Esorcismi in the Lonely Village: Piero Umiliani- Africa (1971), Polinesia (1972)

I present to you today two wonderful and rare Umiliani works from his classic period, a time when his own Sound Work Shop studio was churning out record after record, including a slew of weird, spooky, docu-exotica LPs such as the phenomenal Continente Nero and its brother-album, Genti e Paesi del Mondo.

These two LPs are precisely of a piece with the aforementioned albums, and thus they are indispensable to the Umiliani discography and great, just great.  Africa is very like Nero, very eerie and off-putting in its dissonant, spare approach to exoticism.  Not at all music for a tiki cocktail scene-- rather, the sound of discovering, in the middle of the night in a deep fog, an abandoned and haunted tiki bar, feeling the hair raise on the back of your neck, horrified in the presence of a timeless darkness. 

AFRICA (320)

Polinesia takes the Continente Nero approach to the kind of "Polynesian" paradise music that Umiliani plays mostly straight on Le Isole dell'Amore, and it's a weird piece.  The results aren't dissimilar to his experimental-paradise music as produced for soundtracks such as La Ragazza Dalla Pelle di Luna or Il Corpo, but far less lush, almost skeletal.   Quite excellent indeed, and so highly recommended.

  

POLINESIA (320)

The Field Has Eyes, and the Forest Ears: I've wanted to find and share these albums with you all for quite some time now, but I could never find them.  I never did.  Rather, I threw some inquiries out there and the super-human Owl lent a helping hand.  In a bout of characteristic generosity of spirit, he allowed that I might share the wealth.  If you thank anyone, thank him-- if you know what's good for you.

Flash Car: Summer Storm/Changing Lights (2013)

I present to you all the debut single from Flash Car, the project of a one Mr. Morgan Friedman: longtime friend of the blog, even-longertime friend of mine as a hu-man and knucklehead from the day, a fellow member of the Cumberland County Mean Gang, and artist of sound in the first degree.

I know that I have tipped the hand of my bias (and I'll tip it further-- I myself supplied the cover art), but I say this with complete conviction and sincerity after bracing self-reflection: these two songs are fantastic.

The first track, "Summer Storm," produced in collaboration with a Mr. Boogie Reverie, is a sparkling jewel of 60's pop with crumbling edges-- the naiveté and baroque tinge of Buffalo Springfield or Left Banke by way of the oddball, just-off-center and out-of-time pop sensibility of someone like Eddie Callahan:



The second (in collaboration with another venerable Gang member, Sid Martin, who does some phenomenal work here), is a sexy night drive, on patrol in the land of Robocop: "Changing Lights."  Like "Tusk" filtered through the pilot episode of Miami Vice, but even better than that sounds:




This is some great "now sound," friends.  I hope you get down and into it, pump it into your own zippy little flash car and make it go.

Check out Flash Car's bandcamp to download the tracks at name-your-price.  You can't lose with a deal like that.  Have a good day on this day.

F L A S H  C A R

Trance-Like With Glazed Eyes: Bianchi and His Jungle Sex-Tet- Music to Play in the Dark (1959)

I've wanted to post this for a long time, but I've never had a great quality copy.  My hope was that someone would put out an upgrade on the 128 rip that's been floating around for years, but alas, to my knowledge no one had done so.  Today I come to you with that same tired old rip, sad to say, but only because it's a record worth hearing even in a diminished state.  If you'd rather wait until 320 kbps pop up like a little a wild strawberry, be my guest, but if the last three years are any indication, you may be in for a long wait.  Or, perhaps just by my posting this or by total coincidence, someone will pony up a knockout copy.

Music to Play in the Dark is a sexy little slice of exotica flute-jazz, with a touch of beatnik cool by way of the hotel lounge.  Bianchi (also known as Bob Romeo, on flute) leads a small ensemble with very Denny-esque piano (Eddie Cano, so no surprise there), nice Latin guitar with a tinge of surf (from the great Laurindo Almeida, perhaps channeling a bit of his surf sound from Lalo Schifrin's Gone With the Wave), drums by the top-notch session jazzman Alvin Stoller, percussion by Carlos Vidal Bolado (formerly of Machito's Afro-Cuban boys), and Rafael Vasquez Jr. on bass (whom I know nothing about).  The album copy sums up the sound rather well, I would say:

The persuasive spell of the flute and the primitive pulsating background of timbales and bongos creates a delightful, lavish mood in which even the most modest and restrained males and females have been know to take flight to another and more exotic dimension, on a journey of mysterious and romantic sensations.  With rhythmic sounds of the jungle, the excitement of Lisbon, and the strange exotic sounds of Algiers, they sway, trance-like, to and fro with glazed eyes, drunk with sound, in an emotional fantasy under the hypnotic spell of the lonely flute.

Perhaps it over-states its case just a tad.  The record's promotional accolades give you a better idea of what they want to sound like (an admirable fantasy in this case) than how they actually do.  This album likely won't drive you wild with amorousness and exotic hypnosis-- it's far too mild to achieve any such thing-- but it will set the mood of languor and cool with precision and grace.  It sounds a lot like the rather homogenous, but utterly intriguing and atmospheric, "exotic" jazz from cinema, such as the nightclub scenes in Fellini's La Dolce Vita (or perhaps just my memory of such scenes).  Give it a spin, have a martini and a sex party while wearing an Italian suit.

SEX-TET (128)

Album art images above from Like...Dreamsville's post on this very album (good post, link dead unfortunately).  Thanks be to him for what he's done.

ALSO: Does anybody have a line on Bob Romeo's Aphrodisia?  I've always wanted to hear it, but it's rare as hen's teeth apparently.

Obcure Little Beast on the Prowl: Orera- Orera (1970)

There's a lot of great stuff to be found over at Obscure Little Beasties, much of it original rips (I assume) and of course very obscure (at least it is for me, as I know relatively little about the Russian/Soviet/Eastern European diaspora)-- but since there is almost nothing on the blog in the way of description, it can be a difficult or intimidating sea to navigate.  This is a fine way to run a blog as far as I'm concerned, as I love to spin the wheel and see what emerges from the mystery.  But recently I snagged something so delightful that I wanted to highlight it, ensure you knew about it, and send you all in its direction (and hopefully turn you loose on the wider pastures that Obscure Little Beasties has to offer).

I still know almost nothing about this group, Orera, other than that they are Georgian (perhaps someone out there can better fill me in).  They seem to be practicing a kind of harmony-laden vocal music, blending the (polyphonic?) vocal traditions of their region/culture with the poppy, sunny sensibilities of "sunshine pop" acts like Free Design and the like-- with a good amount of top-notch lite-jazz and Burt Bacharach mixed in.  At times they remind me of a Eurasian Duo Ouro Negro, and while I'm sure that's a shallow comparison, it may be of use in conveying the surface aesthetic at least. 

My inability to intelligently describe or analyze Orera should be clear to you by now, but my perspective isn't really necessary.  Orera are able to advocate for themselves with this video-delight (after which, nothing else really need be said):



Go to Obscure Little Beasties and check this right out, brothers and sisters. 

O R E R A

Baby Cart in the Land of Demons: Hideakira Sakurai- Lone Wolf and Cub OST (1972-74)

The six Lone Wolf and Cub films are, without a doubt, six of my favorite films of all time.  Based on the notably cinematic 1970's manga, and starring the glorious Tomisaburo Wakayama as Ogami Itto, the series depicts the nihilistic exploits of a father-and-child death machine, as they wander the Japanese countryside accepting assassin commissions and meting out utterly merciless revenge.

Because of their cartoonish nature and outrageous violence-- the constant challenge to top themselves by inventing increasingly bizarre ways to depict sword-deaths and blood-spray, the ubiquitous final-act battle wherein Ogami Itto must slay no less than an entire army or armies-- the Lone Wolf and Cub series has rarely been taken as seriously as art as it deserves.  While many of the great Samurai films-- nearly all of them, in fact-- explore the socio-political constructs and resultant injustices of feudal Japan (think Sword of Doom, Three Rebel Samurai, Kill!, Hara-Kiri, Samurai Rebellion, all of you-know-who's samurai efforts, from Seven Samurai to Ran), thus offering subversive elements of allegorical social critique and achieving a deep contemporary cultural resonance, Lone Wolf and Cub traffics very little in these waters.  The protagonists' identity is largely defined by their total rejection of the entire social contract. 

Itto characterizes himself and his son as "evil," or "demons."  Though his sensible, self-evident morality (and paternal devotion) often casts him as one of the only noble characters in the universe, he still represents an unusually nihilistic agent of death death death inevitable fucking death, remorselessly cutting through the landscape (while pushing a stroller), leaving nothing but wind blowing over silent corpses in his wake-- and so the demon comparison is, in many ways, a fitting one. There are no lessons learned, no morals reinforced, no power structures or social codes satirized in any but the most basic sense-- the polemic of every Lone Wolf and Cub is: mess with Lone Wolf and Cub and you will die. 

This fascinatingly simple premise, combined with a committed gonzo aesthetic of splorching, spraying, erupting blood, could result in jokey cult cinema-- somewhere between Riki-Oh and early Shaw Brothers (One-Armed Swordsman springs to mind)-- and that, honestly, would be enough.  Fortunately, it's much more than that, and Lone Wolf and Cub, for all its excesses and absurdity, is a devastatingly elegant body of work (particularly when director Kenji Misumi is at the helm).  Based on a comic book, it embodies much of what a comic book offers, and that includes graphic composition, graceful impossibilities, and psychological impressionism alongside all those surreal eruptions of belief-beggaring violence.  The Samurai genre is often spoken of as a cultural analogue to the western world's Westerns, and while it's not always a clean comparison, it certainly does make a lot of sense to discuss these ultra-violent, anachronistically mythic, and surprisingly graceful pop reconstructions of the Samurai flick in relation to Leone's similar treatment of the Western genre.

It helps that the films are anchored by Wakayama, a troll-like goblin-man with the body of a small sumo wrestler and all the grace, reserve, and dignity of a beautiful god.  With such a magnetic and quiet eye at the center of the storm, you scarcely dare laugh, even when Itto is slashing the tits off a carrot-throwing lady assassin, or striking a statuesque pose while his foe bazooka-sprays blood from his throat.

Contributing to the utter greatness of the series is the exquisite score, by Hideakira Sakurai.  Like the films, it's all over the place, tonally.  Barry-esque spy surf guitars and blaxploitation wah are thrust with inspiring confidence alongside spaghetti western weirdness, eerie psychedelic avant-garde soundscapes, giant pregnant silences, and whatever passes for "traditional" Japanese instrumentation.  It's amazing.  Today I'm sharing with you all the "Best of" Lone Wolf and Cub music, as compiled by La-La Land records (and now out of print).  It's a good collection of themes from each of the six films, a real treat-- though I do wish I could find a complete collection of all the Lone Wolf and Cub scores, because La-La leaves out a lot of the best incidental stuff, which is where Sakurai gets the most abstract, atmospheric and weird.  Sakurai deserves a dimension-x comp of this other stuff like Morricone got with Crime and Dissonance, if you ask me.  But this will have to do for now.

Please enjoy, then check out the films.  You will not regret your choice.

LONE WOLF AND CUB

Coconut Ballet and Jungle Drums: Xavier Cugat- The King Plays Some Aces (1958) and Viva Cugat! (1961)

By 1958, Cugat's "hotter" numbers-- his mambos and the like-- were starting to trade warm rowdiness for cold slick muscle, and on LPs such as this, many of the compositions he had made famous a couple decades earlier were reappearing as brash plastic caricatures with a nagging "bigger is better" sensibility.   The slightly murky, languid sounds of the romantic 78 RPM era were giving way to comic-book brass explosions with a hi-fi polish.  If you want mambos as muscular and thrilling as a Batman fight, you could give Perez Prado a listen (particularly Dilo!), and you would get all that and more-- and it would be good, even grand.  With late-period Cugat, it just sounds strained.

The King Plays Some Aces has some of the symptoms of this disease.  Indeed, as a sort-of tossed-off long player padded with old, repackaged hits, it's potentially emblematic of many of Cugat's thoughtless failings as a populist entertainer first and artist of any integrity second.  It fairly reeks of squandered nostalgia.  But stay tuned for the twist: fortunately, because Cugat really is a magnanimous king and gifted bastard, this seemingly lesser work is, in fact, stocked with a fair share of notable aces.  Late Cugat may not have been a rightful king of the rowdy-ass mambos and rumbas and cha-cha-chas, but he still had that undeniable knack for the lush and exotic.  In this department, the larger orchestras and elaborate production can be employed in such a way as to suit him quite well.

Two real revelations: "Danse des Mirlitons" and especially "Danse Arabe," from, yes, The Nutcracker.  Deftly eliminating whatever Christmas associations we might have, these two glorious arrangements splendidly highlight their essential exoticism (and that of their source-- The Nutcracker, based on the writings of Hoffman, is an extremely exoticizing work at its core). They emerge seductive and a little eerie.

There's also"Baia" and "Adios."  These songs are great every time Cugat tackles them, and the notably novel arrangements, by Sid Ramin, are exquisite.  "Night Must Fall" is another ace, sounding a bit like a less taboo "Jungle Drums," and "Green Eyes" is another ancient chestnut revived for one more charming outing.  I also quite like the version of "Carioca" presented here, though I guess I know its only pretty good.

So if you skip past the merely mediocre and the stinkers, which for me (but not necessarily you-- depending on your tastes, you may feel I have over-emphasized the weaknesses of these selections) means "Mambo No. 5" and "Cuban Mambo," you actually have a somewhat secretly great album.  Afford it your ears if you are so inclined, and do please enjoy yourself.

PLAY SOME ACES (320)

Also, there's Viva Cugat!  I've written about it before (somewhat incompetently, but still) so I'll be brief now, but Viva Cugat! is probably the best and loveliest of the later-era Cugat LPs.  So incredibly highly recommended for those Exotica-lovers among you.

Viva! CUGAT! (192)

One Last Thing: There's been a fair bit of doom-and-gloom drifting about the blogosphere (RIP Mutant Sounds, you fine stallion-- and welcome back Mutant Sounds, in your newish incarnation) but I just want you guys to know that I smell no stink of death on me. I will be here as long as you keep reading-- you know, maybe not till I die, but for a while anyway.  Unless the pigs pitch a big enough fit, I guess.  I know my output has slowed down of late, but I assure you it is not the first signs of that tragic dry-rot, when you can tell that the proprietor of the blog is slowly losing interest. I just have a ton of shit to do these days, and there's nothing I can do to help that.  So it goes, I suppose.

Stay tuned for some cool stuff later in the week.

Like Young Gods Emerging From Ernesto's Forehead: A Lecuona Cuban Boys 78 Collection

If you at all enjoyed last week's Xavier Cugat 78s, then I heartily guarantee that you will die for this collection of similar material from the incredible Lecuona Cuban Boys.  Such sweet sounds are rare indeed.

The Lecuona Cuban Boys don't take their name from composer Ernesto Lecuona without good reason-- they were founded in part by the esteemed Mr. Lecuona himself.  Originally known as Orquestra Encanto, the band began touring in 1934, with Lecuona in tow, at least at first.  In the role of "patron-entepreneur," Lecuona never played as part of the band-- he was given to the occasional piano recital before the show, but nothing beyond that-- but he lent the ensemble the considerable value of his popular and exquisite songs, and by the end of '34, had also lent them his name.  Thus, they became the Lecuona Cuban Boys, and a truly formidable and beautiful touring group was born.

Though they specialize in delightfully robust conga and rhumba numbers, the Boys seem to be fluent in all manner of 30's-40's Afro-Cuban and Exotic popular music.  They can be languidly, almost spookily, exotic, such as on their virtually unparalleled version of "Tabou," "Canto Indio," or the utterly narcotic "Hindou," which can be heard above.  These songs just drip with erotic moisture and tropic haze, and are undoubtedly my favorites.  That tropic-romanticism sound carries over, in less intense effect, to their  more straightforward Latin-pop numbers, such as "Amapola" or "Antilana" (with the slightly bizarre-sounding "Maria La O" somewhere in between), often with the sleepwalk vocals of one of the classic dreamy-voiced lovermen, Alberto Rabagliati.  Some of the selections here feature female vocals as well-- generally those of the Belgian chanteuse Élyane Célis, but with a few from the great Josephine Baker (including a solid rendition of "Besame Mucho").  Beneath the Latin overtones, there's a pre-war international flavor here that richly evokes legendary film-world dens of night-life and multiculturalism-- exemplified, perhaps, by Rick's nobly depraved Café Américain in Casablanca.  

As with the last post, these murky bubbles of magic, beamed into our now from another time-- from a black-and-white dimension full of white suits and fruit-bowl hats-- came from the Internet Archive
(courtesy the "Grimriper"- find a way to thank the generosity of this mysterious hero!).  And as with the last, I've taken the modest pains of organizing the labeling and selecting from the numerous duplicate rips the very best quality versions.

With that, I have but to say that I would be very pleased for you to sink into these deep little wells of sound.  Enjoy, friends.

LECUONA CUBAN BOYS

"The Pagan I Love": Xavier Cugat, Master Pratictioner of Early Exotica and Rhumba Jazz

My first introduction to the eternal Mr. Xavier Cugat was through an early 60's LP, the really quite exquisite Viva Cugat!, but I didn't really fall in love with the man's work or comprehend the magnitude of his talent and influence until I began digging into earlier decades.  Cugat's brand of sexy rhumba-centric exoticism lent itself, quite obviously, very well to the greater Exotica trend of the 50's and early 60's-- but for him, this fascinatingly prolific and unique period in music may have felt more like a revival, or at least a continuation. Cugat had been working with what we now think of as "exotica" since the 30's, and indeed played a huge role in determining which songs would ultimately cement themselves as standards within the Exotica canon: he helped popularize Cuban music, recording numerous Ernesto Lecuona compositions (including, of course, the exquisite "Jungle Drums"), performed the original version of "Babalu", had not one but two hits with Alberto Dominguez' "Perfidia", and generally played a major role in Latin music from Cuban to Brazilian enjoying a heyday as a major international musical trend.

In the Latin craze which penetrated American popular music of the 30's and 40's, Carmen Miranda was queen and Xavier Cugat was king-- Perez Prado and Desi Arnaz, the successful princes who followed along in their footsteps.  Among his many collaborators and bandmates we may count Lalo Schifrin, Dinah Shore, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Tito Rodriguez, Yma Sumac, Rita Hayworth, and many more.  He's also a hilarious draftsman and caricaturist.

Cugat popularized tango, mambo, rhumba, conga, and cha-cha-cha, all genres that tend to be discussed often in terms of their intensity, which gives the impression of their practitioners as being more passionate and brash than anything else, even unsubtle.  But while Papa Cugat's swingers are of the finest magnitude, even his brawniest numbers don't aspire to anything like the sheer crazed muscle of Perez Prado's best work (whose own power is never to be underestimated, and ought not be unduly accused of un-subtlety itself).  Particularly in the early days, he's actually rather tender, or torridly elegant, when and where the piece calls for it.

Indeed, the rhumba and its like used to be a more flexible and rich form, capable of absorbing almost anything from folk, pop, and jazz and producing from it's jazz-orchestral womb an exquisite synthesis (this is illustrated in revelatory fashion by Rhythm & Blues' Rumba Jazz 1919-1945, The History Of Latin Jazz & Dance Music From The Swing Era, one of my very favorite compilations of the decade).  Mr. Cugat may be one of the most enormously commercial and popular practitioners within this cottage industry, but this changes not a whit that fact that his best (early) work remains utterly top-notch and brilliant-- particularly when dealing in specifically exotica, exotica, and proto-exotica compositions.

One of my favorite collections of early Cugat numbers is South America, Take it Away! Covering a the fruitful period from 1935-46 with New York's Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra, this has some of the best and most essential Cugat selections, quite a few of which are early exotica numbers-- with amazing vocals, several of them by Bing Crosby (and wonderful lyrics not often heard in later Exotica versions, a treat perhaps exemplified by the lyric to "Jungle Drums").  I can never find a very good copy of it, but from a few defective rips and such I have been able to cobble together a pretty decent full version.  Check here for the track listing and some additional info.

TAKE IT AWAY!

I would encourage you not to stop there, however.  I have something else I'd love for you to hear.  While digging around in the internet archive site, in the 78's and Cylinders collection, I came across a series of wonderful old Cugat rips (all furnished selflessly by the "Grimriper," to whom I tip my hat with deep and abiding respect and gratitude-- here's to you sir).  They are wonderful and wide-ranging-- and considering that they likely all came from 40's-era 78 vinyl, they sound phenomenal.  I can't recommend this stuff highly enough.  You can check it out here (as well as preview tracks and thank the uploader), and please do, but for your highest convenience, I've compiled all the tracks and tidied up all the labeling, then upped it here.

This stuff is largely just mind-bogglingly great, so beautiful and romantic and exhilarating. Of particular note: "Greek Bolero", "Baia" and "You Belong To My Heart" (both with the incomparable Bing Crosby), "Misirlou" (with Dinah Shore), "Poinciana", "Perfidia", "Jalousie", and many more to be sure.  Now bring these elegant Latin ghosts of Exotica's early history into your night and into your life.
XAVIER CUGAT 78 VINYL COLLECTION

Coming soon: some highlights from Cugat later career in the LP era.

Journey Into the Face of a Cosmic God: Sven Grünberg- Hingus (1981)

Of all the treasures to be found at The Growing Bin, Hingus is one of my absolute favorites.  But, as sometimes happens, the Bin's own link is with us no longer.  So, in the interest of keeping it alive and circulating, I post it here today.

Hingus is the first solo album from Sven Grünberg, the Estonian synth-warlock (and chairman of the Estonian Institute of Buddhism) previously of the band Mess.  Hingus (which, in Estonian, means "breath") is lovely little marvel, an exquisite gem of ambient synthesizer music.  Perhaps despite what its appearance and pedigree might suggest, it's not particularly proggy, nor does it have the pulsing sequencers of classic Berlin School-- what it most reminds me of, in fact, is not Jean-Michel Jarre or Tangerine Dream, or even Vangelis, whose work (especially on China) does come awful darn close, but Alice Coltrane's devotional efforts on staggering works such as Divine Songs.  It has that spiritual breadth (and eastern modality, here manifest in melodies and tones reminiscent at times of Chinese opera and Japanese classical music) coupled with a strong, overwhelming sense of the sublime-- both the beauty and yawning terror of a hugeness, the unfathomable size of the universe and the invisible forces of the void somehow conveyed in whooshing, swooning, soaring synth washes and cosmic gong crashes.

This is a classic, a giant.  God damn it, I love this Hingus!  Check out the Growing Bin's post for technical specs (and give a thank you to Zeroy).  Then float like a ghost planet through a shimmering universe with

HINGUS
HINGUS
HINGUS
HINGUS
 

Thanks to everyone for being so cool and checking out Crashing Waves.  You're all real pals.

The Cumberland County Mean Gang: Crashing Waves

I present to you the new Mean Gang full-length, Crashing Waves.  A classically psychedelic travelogue with shades of Tangerine Dream, Joseph Conrad, and Werner Herzog's Cobra Verde.  Exotic-leaning and Krautrock-informed.  A journey– o'er oceans, deserts, jungles, air&space, and upriver. Down into the blinding light, backwards into the dark places.


  

I myself am a Gang member (full-disclosure and just-so-you-know), and I am very pleased to share this thing with you.  If you tend to enjoy visiting me at this spot, if it pleases you to partake of the treasures presented here, there's a pretty solid chance you'll take some pleasure in this thing, too.  Try it out.  If you're feeling generous, you could even let it blow your mind.

We've put it up on Bandcamp, to make it possible for listeners to give us some money, if they want.  That could mean you, but it doesn't have to.  The price is "name-your-price," which means it's free if you like (just enter "0").  Don't be shy about snagging it for free-- if you want to help support a wild gang of experimentalist explorers, then throw us a dollar or ten-- but what we really want is for folks to listen to it. I just want you guys to hear it, man.

If all that hullabaloo sounds like a bunch of malarky to you, and contrary to the bloggin' spirit, then I have a solution for that as well.  I'll also upload a rip and link to it from here.  But you'll have to go to the bandcamp site to get flac or whatever advanced formats you might prefer.

Go on this journey, amigos.

CRASHING WAVES