Coinciding with the 25-year anniversary of iconic vocalist Billy MacKenzie’s passing, a new triple-CD collection, highlighting his collaborations with Steve Aungle.
• Re-assembling past recordings with several previously unreleased songs (including some collaborations with Dennis Wheatley and Laurence Jay Cedar. (cherry red)
Following the »Minna Miteru« compilation, released in 2020, Morr Music announces a sequel, dedicated to Japanese indie music, overflowing with surprises and welcome discoveries. Like its predecessor, »Minna Miteru 2« is compiled by Saya of Tenniscoats, with the support of Markus Acher (The Notwist). It’s also another part of the Minna Miteru universe, alongside retrospective albums by The Andersens (»There Is A Sound«, 2020) and yumbo (»The Fruit Of Errata«, 2021). Taken together, these albums suggest a scene in rude health, sharing a unique vibration. (Morr Music)
Norma Tanega’s I’m the Sky: Studio and Demo Recordings, 1964–1971 is a comprehensive survey of the pioneering folk artist’s two commercially released studio albums, an unreleased album, and a trove of unheard demos.
Before playing a pivotal part in folk music’s cultural crossover in the ‘60s, Tanega was a curious little girl born at the very end of the ‘30s to a multicultural Navy family in Long Beach, California. Her parents often brought her to Los Angeles for piano lessons, and eventually Tanega earned an MFA at Claremont College, where she studied classical composers like Aaron Copeland and George Gershwin. Amidst her academic pursuits, Tanega learned to play acoustic guitar and autoharp by following Joan Baez records and hanging out at the Folk Music Center, a music store and performance space in Claremont that exists to this day.
After college, Tanega landed in Greenwich Village in 1963, and became active in the coffee house scene and early protests against the Vietnam War. Working summers as a camp counselor in the Catskill Mountains, the up-and-coming producer and arranger Herb Bernstein caught Tanega perform at the camp, and introduced her to songwriter Bob Crewe. The trio found their first collaborative success in 1966 when Tanega’s “Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog” rocketed to #22 on the American and British charts (#3 in Canada). Her debut full-length of the same name followed that year, which saw her perform on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand and Where The Action Is, and tour North America with artists including Gene Pitney and Bobby Goldsboro.
That same year, Tanega traveled to England to tour in support of Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog. During rehearsals for the British music television show Ready Steady Go!, Tanega met Dusty Springfield. The pair became fast friends, then partners in a committed long-distance relationship. Tanega moved to London to be with Springfield, for whom she also went on to write and co-write a number of songs.
While in London, in 1969 Tanega recorded Snow Cycles, a second album that would never see the light of day, and I Don’t Think it Will Hurt if You Smile, eventually released with little fanfare in 1971. As heard on the first half of I’m the Sky, the same whimsical and joy-filled spirit guides all three of Tanega’s studio albums, and provides a colorful stage for her idiosyncratic meter and songwriting. Tanega’s lyrics touch on love and adoration to introspection and melancholy, while her music offers an eclectic take on popular folk-rock and psychedelic sound of the late ‘60s.
The second half of I’m the Sky opens a rare and intimate window into Tanega’s songwriting process with a collection of demos discovered in Tanega’s Claremont home. Unfettered by instrumentation save for a single guitar on most songs, Tanega’s voice soars across the mid-range and above the six string reverberations, openly musing on life and love. More than merely sketches, the demos capture an essence of Tanega’s songcraft, and a tangible translation of the emotional range which sets her work apart from the banality in certain folk music of the era.
In 1972, Tanega returned to Claremont and shifted focus to her visual arts, teaching ESL, and participating in her surrounding community of LGBTQ experimental artists. She kept recording and performing music with a number of local groups as well. While Tanega, who passed away in 2019 at the age of 80, is essential to California’s legacy of folk and experimental music, she’s also essential to the canon of folk-rock writ large. Tanega left behind an exceptional catalog of music encapsulated in part on I’m the Sky, but, more than anything, she left an enduring expression of what it means to be free. (Anthology recordings)
Something of a supergroup featuring two artists very familiar with the Duophonic Super 45s label, Ghost Power is Tim Gane from Stereolab and Jeremy Novak from Dymaxion. Their self-titled debut LP was recorded both remotely separated by lockdown restrictions and in person in Berlin and New York after the success of their first 7” collaboration for Duophonic in 2020. Ghost Power often feels like a natural extension of both collaborators’ primary configurations. For instance, the opening ‘Asteroid Witch’ airs to the side of Stereolab’s cosmopolitan psychedelia, while ‘Inchwork’ plays much closer to Dymaxsion’s harsher experiments. (duophonic)
Johan Asherton has always been interested in electronic music, spending hours recording instrumentals using a custom-built Fizelson synthesizer. Recording at home on a two-track Revox A 77 in the late seventies, he would then overdub layers of sounds, noises, percussions, string-ensemble (an Elka Rhapsody owned by his friend Claude Arto, who would soon form the futuristic duo Mathématiques Modernes). At one point, he seriously contemplated releasing some of these recordings via one of the independent french labels of the times, like Isadora or Pôle.
Various events prevented him to do so but by 1981 he regrouped with Arto – by then fastly becoming a strong force on the Parisian indie-electronic scene – who offered him to produce his first record. Having purchased a Roland System 100 M synthesizer and an EMS sequencer from Arto, Asherton embarked on a series of lenghty recording sessions, resulting in several pieces he dubbed « Environment Music » – a large wink to Brian Eno’s « Discreet Music ». By May 1982 his first single « Harlequin » was released, offering a melodic song set to a largely electronic background. Later that same year, however, Asherton was writing and demoing the nucleus of what would eventually lead to the formation of his first band, The Froggies. (edk records)
Sergio Sayeg (aka Sessa) has always been entranced by what he calls “the mess” of music: the accidental, tortuous nature of it, a path on which musicians and audiences alike can attain a higher purpose. A love supreme, if you will. While Sessa’s 2019 debut Grandeza explored the corporeal pleasures and gentle drunkenness of being in love, his new album, Estrela Acesa (which translates as Burning Star), gazes up to the heavens and ponders love both sensuous and spiritual, in the throes of its resultant hangover. (mexican summer)
First time reissue of one of the milestones of independent production in Brazil and one of the greatest achievements of MPB (Brazilian Popular Music) ever that deserves wider recognition, and shines with a depth that makes it an instant classic to our ears! Features some of Brazil’s leading musicians, arrangers, and composers of all time: Wagner Tiso, Mauricio Maestro, Robertinho Silva, Pascoal Meirelles… The songs on this album sound so fresh they could have been recorded today while also retaining the feel of the best post-Tropicalia work of 70s Brazil.
180g vinyl edition. First time reissue.
DESCRIPTION This 1982 Chico Lessa album is one of the milestones of independent production in Brazil and one of the greatest achievements of MPB (Brazilian Popular Music) ever that deserves wider recognition, and shines with a depth that makes it an instant classic to our ears! The arrangements on the beautiful ‘Choveu’ and ‘Me Pega, Me Larga’ can easily bring names like Verocai to your mind. No wonder the album features some of Brazil’s leading musicians, arrangers, and composers of all time: Wagner Tiso, Mauricio Maestro, Robertinho Silva, Pascoal Meirelles… The songs on this album sound so fresh they could have been recorded today while also retaining the feel of the best post-Tropicalia work of 70s Brazil. It has become a much sought-after album in recent times after being rediscovered by top collectors worldwide (VAMPISOUL)
un musicien de cœur de Mr persévérance n’est plus ( le titre Magellan de FELT fut pendant des années le générique de mon émission radio Persévérance circa 1992 à colmar puis vers 2015 à saint Etienne)
perseverancevinylique 