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24 March 2015

Songlines Magazine #107, April/May, 2015: 4 Star Review for Vodoun Gods on the Slave Coast dvd

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A 4 star review of Hisham Mayet's film Vodoun Gods on the Slave Coast on SUBLIME FREQUENCIES, written by Nigel Williamson in Songlines Magazine #107, April/May, 2015.
A quote:
"A visual field recording of Benin's voodoo culture"

Sublime Frequencies is distributed in the Benelux by Xango Music, and available at www.xangomusic.com 




23 March 2015

Djolo Cultures d' Afrique Review For Baba Commandant

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Baba Commandant, le punk noir du Burkina Faso


Je me souviens une fois avoir lu une critique reprochant l’ambiance « pirate » et la dangerosité d’un petit maquis à Bamako, dans un guide touristique (à bien y penser et vu l’impertinence du commentaire ça devait être le guide du routard) ; et bien l’écoute de cet album de Baba Commandant m’a rappelé l’ambiance « pirate » de ce bar, un petit endroit sombre, ou l’on peut boire une bière Castel mal déglacée, en écoutant le son d’une guitare distordue crachée par un vieil ampli grésillant.
C’est dans ce décor, avec son kamélé n’goni à la main (instrument à cordes, proche de la kora, typique du Mali et du Burkina Faso) et son look de punk dozo (confréries de chasseur anciennes) un peu barré, que le burkinabéBaba Commandant, vient livrer son nouvel album Juguya ; d’ailleurs à le voir, on pourrait penser qu’il s’agit d’un de ces éternels mauvais musiciens qui tenterait vaguement de se raccrocher à un semblant de patrimoine culturel…. grosse erreur !!
Baba Commandant fait exploser le patrimoine culturel de son pays, comme aucun musicien burkinabé avant lui, ou presque. Et si l’on retrouve les sonorités traditionnelles mandingues, l’artiste originaire de Bobo Dioulasso (ville à la frontière malienne), n’hésite pas à aller emprunter du côté de l’afrobeat (avec des sections cuivres remarquables, assurées par son groupe le Mandinguo Band), mais aussi du rock, du punk, du hip-hop, et même du dub.
L’image de punk du Baba Commandant, Mamadou Sanou de son vrai nom, n’est pas née aujourd’hui ; il faut dire qu’il n’est pas un de ces jeunes premiers pris au berceau sous l’aile d’une maison de disque international, son parcours artistique a débuté en 81 comme danseur, puis petit à petit, au rythme des cabarets et des balani, et au côté de grand nom de la musique ouest-africaine (notamment le burkinabé Victor Démé), Commandant Baba s’est forgé une solide réputation. Aujourd’hui, son album Juguya, paru sur l’excellent label Sublime Frequencies, lui apporte une visibilité, et une reconnaissance internationale.
Sur Juguya, vous retrouverez 8 titres, où se s’entremêlent avec harmonie, les notes cristallines des kora et ngoni, l’énergie brute des guitares saturées, la transe des rythmes de balafon, et bien sûr le chant âpre et puissant de Baba Commandant.
Si vous avez apprécié le contenu de cet article sur Baba Commandant, n’hésitez pas à visiter notre page facebook et a y réagir, et pourquoi pas même nous encourager d’une petite mention « j’aime ».

22 March 2015

Radio Vietnam CD: Dusty Groove Review

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Original link at:

Radio Vietnam CD SF095 





A very cool set that returns to the earliest style of the Sublime Frequencies label – those 90s releases that often had the company grabbing global sounds out of the ether, then committing them to tape! The set here is exactly what's promised by the title – music from the radio in Vietnam – put together at a level that's extremely thoughtful and a lot more compelling than just flipping the dial in Southeast Asia! Each track is kind of a different pastiche of songs and spoken bits – assembled in a way that creates a certain flavor, and really makes a new sort of music out of these invisible sounds from the air. Titles include "Home Village Identity Event", "Induction Temperature", "Hit Zones", "Morning Exercise In The Coded Ether", "Message To The Age Of Twenty", and "America Lost The Vietnam War". © 1996-2015, Dusty Groove, Inc.


13 March 2015

BOMB Magazine — Artists in Conversation: Olivia Wyatt by Will Oldham

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Olivia Wyatt

by Will Oldham


Sea-gypsies, Vodou, and ethnographic documentary.



Still from Sailing a Sinking Sea, 2015. Directed by Olivia Wyatt. Image courtesy of the artist.

06 March 2015

Review in Pasatiempo: Santa Fe, New Mexico's Weekly Magazine VARIOUS ARTISTS "Folk Music of the Sahel 1: Niger" (Sublime Frequencies)

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Review in Pasatiempo: Santa Fe, New Mexico's Weekly Magazine
VARIOUS ARTISTS "Folk Music of the Sahel 1: Niger" 

(Sublime Frequencies)

With his world-music label Sublime Frequencies, Hisham Mayet has become something of a cross between Alan Lomax and Anthony Bourdain, traveling to war-torn landscapes to record popular and ritual music in Africa and the Middle East. In the process, he exposes the musicians he encounters to wider audiences in Europe and North America. For the debut of his ambitious new project — a planned six-volume series surveying the musical landscape of Niger’s Sahel region, famed for its mix of nomadic animist and Afro-Islamic cultures — Mayet has released a trove of field recordings he collected over the past decade. The album includes live recordings of griots, or praise singers, whose improvised, hand-percussion-backed performances blend storytelling, gossip, and commentary on local events. An astonishing cut from Koudede, a popular Tuareg guitarist killed last year in a car accident, showcases his haunting, Arabic-infused, bluesy songs that made him a local hero. Songs to back the courtship dances of the Wodaabe tribe as well as several call-and-response choruses, syncopated to oil-can drums, round out this collection.
- Casey Sanchez


04 March 2015

DUSTY GROOVE and AQUARIUS RECORDS' REVIEWS FOR BABA COMMANDANT & THE MANDINGO BAND: JUGUYA

SUBLIME FREQUENCIES COMMUNIQUÈ

SUBLIME FREQUENCIES 

 PO BOX 17971 SEATTLE WA 98127 USA



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DUSTY GROOVE REVIEW FOR
BABA COMMANDANT & THE MANDINGO BAND: JUGUYA
One of the most solid albums we've ever heard on the Sublime Frequencies label – a studio recording by a group with a really great approach to their music – a style that mixes classic Afro Funk elements with rootsier elements on the instrumentation! The grooves are tight, but the sound has some nice earthy qualities at times – especially in Baba Commandment's use of ngoni, which rings out in a way that's both melodic and rhythmic at the same time – echoing an older mandingo tradition, but coming across with a lot of punch! Other instrumentation includes lots of percussion, fuzzy guitars, and balafon too – and most of the vocals have a call/response style, in which other singers call out alongside Baba's lead. Really great stuff – with titles that include "Tile", "Folon", "Wasso", "Juguya", "Siguisso", and "Ntijiguimorola". © 1996-2015, Dusty Groove, Inc.

AQUARIUS RECORDS' REVIEW FOR
BABA COMMANDANT & THE MANDINGO BAND: JUGUYA
Well, there's Records Of The Week, and then there's Records Of The Week. This one was quite a nice surprise. And it's not like we don't already expect great things from the globetrotting subversives at the Sublime Frequencies label, they're always making great discoveries - we almost take 'em for granted now, we suppose. So with this album, by the wonderfully-named Baba Commandant and the Mandingo Band, which boast a striking cover design too, at first we were like, that's probably going to be cool, but then when we heard it, we were like, this is REALLY cool. We were expecting some kind of funky Afrobeat, and that's what it is, but much wilder than we ever imagined. Totally off the hook! 
http://aquariusrecords.org/images/dot.gifBaba Commandant (aka Mamadou Sanou) and his band are from the West African state of Burkina Faso (formerly the Upper Volta), and in a true, underground, DIY style, mix up the traditional, tribal Mandingo music of their region with a more modern, electric approach. Baba Commandant, born in 1973, who sings and plays the ngoni (an ancient, traditional lute), has been an active and original presence on the music scene in Burkina Faso for many years. He's been in various other bands, but as far as we know, this is the debut release from this group. It's a cool discovery on the part of Sublime Frequencies, but we bet Baba Commandant & Co. would have been heard sooner or later over here, just due to the tons of rhythmic energy radiating from their music. Yup, they've got plenty of power (there's guitars to go with the ngoni, horns too, and they don't hold back), making for some pretty hot jams. The wide ranging vocals of Baba and his backup singers are crucial too, and together the group really casts a hypnotic spell. Fans of Konono No.1, of all the cool desert guitar bands that Sublime Frequencies has brought us before (like the late, great Koudede, whom Baba Commandant has performed a live tribute to), of anything Afro-funky and maybe a bit eccentric in that vein, check this out, you will dig!!
http://aquariusrecords.org/images/dot.gifOn cd and lp, and as usual with Sublime Frequencies, the vinyl is a limited edition release.


MPEG Stream: "Waso" 
MPEG Stream: "Folon" 
MPEG Stream: "Ntijiguimorola" 
MPEG Stream: "Siguisso" 

03 March 2015

Superflyrecords Interview and Profile of HISHAM MAYET: SUBLIME FREQUENCIES

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Original piece is here: 


HISHAM MAYET: 

SUBLIME FREQUENCIES


20140327_Mayet_089
 
 
Each month, we are focusing on a record label founded by an active digger. This month, Hisham Mayet, co-founder and co-owner of Sublime Frequencies, a label which, since 2003, has been documenting many obscure scenes, from eastern psyche pop to sahel post folk, from ancient to more futuristic.
When did you start digging records?Early 80’s, in my early teens.
What LPs did you buy at first?I was buying punk and post punk LPs. Some early hardcore singles, stuff on SST (Meat Puppets, Minutemen, Black Flag, UK shit, early Cure, Joy Division, New Order, Mekons, Gang of Four, Wire…).
Do you still listen to them?Not so much, but I still have most of it.
Do you have any particular style or favorite period?I don’t have a particular style that I collect. I’m into so many styles and genres. I collect Calypso, Free Jazz, ethnographic records, international sounds from around the globe from the mid-50s to the mid 70s, late 60’s psych from around the world and 60’s/70’s Italian/Euro soundtracks and library LPs… The list is endless. My collection is staggering in its diversity.
Why Sublime Frequencies ?I think it perfectly captures the mission of the label.

saigon rock soul


What was your first issue?
We released five titles at once. Three albums (‘Folk And Pop Sounds Of Sumatra Volume 1’, ‘Radio Java’, ‘Night Recordings From Bali’) and two DVDs (Nat Pwe: Burma’s Carnival Of Spirit Soul, by Alan & Richard Bishop, Jemaa El Fna: Morocco’s Rendez-vous Of The Dead ‎by myself).
Were you at the beginning of story, with Alan Bishop ? How and when did you meet him ?Yes, I approached Alan about the idea to start an ethnographic style label. When we discussed it further, we launched Sublime Frequencies officially in 2003. But, we had already been discussing and collecting for many years prior. I was a fanatical fan of Sun City Girls (Alan’s along with brother Richard and Charles Gocher’s unclassifiable musical universe for some 30 years)… We started communicating with some regularity in the mid-90’s.
What could be the editorial/esthetic line of the label ?We release things we’re passionate about. We all have our own particular aesthetic and the collective is diversified enough to make it interesting moving forward.
What could be your leitmotif for the label?I think our mission statement sums it up pretty well. « Sublime Frequencies is a collective of explorers dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers via film and video, field recordings, radio and short wave transmissions, international folk and pop music, sound anomalies, and other forms of human and natural expression not documented sufficiently through all channels of academic research, the modern recording industry, media, or corporate foundations. »
How do you decide on the choice of reissues or new releases? Is it a team decision?Alan and I often discuss and have a final say on what is released. We both have very similar tastes so there really is a unified vision moving forward.

group doueh

or is it more complex ?
If you look at our discography, you’ll see that we are well beyond « oriental/arabic music ». We have outside of SF released (Alan with Abduction/Myself with Outernational/Assophon) over 100 other releases outside of SF. So, we – me as Alan – are not confined to certain geographic regions.
How did you discover musicians like Group Doueh ? Rumors? Listening to a tape?All the rumors are true. I landed in a house in Dakhla un-announced and a cassette and boombox later, history was made.
Were you surprised by the success story of Dabke groover Omar Souleymane?Yes we were. So much so that we decided he was too big for us.
Are you still digging, buying vinyl, visiting record shops?Yep. Still digging. I’m writing from Trinidad now and just spent a day digging in a storage space. I was just in Paris and digging at Superfly. I know Paulo, Manu and Nico and have been shopping there over the years…

algerian proto rai

What is the best deal/business : to make reissue or to produce new records?Both!
Are they two different jobs?It can be. Re-issues sometimes deal with dead artists or defunct labels and their archives. Sometimes, there is a lot of missing informations when you are dealing with obscure material from a forgotten location. Lots of archeology in that process. Contemporary artists require a different approach and the variable can be much different. There is touring and new material and a host of logistics involved.
There are more and more reissues of old LPs. Do you think that the LP reissue market could ever reach saturation point?I think there is a saturation point, but it is always exciting to see what coming out via the mafia of reissue labels. The production values are amazing as well. I don’t know as a collector, it is an exciting time. But then again as a collector it is always exciting!
What are your next releases ?We are excited about the debut LP of Baba Commandant and the Mandingo Band and releasing Thai Pop Spectacular for the first time on vinyl.
What is the LP you dream of reissuing?An 8 LPs boxset of Ennio Morricone conducting a pygmy orchestra playing free jazz.


baba commandantBollywood steel guitarbush taxi malichoubichoubifolk pop pakistanfolk pop sumatraomar khorshidomar souleymaneprincess nicotine

01 March 2015

OUT NOW AND IN STOCK!! BABA COMMANDANT AND THE MANDINGO BAND: JUGUYA — AVAILABLE ON CD AND LP!

SUBLIME FREQUENCIES COMMUNIQUÈ

SUBLIME FREQUENCIES 

 PO BOX 17971 SEATTLE WA 98127 USA



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OUT NOW AND IN STOCK!!!


 BABA COMMANDANT 

AND THE MANDINGO BAND:

 


JUGUYA

AVAILABLE ON CD AND LP

SF - 097 CD / SF - 097 LP


To hear Samples and to Order from Forced Exposure (cd version): http://www.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/baba-commandant-and-the-mandingo-band-juguya-cd/SF.097CD.html

To hear Samples and to Order from Forced Exposure (lp version): http://www.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/baba-commandant-and-the-mandingo-band-juguya-lp/SF.097LP.html


Baba Commandant and the Mandingo Band are a contemporary group from Burkina Faso. Coming from Bobo-Dioulasso, the group is steeped in the Mandingue musical traditions of their ancestral legacy. The enigmatic lead singer Baba Commandant (Mamadou Sanou) is an original and eccentric character who is well respected in the Burkinabé musical community. A sort of punk Faso Dan Fani activist for traditional Mandingo music, Baba continues to redefine the boundaries between traditional and modern. In 1981, he joined the Koule Dafourou troupe as a dancer. Later, he embarked on his current musical direction as a singer, first in Dounia and then in the Afromandingo Band. His current band -- when he's not playing with the now-famous Burkinabé musician Victor Démé -- is the Mandingo Band. At present, he is a practitioner of the Afrobeat style, drawing inspiration from the golden era of Nigerian music. Fela Kuti/Africa 70 and King Sunny Adé are big influences, as is the legendary Malian growler Moussa Doumbia. Baba Commandant plays the ngoni, the instrument of the Donso (the traditional hunters in this region of Burkina Faso and Mali). His audience comprises multiple generations and strata of Burkinabé society; he accordingly adapts his repertoire to his surroundings, which range from cabaret Sundays in Bobo-Dioulasso to the sound systems of Ouagadougou. Baba Commandant and the Mandingo Band are a formidable force steeped in Ouagadougou's DIY underground musical culture.Juguya is their sound. Limited edition LP housed in a Stoughton tip-on sleeve.