B.C. Camplight - Blink Of A Nihilist

What made me curious about this album was I read somewhere that the artist's been in a mental institution and also used stories of other patients as inspiration. I expected something like Syd Barett's music but I got something more like Brian Wilson's. Don't know how I overlooked that possibility.
But really, my association with this music is Beach Boys. Not the close harmony singing but the perfection of the song and the attention to details in arrangements. It somehow "feels" like Beach Boys stuff perhaps more than I can point to actual references. To be absolutely clear, B.C. Camplight's music doesn't sound crazy at all.
His lyrics are different. Weirder and apart from mental institutions, Brian Christinzio (the B.C. in B.C. Camplight) has also looked for inspiration in prisons. That's inspiration and not literal crime stories or hallucinations, it's a bit vague. Just like they're printed in the booklet: without punctuation or capitals.
Back to the music because that's the best aspect of this CD to me. I like it overall and there are these small moments where the music really takes off and flies away. Beach Boys again: you know that moment in 'Good Vibrations' where the music fades and then the refrain/ chorus explodes once more? That kind of feeling.
Don't get me wrong, for everything that's right with this album it's not exactly like the Beach Boys and you won't find another 'Good Vibrations' on it, of course. B.C. Camplight does his own things and he does them well. I hear an album made with much ambition and BC gets it perfect (yes, perfect) mostly. Not all things work out that well and I think his voice is a little too high but there's so much magic that I rate this album very high.
One Little Indian, 2007

B.C. Camplight - Blink Of A Nihilist

Golden State Funk

"Impossibly Rare Funk From The Bay Area" and "Rare late 60s/ early 70s Bay Area funk, from the legendary Golden State Recorders."
What I understand from the linernotes is that Golden State Recorders wasn't really a label but a recording studio. The "Recorders" part gives it away but in every other respect does this CD fit in the Ace collection of label releases. The Golden State Recorders was owned by one Leo de Gar Kulka, a Czech native, and business was into recording for other labels or small private releases.
The music's funk indeed, you can take the "late 60s/ early 70s" part quite literally, it seems to be from 1969 to 1971 but since most songs are "previously unissued", you'll find 2007 as the major release year.
As a recording studio, Kulka provided a service for major labels until those labels set up their own studios in the region. That prompted him to work in niche markets: music targeted at a black audience and recording sessions for private parties like church choirs. A nice side effect from that was that it enabled Kulka to contract some talents from those choirs and if you've never heard Jeanette Jones sing it's not because of her voice: it's powerful enough to test the limits of your speakerset and can easily bridge an ocean unamplified.
Funk: yes but nothing outrageously or extreme, this collection is excellent if you want to take it a bit easy after a James Brown session or so and continue dancing.
It's a release by an Ace sublabel so sound quality is excellent and the booklet provides added value in background on the music and artists. Many pictures of 7'' labels as usual, I don't know what's interesting about that but also a few more relevant images. Worth a look if you want to see how big afros can be or how dull today's fashion is compared to 4 decades ago.
Hey, hey, hey, super chicken ya all.
BGP / Ace, 2007

Golden State Funk

Crucial Acoustic Blues

"Crucial" is the name of the series this CD belongs to, that explains why they managed to fit all the 'crucial acoustic blues' on 1 CD and why you won't find, say, Robert Johnson on this. The Crucial series has similar titles like 'Crucial Harmonica Blues', 'Crucial Chicago Blues', etcetera. Rather than just a collection of blues compilations, they're label samplers; shop windows to albums by single bands. Find info on the site of Alligator records, a label dedicated to blues releases it seems.
It's a safe selection of artists with only a few names I hadn't heard of before, and I'm not particularly knowledgeable about blues. From what I understand of the linernotes, there are only a few new blues artists on it, most have a 20+ years career on their resume or are dead already. Well, who expects something revolutionary of an acoustic blues collection anyway, right?
The quality of the music is great, the music is more diverse than you maybe expect from such a CD (yes, acoustic blues = acoustic blues but still...) and the price fits the idea of a label sampler. I haven't tried any of the other Crucial CDs but based on this CD alone it seems the series is a good way to build a small blues collection. No idea if this compilation has the 'hit' song and the original album contains only filler but that's hard to imagine, it may well be of course that the compiler has taken the single acoustic song of an album for this compilation and you'll find only amplified tracks if you dig deeper.
The linernotes? Hardly there, just enough to introduce the original albums and artists but that's the whole point of this release. It also mentions the other Crucial albums and my copy came with a little leaflet advertising Alligator t-shirts and caps. Because blues isn't really blues if you're not wearing the right clothes, I guess, and the tees are probably made of cotton for authenticity. Enjoy the music though! ;-)
Alligator, 2007

Crucial Acoustic Blues

Cristina Branco - Post-Scriptum

A couple of years ago, I wanted to learn some more about fado. Fado is music from Portugal and Cristina Branco is a well known fadista (I think the word is). That's all I know and I bought this CD to learn more but forgot it at my parents' place so I still don't know anything about fado.
It's folk music, in the sense of "world music" rather than "hippie music", it's traditional music with a history of at least 200 years. Anyway, you can find Wikipedia too but I want to quote a line from the entry on Cristina Branco: "Her music is deeply rooted in tradition, yet is essentially modern." That's a subtlety I really can't say anything about, it probably takes some deep understanding of fado to say what's traditional and what's modern.
To me it sounds Mediterranean, I can hear similarities between fado and music I know from Spain, Italy and Greece. An additional characteristic is melancholy, a sort of deep sadness which isn't necessarily depressing but works a bit like blues. The most remarkable aspect I hear is how the music and the language work together: in Portuguese you don't have to sing to sing, if you understand what I mean, the language has a fluent melodic quality of its own. Mix the Mediterranean origin, the blues feeling and the Portuguese language and you get something really dramatic; it's emotions flying all over the place and that's even without being able to understand the language directly. If she'd sing her shoppinglist... uhm, never mind, sorry.
The centerpiece is the singer. Cristina Branco has a beautiful voice with which she plays around with emotional accents and volume and it really is a joy to listen to her while she's backed mostly only by acoustic guitars. The emotional depth of the music makes that such a 'simple' setup actually sounds plentiful also because the guitar playing is far from simple; you'll hear that Spain and Portugal share the same peninsula and the same love for guitar playing.
I'm quite impressed with this album and I guess it's more or less typical for fado. I'm sure there are all sorts of different types and styles but I find the general sound very appealing. It would have been better I think to get a 'fado for dummies' compilation first but I can't imagine The Fado being very different from this, else it wouldn't be fado anymore. This album is definitely 'listen' music, music where you have to pay some attention to as opposed to music that can play in the background unnoticed. I think it's music that needs its moment, I wouldn't want to listen to it all the time or with every occasion, but with the right timing this album can be something spectacular.
I found that the album, her third, is from 1998, my copy is from 2000 from the French Nocturne label. The linernotes are in French and English and every song has the lyrics (in Portuguese obviously) with translations in those languages too.
Cristina Branco has a website.
Nocturne, 2000

Cristina Branco - Post-Scriptum

Crash Of Thunder

"Boss Soul, Funk and R&B sides from the vaults of the KING, FEDERAL and DELUXE labels". Compiled by Matt "Mr. Fine Wine" Weingarden and released by Vampisoul.
So, that should be enough to start downloading. Perhaps it's even enough to buy without listening first; it was for me. Not that I've heard of mister "Fine Wine" before but everything else looked good enough, and it is.
I'm not quite sure what I've bought though. "Various Artists" compilations from Vampisoul are often just a catalogue of their recent releases, like this and this example. So that's just a CD full of assorted music where the only relevant information is the artists and the albums from which each track is taken. The only relevant aspect for me is that those CDs are very affordable and awesome, I don't care that the artists are unknown to me because every Vampi surprise has been a pleasant surprise to me. If you dig deeper into Vampi's 'ordinary' releases, you get an album usually with a little background provided and sometimes with a lot of background (this Andre Williams CD for example comes with a booklet that gives you a good idea of the musician behind the music).
Crash Of Thunder is something in between. It's not a Vampisoul releases sampler and it doesn't contain much information about the music. The reason why I point this out is that the text provided (also by "Fine Wine") refers to the rarity of the music so this compilation could have been an excellent platform to put the artists in the spotlights. And the artwork is uninspiring. /whine
The music is excellent (of course), see first line of this post. Funk and funky soul/ R&B, vocal and instrumental songs. I can also add that this CD doesn't contain music by the most famous artists of the labels (James Brown a.o.) and it sounds like late 60's and early 70's stuff to me (the linernotes don't tell me). It's supposed to be rare material, AFAIK only released on 7'' singles so maybe this is an essential collection for those looking for a specific song, search the Vampisoul site for the tracklist. If you're on the Vampisoul site, check the menu-item "special products" and see that this CD is part of a series of 3 singles compilations by "Fine Wine", the others looking equally interesting. Fine Wine is a DJ for WFMU also noted for the 'Vital Organ' compilations.
Background on the King, Federal and Deluxe labels can be found on this website, it also has lists of album releases.
Enjoy!
Vampisoul, 2007

Crash Of Thunder

Talcum Soul 6

EMI, the company you love to hate. Love 'em this time, this 6th installment of Talcum Soul comes to you reasonably priced and without DRM or, exceptionally, copy protection(*). The recipe is unchanged: "twenty six stonking northern soul greats", there's a bit more to read in the booklet than before and the artwork follows the previous 5 editions (lots of white, baby blue and pink but the consistency over 6 volumes almost makes it look good). Tracks range from 1963 to 1978, the bulk from the second half of the 60's.
Don't worry about the quality: if you're sitting on a mountain of music as EMI does it's not hard to descent to the vaults once every while and come back with 26 great tracks of varying rare-ness but acceptable greatness.
"Northern Soul" indeed, but the diversity on this compilation shows that's a rough term; expect danceable, up-tempo tracks Motown style. Yep, just like the previous sets.
$tateside / EMI, 2007

Talcum Soul 6

(*) be aware of Copy Control technology: it's usually quite obvious from the back side of a CD case and from the disc, the absence of ordinary Compact Disc logos is another sign. It's not being used anymore AFAIK but there are plenty of CDs released with it. It can make ripping a CD quite difficult and sometimes impossible to do so without hearing artifacts in the music. I rant about this again as Talcum Soul volume 4 is "copy controlled" for example; don't buy.

Cambodian Rocks volume 1

Looking back on the history of music, there's something to be said for the 1960's and 1970's as a very interesting period for us today. Whether that's because of the music or because of recording techniques is something to think about; it's weird of thinking the decade between 1965 and 1975 as more relevant than the centuries before that but the impact of that time on today's culture is undeniable.
Popculture is perhaps a development or evolution in western culture but only an influence in other cultures. The Cambodian Rocks compilation is an example of that: 'western' music played by and for Cambodians. First of all: this phenomenon was fairly common in the 60's. Hits were translated or fit with new lyrics and sung in native languages everywhere, regardless of their origin. Popular British/ American beat songs have clones in every western European language but that happened to French and Italian songs too and for Dutch artists is was often profitable to release a German language version of their songs. The difference is that the US and western European countries shared, despite the differences, a large single cultural base, unlike Cambodia. Not that the 'western' culture was unknown in Cambodia but the country had so much more: its own history and a location close to China and India.
The attraction of pop music was felt globally. The songs on this album are faithful reproductions of 60's songs or originals with a 'western' flavor. The language isn't English and I doubt whether the lyrics are translations, I think they're more new texts to familiar tunes. In that, the Cambodian influence is rather small, compared for example to a similar kind of album with Turkish bands. The 'foreign' angle can't be missed though, the Khmer language is very different from 'western' languages and there's an 'Asian' quality in some of the voices and phrasings too. It would be harder to say something about the origin of these recordings if you'd only hear instrumental tracks.
Enthusiasts all over the world have put effort into releasing 60's music from every nook and cranny of our earth and Cambodian music has been compiled before. Label KhmerRocks has the largest collection it seems in MP3s and compilations by artists. The Cambodian Rocks series is a sort of introduction, volume 1 looks like a test release to me. Most tracks are by Sinn Sissamouth or by Ros Sereysothea, the biggest stars of Cambodian rock, with only a few other artists. After volume 2 of the series proved to be successful, volumes 3 & 4 have a bit greater diversity in artists. Fame and quantity is the reason: Sinn Sissamouth alone apparently recorded more than 2000 songs. The booklets are very unimpressive, nothing extra but the English translations of the songs. Only volume 3 has a little background information on the selections and Cambodian music/culture, just enough to make clear that there's a lot more to tell about Cambodian music.
Are you waiting for a Khmer version of, say, 'The House Of The Rising Sun' or 'Gloria'? Well, the artists here aren't really comparable to an average band of pubescent wannabees because there's a historical significance to this music. I can't say if you like this CD but I can promise that the artists are genuine rockers, musically it's of good quality, recordings from the 1960's to 1975. If you wonder what the story was again with Cambodia, you can read some in this biography of Ros Sereysothea.
Khmer Rocks, 2003

Cambodian Rocks volume 1