OUT NOW! 1970's ALGERIAN PROTO-RAI UNDERGROUND NEW REPRESS CD - SF045

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OUT NOW! 

1970's ALGERIAN PROTO-RAI

UNDERGROUND

VA CD - SF045

To hear samples and order — Forced Exposure

http://www.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/SF.045CD.html

This is a new 2014 digipak designed CD repress of the limited LP pressing which sold out almost immediately when released in 2008. This is Raï music from Algeria as you've not heard it before. In the early 1970s, a new group of singers and musicians were operating on the northwest coast, and what they pioneered was a sound that eventually reached worldwide status by the end of the decade; however, their names are relatively unknown to this day outside Algeria. This crucial and defining period of the development of Raï is criminally ignored and overlooked by Algerian music historians and Raï fans. Due to censorship and government-controlled music diffusion, this scene and lyrical style was forced underground and banned from broadcasts, yet slowly built a small following around the seaside cabarets of Wahran (Oran). This period witnessed the rise of artists such asGroupe El Azhar ("The Flowers" group) and Messaoud Bellemou, who can comfortably be considered the Godfather of the modern Raï sound. His group, L'Orchestre Bellemou, rewrote a heritage of centuries by using modern instruments and especially the trumpet, which became, during the 1970s, the backbone of the Wahrani genre. Reinterpreting the gasbamelodies on trumpet, Bellemou backed singers such asBoutaiba Sghir and Sheikh Benfissa who carried on the lyrical tradition of their forefathers singing about daily preoccupations and problems as well as love affairs, alcohol, or simply owning an automobile! Toward the late 1970s,Cheb Zergui brought a newer ingredient: an electric guitar with a wah-wah pedal. Thankfully, the late 1960s saw the development of vinyl pressing in Algeria. This new industry allowed many small artists including the Wahrani "scene" to record and release singles documenting their repertoire. This compilation is a selection of this proto-Raï scene's vinyl 45s. CD booklet features photos of the musicians & informative liner notes by the man who compiled it, Hicham Chadly.

BODEGA POP / WFMU 3 HOUR SUBLIME FREQUENCIES' RADIO SPECIAL

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SUBLIME FREQUENCIES PO BOX 17971 SEATTLE WA 98127 USA

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From 7-10 PM EDT this Wednesday, March 26, 

Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio will celebrate the Sublime Frequencies' first decade with a three-hour-long serving of sublime pop, folk and radio snippets 

from over 80+ game-changing albums put out to date.

. 

http://bodegapop.blogspot.com/2014/03/sublime-frequencies-bodega-pop-live.html

NEW RELEASE OUT NOW! RAJASTHAN STREET MUSIC VA 2LP

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SUBLIME FREQUENCIES PO BOX 17971 SEATTLE WA 98127 USA

http://www.sublimefrequencies.com

NEW RELEASE OUT NOW!

RAJASTHAN STREET MUSIC

Various Artists 

2LP - SF 087LP

Go to Forced Exposure to order and for audio samples:
http://beta.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/SF.087LP.html

"Swathed in hundreds of miles of snaking hinterland, the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan is a giant canvas for the imagination of the wanderers it gives home to. Through the stark reaches of the vast Thar Desert, Rajasthan shares borders as well as bloodlines with the Pakistani provinces of Sindh and Punjab to the west and the Indian state of Gujarat to the south. The state's rough history and harsh environment is heavily reflected in the Rajasthani people and Marwari tribal culture; centuries of continuous invasions, epic battles, brutal slaughterings and various rulings by Scythians, Mauryans, Satraps, Gurjars, Mughals, Rajputs and the British have left their traces in local folklore in the shape of storytelling, songs and plays. In Rajasthan's modern-day avatar, daily life is controlled by power failures, lasting droughts, dried-out or diverted rivers and an ever-advancing desertification. These hardships of the past and present have equipped the Rajasthani people with their notoriously resilient and proud character and are clearly voiced in the music of the region. This compilation has been recorded in various cities, villages and remote regions of Rajasthan as part of a two-month road trip seeking found folklore, of which one month was spent in the holy town of Pushkar, where we experienced different aspects of Rajasthani cultural and Hindu religious life. Flexible improvisation, good chance and often pure luck allowed these recordings to happen when musicians of different ages and castes crossed our path along the way. This collection does not focus on the contextual technicalities of musical lineage, castes or styles, and is neither an exhaustive folkloric research project nor an ethnomusicology study; rather, it presents the musical landscape of contemporary Rajasthan on the street level as it was found in 2007-2008, a cross-section of aural environment outside of the academic approach to Rajasthani music that many Western and Indian scholars have already covered in intricate detail. The most important criteria for recording these musicians in their homes (or on the streets) was the personal beauty of raw power in their music." --Seb Bassleer; Limited edition 2LP in a full-color heavy gatefold jacket with images of the musicians and detailed liner-notes by compiler and producer Seb Bassleer.

NEW RELEASE OUT NOW! RADIO NIGER VA CD SF086

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 Radio Niger 

VA CD 

SF086

Although it’s one of the poorest nations on the planet in terms of the UN’s Human Development Index, Niger has one of the most diverse and richly ornamented cultures on the African continent. The country’s first station, Radio Niger, went on the air in 1958 and was renamed Voix du Sahel in 1974. In 1979, the government established the Broadcasting Corporation of Niger State (BCNS). 
Today, Radio Niger is where the country’s range of ethnicities, with their disparate customs of language and music, combine to create an astonishingly complex sonic patchwork: Bawdy, drunken sages and storytellers wandering into the studio; local shout-outs to girlfriends and family members; comedy skits juxtaposed with Zarma/Songhai mollo (a regional stringed instrument) and Denke-denke mollo from neighboring Burkina Faso dissolving into Tuareg guitar blues trance. News snippets from RFI and the BBC vie for supremacy with Hausa women's ensembles; Malian Kora collides with Zarma Koranic transmissions; lo-fi cassettes from the marketplace bump up against animist Bori folk dirges and the vapid autotune stylings of modern Nigerian pop. DJs bring an improvisational element to local radio: singing along with tracks live on air; creating live multichannel compositions and avant-collage cutups; and generally preserving the human element that has long since disappeared from corporate western radio. In short, Radio Niger is outlaw radio, broadcast with freedom and spontaneity, and bathed in an arid fidelity that reveals the region’s character and landscape.

Order via Forced Exposure: 

http://beta.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/SF.086CD.html

OUT NOW: Molam: Thai Country Groove from Isan 2-LP SF019

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Molam: Thai Country Groove from Isan 2-LP SF019 

Double LP reissue of the long out-of-print classic CD first released in 2004 -- the first modern electrified Molam recordings from the 1970s ever presented outside Thailand. Molam is a multi-faceted folk music native to Laos and the predominantly rural Northeastern region of Thailand known as Isan, home to myriad ethnic groups and provinces, and once a part of present-day Laos. Mo meaning "master" and lam meaning "song," "molam" literally translates into "master singer," but it remains more of an umbrella term covering over a dozen types of lam styles in which male and female singers can be backed by a free-reed bamboo mouth organ called a khaen, indigenous lute-like instruments (the phin or the soong), a bowed fiddle called a sor and a percussion ensemble featuring finger cymbals and hand drums. Lam phun and lam sing are the two molam styles featured most prominently in this collection. Also in the musical family is look thoong, a slower, more tragic style, usually lamenting lost love and perpetual poverty. Examples are heard on tracks 10, 15 and 20. Costumed Isan comedy troupes called Talok incorporate hyper-eccentric molam and look thoong renditions with low, vaudevillian comedy and high social satire on stages and TVs throughout the country. Maniacal examples are heard on tracks 2, 8 and 11. The classic recordings featured here are selections from rare vinyl LPs, 45s and cassettes recorded in Isan and beyond between the 1970s and 1980s. This was a pivotal time when music of the region began to be electrified and integrated with Western instruments, when electric bass, effected guitars, electric organs, kit drums and horns played alongside the khaen and the phin. Molam had never sounded this way before -- and due to the typically ephemeral nature of the music industry and the introduction of the modern keyboard work-station, molam will never sound like this again. This vinyl 2LP edition comes housed in a full-color heavy duty gatefold jacket with gorgeous original artwork and liner notes. Compiled by Alan Bishop and Mark Gergis, October, 2004.

Order from Forced Exposure:
http://beta.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/SF.019LP.html


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. SUBLIME FREQUENCIES is focused on an aesthetic of extra-geography and soulful experience inspired by music and culture, world travel, research, and the pioneering recording labels of the past including OCORA, SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS, ETHNIC FOLKWAYS, LYRICHORD, NONESUCH EXPLORER, MUSICAPHONE, BARONREITER, UNESCO, PLAYASOUND, MUSICAL ATLAS, CHANT DU MONDE, B.A.M., TANGENT, and TOPIC. SUBLIME FREQUENCIES PO BOX 17971 SEATTLE WA 98127 USA

STARING INTO THE SUN: Ethiopian Tribal Music 2 LP

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A contemporary survey of the tribal music of Ethiopia. Recorded in 2009 by Olivia Wyatt, this double LP showcases an array of mind-blowing sounds from the "land of eternal sunshine." Presented in this visually stunning gatefold are audio examples ranging from remote tribes -- of the Ethiopian highlands, the lower Omo and the Great Rift Valley -- to their electric analogues in the sweaty beerhalls of Addis Ababa. This collection features songs from the Azmari, poet-musicians who play the krar (ancient lyre) and whose song repertoire includes everything from comic improvisation to lyrical elegiac, the Borana whose work songs are a transcendental polyphonic singing that stops time, and the Dirashe whose syncopated panpipes are as otherworldly as anything ever heard. Other selections include music from the Mursi, Druze, Gedeo, Konso, and Tsemay tribes as well as some fine examples of amplified roots music from the capital from the Habesha 2000 Band. This is a limited edition one-time pressing double LP housed in a gatefold full color tip-on sleeve with gorgeous Polaroid shots from Olivia Wyatt.

STARING INTO THE SUN: Ethiopian Tribal Music 2 LP SF074

Order from Forced Exposure

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. SUBLIME FREQUENCIES is focused on an aesthetic of extra-geography and soulful experience inspired by music and culture, world travel, research, and the pioneering recording labels of the past including OCORA, SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS, ETHNIC FOLKWAYS, LYRICHORD, NONESUCH EXPLORER, MUSICAPHONE, BARONREITER, UNESCO, PLAYASOUND, MUSICAL ATLAS, CHANT DU MONDE, B.A.M., TANGENT, and TOPIC. SUBLIME FREQUENCIES PO BOX 17971 SEATTLE WA 98127 USA

Out Soon...Eat The Dream: Gnawa Music From Essaouira LP

Eat The Dream: Gnawa Music From Essaouira LP

various artists SF071 LP 

This record was originally released on CD as Eat The Dream: Moroccan Reveries On Tinder Records In 1996 (Tinder CD 42825032). Original label out of business/CD out-of-print. Recorded and compiled by Tucker Martine in 1994, the bulk of this album features the magnificent results of a chance meeting between Martine and the late, great master of Gnawa music, Maâllem Boubker Ghania (1927-2000), who kindly offered to organize a several-day informal recording session in his home. Martine began rolling tape as musicians came and went throughout the sessions. These spectacular recordings from Essaouira Morocco are interwoven here with other encounters, including a wedding procession in the streets of Marrakech, snake charmers of the Jemma El Fna with their rhaitas, calls to prayer with children playing while James Brown echoed off of the labyrinthian walls, Moroccan radio dial surfing and more. The Gnawa are a mystical brotherhood whose ancestors migrated from West Africa to North Africa approximately 500 years ago. After integrating into the local Berber and Arabic societies, a unique cultural blend resulted which is reflected in their music. Their complex liturgy borrows both from the traditions of mystical Islam and African Shamanism. The Gnawa's trance-inducing music accompanies rituals such as the healing of psychic disorders and scorpion stings, Ramadan celebrations and animal sacrifice. Participants in these all-night rituals are invited into an ecstatic state. The primary instruments of this tradition are the krakebs (a pair of metal clappers) and the guimbri (or sintir), a three-stringed lute with a camel skin covering and a body carved from a log. The one short string and two long strings are made of goat gut. Limited edition LP housed in a heavy-duty tip-on jacket with an insert containing additional photos of the musicians and Tucker Martine's liner notes. 

SUBLIME FREQUENCIES PO BOX 17971 SEATTLE WA 98127 USA

http://www.sublimefrequencies.com

Out Now: CD version SF060 - Saigon Rock & Soul: Vietnamese Classic Tracks 1968-1974

This is the CD version of the out-of-print 2LP. The long-awaited foray into the Vietnamese rock, pop and soul sound of the late 1960s and early 1970s is finally here. Saigon Rock & Soul delivers the goods international retro collectors have been searching for in vain for many years -- and it delivers beyond belief. Every song is a mini-masterpiece, be it heavy acid-rock psychedelia, horn- and guitar-drenched funk grooves, or gripping soul ballads reflective of life during wartime. The tracks that form this collection cut a window into a rich musical Vietnamese music scene that has long been obscured, and for the most part, forgotten. As the scope of electrified Vietnamese music from the 1960s and 1970s begins to be revealed, it becomes evident that this was among the heaviest and most eclectic musical scenes of Southeast Asia at the time. These songs tell of war, love and what war does to love. All of them were recorded in makeshift studios and even U.S. army facilities while the Vietnam War raged -- and were issued by a handful of Saigon record companies on vinyl 45s and reel or cassette tapes. Westernized forms of music in Vietnam had appeared during the latter 19th century, and especially during the early 20th century, under the influence of the French colonizers. Tan Nhac (trans. "modern music") always incorporated both domestic and international sounds, and continued to develop alongside Western musical trends. During the 1960s and 1970s, pulp ballads were being recorded by leading crooners of the time who alternated between modern and traditional forms of regional music. When the electric guitar hit the streets of Saigon, Vietnamese renditions of contemporary instrumental trends such as surf-rock, beat and twist soon emerged, followed by some pretty deep soul sounds inspired by Motown radio hits as well as funk grooves brought on by James Brown and his contemporaries. By the mid-1960s, Vietnam had been ravaged by war for years. American G.I.s had become a standard fixture in Saigon, as did many of the cultural artifacts they brought with them. This certainly included the music. The sounds of rock and roll dominated the radio waves, and Saigon nightclubs were teeming with new sounds. Musically, The Shadows and The Ventures soon gave way to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones as an enthusiastic set of young Vietnamese rockers signed on to the lifestyle, always eager to hear the latest musical trends the G.I.s would bring in on LP or tape. This era saw the birth of a vibrant rock scene, yet rock music and anything that came close was commonly referred to as "soul" in the Vietnamese genre-listings. Like many cultures in Asia, Vietnamese music is recorded, marketed, listened to and disposed of in a relatively quick manner. This level of advanced ephemera ensures a degree of difficulty when trying to unearth and discover cultural histories. Literally, most of the music heard here has been brought back from the dead. Artists featured include some of Vietnam's most popular at the time: Elvis Phuong,Hung Cuong, Mai Lei Huyen, Le Thu, Thai Thanh, Giao Linh, Mai Lei Huyen and the CBC Band. Features 70 minutes of classic original recordings compiled by Mark Gergis with extensive liner notes.

SUBLIME FREQUENCIES PO BOX 17971 SEATTLE WA 98127 USA

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