Following our first podcast dedicated to the Quebecan freakwave, here comes a second made for and hosted by The Drone, enterely based on taiwanese vinyl and tape material freshly collected in Taipei: expect mandarin disco pop, children songs, easy listening, marimba orchestras or library stock music for bars and night clubs, with a certain amount of cover songs involving western or japanese melodies.
Vintage culture in general being not so offshore in the country, I'd like to especially thank for their adresses, tips and recommendations Yujun Ye, Kishino Yuichi, as well as Sataka Ritsuko and Hideki Yachi.
Detailed tracklist to follow hopefully soon,depending on our translator friend celerity, but we can already briefly mention the presence of the Pi li bu dai shi puppet show's opening theme from the 80's, J.S.Bach adaptation for marimbas by taiwan native orchestrator Wen Loong-Hsing, plus singers Wan Sha-Lang and Yao Su Rong, whose haunted voice for a sensuous beat closes the chapter.
Quite an underrated symbol of a certain parisian elegance, Frédérick Botton remains too often missing in the celebrations, as many others whose songrwiting was discreetely camouflaged by the personality of people they were writing for. Botton had a singer carreer by himself, though. His frank voice, delicate, is often praised by people who happen to know song like "Le voyage abandonné" Viens faire dodo sur mes dollars, or Le Black Botton. In case of his craziest singles (La grosse boule, Pi 12 3, 14116), arrangements by Alain Goraguer decidedly bring the incongruity to the next level of bewilderment.
H comme hippies for Dani (see below), Pêche abricot for Zizi Jeanmaire, Les hommes sont des poupées for Alice Sapritch... Botton wrote for many. A bourgeois part of me doesn't mind to fantasize about his acquointance with Françoise Sagan, his Hausmann apartment, his brands of whiskey and nights in cabarets. In case of Amarande, we have an actress who worked a lot for theater + a few movies, and sang a bunch of singles. Apart from Le Pétrole, composed by our man, you might briefly check her other single attempts A quoi bon se presser, or L'Amour et le rugby.
During the 80's, Botton seems to write more and more scores for the parisian cabaret Le Paradis Latin. You can find a few excerpts of Champagne on Youtube, and a LP was released of Le Rayon bleu that's not really worth being uploaded. An unexpected yet successful incursion in the field of synth-wave may be noticed with that song for Nathalie Reims, whose singer carreer was partly made under the alias Alix. Sister of Bettina Rheims, in a jet-set love relationship with Leo Scheer, then Claude Berri, she also commited another single, Ca tourne à l'envers.
In the field of commercial works, that good-looking 7" was used as promo gift by hairdresser Eugène, that sadly doesn't exist anymore in rue d'Athènes à Paris.
Wether it may be due to the piano or to the wah wah sound, this item is so representative of the french freakbeat wave that it instantly evocates some of Jean-Claude Vannier's production, or De Roubaix's incursions in funk for L'homme orchestre soundtrack.
It wasn't that usual for a 7inch to also include such collage elements at the time: another reason to file this among the most remarquable ones produced by Patrick Abrial's, an outsider rock singer you might remind for Le grand ordinateur, that Mr Aubrun already posted here. Credited for the "solution" side, his acolyte Claude Morgan is known for being a member of the french hitmaker combo Bimbo Jet, whose classic 7inch may be found in almost every pile of decent french material.
Another 7" in the infinite serie of obscure french grooves from the seventies, layering its twister beat on epic melodic surf elements: as the title says, quite a tribute in itself to the Space echo effect.
Michel Cenni remains quite a mystery. Was he maybe related to the Pop concerto orchestra ? His second (and only?) solo appearance consists in a great and praised space disco maxi by Optik 5, "official music for the 10th festival of fantastic and science fiction cinema".
Bocquet isn't exactly what you would call hidden treasure now that he already resurfaced on several blogs, mainly with his double Robot bleu / Robot rose. But I already noticed how much some of our followers occasionally don't mind a subsequent post overviewing or summarizing one of their heroes' course. And the comeback of the mighty Henriette Coulouvrat on stage, thanks to the blatant monastical efforts of Musikmekanikcircus, gives me a good opportunity to talk a bit about the one she describes as her favorite composer.
Starting as a decisive member of the french prog band Catharsis, Bocquet's career firstly follows the band's impressive discography. Keyboardist, he brings a highly specific Farfisa touch that made the band's sound distinctive, as you can notice on that b-side packed under a delicate artwork. Following the Catharsis' cessation of activity, he released the Paradia solo LP, followed by Robot rose (including songs from Paradia) and the brand new Robot bleu on the library label RCA media. His perreyesque Marche des canards as well as songs Le flipper amoureux and Le repondeur automatique rightly titillated the label enough to give him a 7" exposure outside of the library field.
Across the 80's, he cumulated commercial works, layering his arpegiators on a massive amount of highly dispensable french tv anthems (X-or, Mask, les Petites canailles) or soundtracks (La Balance). Even a single for Marie Dauphin (Y'en a qui).
Now get ready and spread the word: the syldavesque madame Henriette, for whom Bocquet composed killer hits, is back. And her last month's live appearance in Paris announces more events to come. We all know how much this kind of comeback on stage is risky and rarely works for people with such a fabled profile: this is why we got struck to almost surprisingly shiver and dance on a performance that brilliantly honoured all together the sound (no shitty remixes but pure vintage backing tracks), the voice and the crazyness. We clapped, she laughed. Ha ha ha hi hi.
Amongst the shelves of the praised Nakano bookstore Taco che, there was no way to miss such a striking artwork, blending the best of karaoke computer graphics with a unique Friday 13th aesthetics applied to kayokyoku. But it took time to put a name on the enthusiasming music, and to decode the various infos provided by the garrulous yet obscure liner notes: something that was made possible thanks to the help of Tadao Takeuchi, from the band Tartine, who actually attended a Kawanishi Kyô concert during an Oz disc festival in 1993, and taught me most of what I know now about the man.
As written on the cover, here comes "the first work sang in the language of the universe": a statement that perfectly explains the highly specific use of onomatopoeia in the two excerpts provided here. In the booklet of his self-produced item, this japanese citizen, whose lyrics are for some reasons often historically obsessed by the situation of Korean people, is credited with more than 1000 songs written between 1988 and 2007. Something partly confirmed both by the "Volume 1" label, and by a few promo videos lost somewhere deep down youtube.
It would be hard to render the unique syntax by translating song titles such as "spaceship of the maruberu break". With an opening song directly refering to the Andromeda galaxy, it is almost impossible not to think he might have a astral match with another highly specific character, the lovely andromeda hime Aoki Ai. Direcly connected to the universe, he's also a bashful perfectionnist, who couldn't help apologising in his booklet for the recording quality. God knows how many other jewels are still somewhere on the shelves ...
Comparing to the big names who got recently rediscovered by westerners interested in japanese new wave titillating archives (think Uchôten, P-model, Plastics, or Hikashu), Jinseiremains so far outrageously confidential outside of its own country.
Also spelled Zin-say or 人生, this former project involving future members of techno unit Denki Groove started circa 1985 while its protagonists were still young male students. Thanks to its wild homemade first recordings, it quickly caught the attention of Uchôten leader Kera and his label Nagomu. A catalytic connexion, propeling the band who managed to build a substential aura with its blend of sonic insanity, cracked up electronics, gross stage costumes and occasionally poetical lyrics like "there is something rotten in the asshole".
Each one of these fellow bands from the 80's experienced a different destiny: some like Uchôten ended up signing on major labels, others like, Picky Picnic, managed to release some of their records in Europe ... Despite a reissue as part of the Nagomu collection, a decent thread on Mutant Sounds, and the efforts of a few hardcore fans like femaletrouble, Zin-say's mutation into Denki Groove might partly explain why its cult got less maintained outside of Japan than others. Like Karate Bakabon, its irrecoverable amount of oddness maybe did hold off the most conservative listeners. Scared pussies ...
Another french synthpop one shot from the band Journal Intime, which drum machine and mono bassline reminds us of other typical tunes such as Bisou's one. One of the band members, Dominique Rousseau, can be tracked down as a producer of either Michel Legrand's Disco Magic Concorde or the furry hit single Kiki Spatial. Moreover, he was also the one in charge of the 1979 disco-funk soundtrack of Les Givrés, one of these comedies that cement our national pride, challenger of the other classic reference in the field of winter sports' gag released exactly the same year: Les Bronzés font du ski.
Pure product from the 80s in France, the ambitiousness that you can feel in the few words spread across press reviews by these five french boys from Lyon attests that they had moving dreams, huge ones. Just born and already overtaken by some tragic circumstances (death of one of its members), Banann Panthair had enough time to prove to Paris that they were worth it (live at Gibus), but despite all their efforts didn't manage to give a little brother to their only 7" and its typically misty hit: a sour item that now belongs to the archives of french coldwave.
In a country where comedy artists & satyrical bands seems more inclinded for popular success than any others; comes a selection for what sound best to my hears. I've never been actually to Finland and once again came across for those via various cd's friends brought me back & forums.
Finnish superstar and top selling artist, Jope Ruonansuu deserved to be first to be introduced there. He began early in the 80's as a stand-up actor, then go on relasing records. I've only managed to get few of his albums blended with phone jokes and cheap parody songs. Giorgio Moroder meets Harry Merry meets Russian Army Choir (more or less).
Claiming to be hugely influenced by the whole US pop, Hullujussi (fronted by the excentric Viktor Kalborrekin) gained notoriety with running shows on finnish pirate radios back in the early 70's. The "Rope Ja Kake" song comes from a 7inch single as released in 1975 & also appears on their very first eponym LP...
From 1985 and still fresh as a watermelon, a discreet yet cheerful EP from the mysterious Lula on Zero records . Moreover, a good opportunity to talk a bit about this label which catalogue seemed to contain all the roots of a music tree that would later become fundamental in the field of japanese independant music. While many of the musicians who happened to release their early recordings on Zero are still active, they furthermore developped a decisive influence through the years on a younger generation, wether you consider the now classic Shonen Knife or the less highlighted Luna Park Ensemble (which member Hiro Nakazaki now belongs to Maher Shalal Hash Baz), among many others.
This label's releases, now belonging to the tough world of collectors, start to resurface from time to time on various blogs: check Stalking Duppi for the highly recommended Kumiko Suyama's haunted vocals layered on filtered noises, or Mutant Sounds for the delicately detuned works of Che Shizu:
The rich Aura Music compilation, featuring various artists from the team, also offers an interesting panorama, including incursions into more synth oddities with such a kind of electronic tune:
It's not a surprise to learn that this label happened to release the japanese edition of After dinner's Paradise of replicaand Souvenir Cassette (compilating live recordings from european and japanese tours): its whole catalogue seems to be cemented with a deep coherence, a (sub?)conscious trademark that will allow you to find connexions between many of the artists, projects and specific musical aspects they developped.
A floating tempo principle inherited from traditional sundanese music played with Calung (a bamboo tube xylophone from the west Java), blended with soft MIDI tambourine and drums, give to these tracks from indonesian superstar Darso a specific and titillating sound that makes me feel highly grateful to my wise friend Makiko who kindly brought me the original tape back from her last travel here.
Trying to dig Darso's impressive career that goes from the 70s - with more psyche-related material - to recent karaoclips that remain full of unexpected ingredients, a search on the insanely completistMadrotter blog for more will lead you to this creme de la creme synthy jewel piece of him featuring Detty Kurnia. So good and underrated that I can't resist to include an excerpt:
Among the members of that not-so-usual french synth-pop band, you will find Daniel Chevenez, future half of Niagara (who also produced les Calamités, among various other things), for what happens to be their only 7"release from 1981.
Infos are scarce on the band and its other mysterious members so we'll simply extract here the sweet mesmerizing B-side and also will notice that Pierre-René Worms, in charge of the cover portrait, is well-known for his experience as a photographer who shot the eclosion of new wave in France at the time.
Algerian early rai legendary band from the 70's who gained notoriety for imposing their "Abassi" music style playing (different to the Oranese one). They're beng collaborate with early Rai legends such as Groupe El Azhar, female rai singer Chaba Fadela amongs others...
The band was fronted by Ahmed Zergui (pic below) who go on after the group disbanded, releasing many other tapes. I can't really confirm if he's the same artist who appeared under "Cheb Zeguir" on Hicham Chadly's "Proto Raï" as they are quite a lot of: "Cheb Seguir", "Mohamed Zaguir", "Sghir" etc in the whole rai scene. (Anybody to confirm ?)
First in a number of few posts dedicated to other fascinating Tamil / Kollywood score composers who did not appear on the tracklist of our "Play That Beat Mr. Raja #1" compilation...
Chandrabose, sometimes also known as "Chandra Bose", was a hugely popular Tamil composer who scored for around 300 movies and was kind of emblematic in the late 80's to early 90's..
At first comes one song as taken from "Manithan's score, a 1987 Kollywood blockbuster starring Rajinikanth. The movie being quite famous too for its ending with the violent and explosive death of the villain and some dreamy & beautiful music clips.
As for the anecdocte, back in 2008 when we thought for a Tamil score compilation (which was supposed to be a 2xLP record), that song was planned to appear...
Rougher and South Indian folklore inspired second song, from "Paati Solle Thattathey"(1990) with a pic (above) taken from its cartoonish style animated generic.
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To end properly comes one last extract from one of Chandrabose's most popular succes: "Raja Chinna Roja" (1989).
I recently came across that tape from 1984 which absolutely blew my mind away. Some of you following for the recent trend of oriental psych reissues (TOO MUCH) might have already heard for Les Abranis or Frères Megri (already posted on the blog HERE) but this seems now to be completely obscure stuff.
Well obscure not exactly as in the end H.I. was nohting but an early pseudonym for Kabylian Diva from Djurdjura origin: Nora At Brahim.
For this radio mixtape made on demand for both french magazine Telerama radio and french blog Le Musicassette, Gangpol & Mit took the opportunity to pay tribute to music and people who were influential in the making of their new record, subjectively united here under the temporary banneer of international music exchanges, mutant folkloric reappropriations, western/eastern connexions and carefully traded exoticisms in what I imagine as an old-time open international noisy harbour.
For such a legal podcast, I allowed myself to include or quote more classically celebrated bands than usual, that maybe will sound quite obvious to you. Howere, I hope that the thread will make sense, from mambo electronics to dangdut upgrades, blended traditionnal sources, and an occasional anglo-saxon tiny spoon of lyrics.
Love it or hate it, African Boogie music is largely underrated... I believe few blogs around have accorded and shown interest & with most record labels exclusively focusing on Fela's contemporeans & heritage it seems there is no place for those cheesy pieces of west african pop-funk songs.
Dizzy K. (Fofola) who is generally considered as an iconic african Boogie figure cut 6 records, all of them engineered by the mighty Tony Okoroji (music producer but also "auteur" for the afro pop gem "Mama & Papa") whome I believed had a huge influence on Dizzy's electrofunk compositions due to surprising similarities between both artists.
Today Mr. Fofola (now a Londoneer resident), is making a living as a succesfull gospel interpret...
> For some more "sweet Dizzy K. music", have a visit at "With Comb & Razor" who uploaded a couple more songs.
As taken from the B side of african synthi wizard W.O.'s LP: "Good Name". A two track killer Lp (his biggest record on demand) which despite of not being considered by specialists as real Boogie musics is full of bizarre & progressive synth driven funk songs just like his latter efforts.
> The long promised Onyeabor's anthology post should come soon.
As far as I know and considering the record list on discogs "Girl" is Emma Dorgu's lattest record. Pretty different from his earlier LPs & much less sophisticated african disco-funk style songs, by far my favourite record. There is also an instrumental dub mix for the song on the B side.
> An E.D.'s song can be found on the recently released compilation "Lagos Disco Inferno" as compiled by Frank from Voodoo Funk.
Musically piloted by the lady herself, in charge and control of every details from the musical scores to the home recording, self-made impressive mix and carefull fabrication featuring her long-time friend Stéphane Blanquet on the graphic side, here comes Mami Chan's brand new solo opus, after more than 10 years of waiting since her last solo on APC.
Remembering our first contact with her music brings us back in time more than 15 years ago right to the pages of the fanzine Popo Color, when it started advertising her first album on the Saravah's sublabel Popo Classic Collection run by Pierre Barouh's son Benjamin Barouh. However, while these early albums were joyfully developping a baroque sandbox dimension, with a generous excess of tools, guests or directions, this new one limits itself to Mami's most fundamental characteristics on purpose, until a wonderful coherence arises.
Striking is she, in the way that she owns a sense of how to place things, sincerely, accurately. Strong even in its simple moments, detached from any care regarding trends, the result is moving in its honesty, from intimate songs to orchestral instrumentals, intricate with neoclassic piano pieces highlighting her feeling in riffs: playing as a keyword, until your hands happily start to drive out of the road.
During the past years, Mami Chan worked a lot through a galaxy of collaborative projects, including music for the animations of Blanquet, in charge of the illustrative work for this specific object. An appropriate collision between his dark-inked universe and a music that exactly required such ambivalence to get revealed for what it is: not as naïve as you might think at first sight. There's oddness, melancholy, small dramas also in this collection of characters, shadows, plants and insects: promenade in the woods, friends, or village parties, it's never that simple.
May this post be an opportunity to quickly explore a few things from the past. Extract from the Love and Beauty limited promo EP, here comes, according to me, one of the best example of her early years madness: four tracks in one, arranger keyboard abuse and woody wild drums for a deviant unique instrumental anthem.
And, as a last nugget on the lo-fi side, another tune featuring the ultimate revered queen Haco, extract from a now sold out 1 minute women collective 7" published by the parisian collective Dokodoki.
