Disco-Gadda-Da-Vida Baby

April 15th, 2018

Hot RS
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (Part 1)
The Garden Of Eden
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (Part 2)
Hot RS was a South African disco act. Their name is a bizarre abbreviation of “House Of The Rising Sun,” a disco cover of which also served as their first single. Like many other disco acts of the late-70s (including some I’ve already covered), they focused on long-form tracks primarily. Their first album had just three songs; their cover of “House Of The Rising Sun” took up the entirety of side A, which two additional seven-minute tracks making up the B-side.

Forbidden Fruit has a few more tracks on it, six in total to be precise. Many bleed together like a medley, all are thematically-tied to the story of The Garden Of Eden, making Forbidden Fruit a disco concept album, which is a real rarity.

The B-side is kind of throwaway though, the real stand out is, obviously, that massive cover of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” which also features an interlude cover of the unrelated oldie “The Garden of Eden.” It is shocking how well this song works as a disco track. They even manage to fit in a little bit of the drum solo and somehow make that work. A lot of it has to do with the song’s reliance on sequencers, they help to move things along, as well as some damn decent guitar work.

From what I can gather about Hot RS, that damn decent guitar work came from one Trevor Rabin, who you may know from his work with 80s Yes and about a billion film scores. According to what I’ve read on the internet about this group, he served as a session musician for Hot RS. Although I do have to say that I really can’t confirm that, as my copy of the album came with nothing in the way of liner notes.

The main members of Hot RS were Kevin Kruger and Dan Hill, with Kruger being the songwriter on a few of their tracks that weren’t covers (their weaker material, to be honest). Kruger was also a percussionist and he went on to work with Rabin on a few of his solo records. He also worked with Rabin on Disco Rock Machine, a group that was similar to Hot RS for taking rock tracks and transforming them into electronic disco tunes (I must own their records).

Dan Hill’s career goes a bit deeper though. He started as a jazz musician, and scored hits as early as 1958. In the late 60s and into the 70s he had several more hits with albums comprised of jazzy covers of hit pop tunes. (I suspect the incredibly risque covers no doubt help that.) As the 70s moved on, I think those got more and more electric in nature, one even name drops the Korg in the title. His last credited appearance on an album was in the early 90s, but apparently he kept on playing live until right before he passed away in 2009. Literally every article I found on him calls him a “music legend.” So I guess he was kind of a big deal in his home country.

Like I said, I fucking love this. If you didn’t latch on to my last disco upload, I really can’t blame you, that record was more of a curiosity than legitimately good. But this is just utterly captivating. Equal parts cheese and quality for me. And “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” is just such a classic tune anyway, it’s fun to see it re-worked into a different genre, and with other material that fits the lyrics of the track. Call it stupid, call it dated, call it corny, but don’t call it lazy; they put some effort into this one. This is a well-made, well-produced record by people who knew what the hell they were doing. A very good use of sequencers and other electronic instruments in a pop environment, which were all still kind of a new thing at the time.

And holy shit that cover.

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Tell Chico that his beat his dope – The Mexican

April 10th, 2018

Jellybean
The Mexican (Dance Mix)
The Mexican (A Capella)
The Mexican (Funhouse Mix)
Hip Hop Bean Bop (Bonus Beats)
The Mexican (Short Version)

It’s funny how you stumble upon, discover, or even re-discover songs sometimes. I’m absolutely certain I had heard this song before last month, but it took a fluke discovery of a disco cover for me to fall in love with it finally.

 

“The Mexican” is a classic for a lot of people, but just as many people don’t know anything about it, so I thought I’d touch upon its history here. The song was first written and recorded by the band Babe Ruth, a British prog/blues band who released a few albums of moderate note in the mid-70s. “The Mexican” was a minor hit, but not a breakthrough smash by any stretch of the imagination.

 

But it somehow quickly found a second life, not as a rock tune, but as a club track. That’s how I re-discovered it, hearing it on a goofy disco record by a Canadian disco act called Bombers. Their version is good, it’s a pretty hard song to fuck up to be honest, but the second I heard it I realized that I had heard a different version of it at some point in my life, a version that was better.

Thanks to never deleting any song from my iTunes ever, I quickly was able to figure out where I first heard the track; on The Prodigy’s Dirtchamber Sessions mix CD. That’s two dance acts (albeit of very different types) to cover/sample “The Mexican,” but little did I know that just scraped the surface.

“The Mexican” sounds instantly familiar to almost anyone because of samples, not only because of who has sampled it, but because of what it samples as well. The track is built off of a riff from a Morricone tune, the theme music to “A Few Dollars More.” Like the theme to “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” that music has been used so often as homage and/or parody that it’s just ingrained in the public psyche. Anyone listening to “The Mexican” for the first time will get to the part that uses that famous Morricone riff and instantly recognize it.

In turn, “The Mexican” has been sampled and remixed by seemingly countless other artists. Parts of it were sampled in “Planet Rock” by “Afrika Bambaataa, and it was even sampled by Sugar Ray in their shitclassic “Fly.” And if you fancy yourself a fan of The Jungle Brothers, Grandmaster Melle Mel, GZA, R. Kelly, Kool Moe Dee or Doug E. Fresh, then you’ve probably heard a sample of “The Mexican.”

 

A lot of people would probably credit the version I’m sharing tonight for popularizing “The Mexican” in hip-hop and dance culture, but as the version by Bombers shows, that’s clearly not the case. This song was floating around in the club and dance scenes almost immediately after its original release. It was a disco staple, despite not being a disco song at all.

Still, without question, a big factor in long-lasting appeal of “The Mexican” is because of this version by Jellybean, aka John “Jellybean Benitez, the superstar producer and remixer of the 80s who worked with Madonna, Sheena Easton, Fleetwood Mac and about a billion others. This version was a number one single on the dance charts and is the one that most often pops up on mixes like The Dirtchamber Sessions. It was a prog/blues song that happened to have a good beat before Jellybean got his hand on it, he turned it into a dance track, one that breakdancers still pop and lock to the beat of to this very day.

However, even though it’s been an incredible influence on the dance scene, (not to mention that it just kicks all kinds of ass) Jellybean’s version of “The Mexican” is not an easy track to come across legally these days. You can find it on some compilation albums, although they usually only feature the short version. The full-length mix was included on Jellybeans’ 1984 album Wotupski!?!, but even that’s a little hard to find these days, and the CD version apparently has all kinds of problems. How holes like this in the digital marketplace of 2018 continue to happen are beyond me, but as long as they exist I guess this blog will have a place.

And someone tell Muse to cover this, that would be amazing.

Posted in Jellybean, remixes | 1 Comment »

Disco for exhibitionism – Penthouse’s Let Me Be Your Fantasy

April 1st, 2018

The Love Symphony Orchestra
Let’s Make Love In Public Places
Let Me Be Your Fantasy
At The Football Stadium

Oh boy, where to even begin with this one.

I suppose I should get the obvious out of the way; yes, Penthouse actually released a record. In fact, from what I can gather, they actually released two records. This one in 1978, and a follow-up the year later which also featured The Love Symphony Orchestra entitled Messdames Ce Soir (the typo in “Mesdames” is theirs, not mine). That album is predominately covers, but this one is all original material – and I suspect is all the better for it.

The back cover lists two tracks, “Let’s Make Love In Public Places” and “Let Me Be Your Fantasy.” But that’s actually misleading in multiple ways. Firstly, the album has a third track, the decidedly unsexy-sounding “At the Football Stadium.” But in actuality, all of the tracks are really just sections of a multi-part suite, that for all intents and purposes is “Let’s Make Love In Public Places.” That’s both the thematic and musical glue that holds all three numbers together. The chorus of the main track makes an appearance in the other two tracks.

This is longform disco, which was very much the style of the time. Acts like Donna Summer and Grace Jones were putting out albums that had entire sides dedicated to a single track. This is before the idea of the “dance remix” really took hold. You wanted to craft a 12-to-17 minute banger that would really take hold of the dance floor.

In case you couldn’t already guess by, well, literally every single thing I’ve said about this record, it’s entirely about sex. More specifically, it’s about banging in public. The entire first section, all 13 minutes of it, is an ode to lewd behavior in public, complete with a spoken word interlude by a woman desperate to convince her man to get down to business outside.

Oddly enough, the second part, “Let Me Be Your Fantasy,” offers a slight argument for doing it behind closed doors, with the male counterpart taking the vocals to exclaim that he wants to “make love alone in private.” But his viewpoint is almost immediately shut down once the chorus for the original track returns. This woman wants to get down in public and this dude sure as hell isn’t going to stop her.

And she finally gets her wish with the grande finale “At The Football Stadium,” where the two characters get down to business…at the football stadium (duh). A few absolutely horrible football-as-sex metaphors are exchanged (“On the next play come inside our huddle/don’t care who wins as long as we score”) before the chorus of the title track returns once more and segues into an extended instrumental outro.

The only member of Love Symphony Orchestra that Discogs lists on the group’s page is Matthew Raimondi, a violinist who mostly works on classical music now. But if you dig into the page for this album, you’ll find more detailed information. A lot of people worked on this album, some really talented people at that. Andy Newmark from Sly & The Family Stone played drums, and the Blues Brothers’ Lou Marini is here as a flutist. Everyone on this album is on a billion other albums, many of which you’ve probably heard. Check out their Discogs’ pages and discover the wonderful rabbit hole that is exploring the work of session musicians.

I don’t know if I really like this record all that much, even though it is more than technically proficient and definitely well-produced. But I do know it’s funny as hell. I really appreciate its enthusiasm and commitment to its cause/mission statement of fucking in public. This is more or less a concept album dedicated to lewd public indecency, and I respect that.

Regardless, you certainly don’t hear anything like this these days. So if you want a throwback to a sound that is long forgotten, give it a listen. Just don’t hold me responsible for any laws you might break if you find yourself inspired after the album is finished.

 

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Grace Jones and dope electro beats

March 19th, 2018

I’ve listened to I don’t know how many records this week and have added well over a hundred songs to my music library as a result. I bought so many Moog albums it was ridiculous. I’m actually working on something about Moog albums for my other site that I hope you’ll find interesting.

I was going to write a guide to Osaka record stores, but I just didn’t have enough time to really dig into that place. I don’t want to half-ass it. I’m going to try and re-visit that city sometime soon, hopefully with a couple of visits under my belt I’ll be able to piece something together. There are a lot of amazing stores there, but also a lot of crap stores as well. Fortunately, most of the worst stores looked relatively new, so hopefully they’ll get their shit together or go out of business before they sully the good name of that wonderful city.

Now electro.

 

Grace Jones
Party Girl (Extended Remix)
Party Girl (Dub)
This was the one track by a mainstream artist that I found while shopping for records in Osaka. While my interest in crate digging for 12″ singles has waned in recent years (mostly because I literally have nearly every 12″ single I could ever want), I’m always on the lookout for more epicness by her majesty Grace Jones. In what turned out to be a theme for tonight’s post, “Party Girl” is a sparse electronic dance jam, very typical of Grace’s awesome 80s work. It was produced by Nile Rodgers, so yeah, it’s good.

Mya & The Mirror – Hesitation
Gina & The Flex – I Wanna Believe
I found both of these excellent tracks on a compilation called Fuzz Dance. The 12″ had four tracks in total, the other two being “Problemes d’Amour” by the legendary Alexander Robotnick and the absolutely brilliant “Check-Out Five” by Naif Orchestra. Both of those tracks have been re-issued many times over and are actually in-print at several digital storefronts, so I suggest checking them out.

These tracks haven’t had the same fortune, and have fallen into an even greater level of obscurity than the other ones. And that’s a shame, they’re dope electro/italo-disco cuts from the mid-80s that really exemplify how fun and wonderful that genre can be. Super upbeat, great grooves, amazing production, these tracks are tight as hell. I miss this type of dance music, it’s one of the reasons I’ve fallen hard off of the current EDM scene. It’s so big and the beats are overpowering. I feel that dance audiences today feel like they need a constant BOOM BOOM BOOM beat in order to dance. But they don’t! Minimal tracks like this prove that sometimes less is more. You just need a groove, man. I wonder if any gay dance clubs in Tokyo have a retro night…

Both of these acts didn’t really exist. They were manufactured names for producers. Mya & The Mirror is actually producer Maurizio Dami, featuring vocals by Mya Fracassini. Dami’s done a shitload of stuff over the years, while it appears that Mya went on to work in opera. The people being Gina & The Flexix were Gianni Sangalli, Marzio Benelli, and Giancarlo Bigazzi. Like Dami, they all produced, wrote and worked on dozens of dance tracks under countless aliases an in countless group projects.

Posted in Grace Jones, remixes | No Comments »

The Konami Famicom Super Medley

March 11th, 2018

Osaka was amazing. I saw incredible castles, temples, shrines. I went to two amazing aquariums. I ate so much wonderful food that my stomach is still angry with me. And, of course, I went to as many record stores as possible and bought a billion records and CDs.

Almost everything I bought was obscure and out-of-print. It looks like I have plenty of material for this site for the next few months if not a year. However, very little of it was “traditional” Lost Turntable content. Only got one 12″ single of an artist any of you have probably heard of. The rest of what I found was either obscure electronic music, Japanese prog, Japanese jazz/funk or video game soundtracks. So I hope at least some of that sounds interesting to you, because that’s what you got coming up for the next few months most likely.

Y’know, stuff like this.

Konami
Famicom Arranged Medley
Famicom Original Remix Medley
Famicom Super Medley
All of these are “arranged” and/or “remixed” so I don’t understand the names behind these tracks. The opening “Arranged Medley” is probably the worst of the three though. It just takes a bunch of arranged versions of Konami tracks and mixes them together while an horribly bland backbeat plays throughout. I mean, it’s not terrible, the source material is certainly great, but when compared to the tracks that follow it certainly falls flat.

Because the other tracks are really great. The “Original Remix Medley” is a much more pure presentation of the source material, using the original game audio alongside some added sound effects and beats. It’s not as smooth as the “Arranged Medley,” some of the cuts are a bit jarring, but the overall experience is much better. The original tunes are so strong that they stand on their own, they don’t need the lame backbeat of the “Arranged Medley’ to support them.

That’s not to say they can’t benefit from the remix or arrangement treatment, because they certainly do with the “Super Medley.” This track takes the most liberties with the original songs, re-recording them entirely with new instrumentation and accompaniment. Of the three, it is the most fun, and works the best as a proper medley. The segues between the tracks are smooth and natural, lacking the out-of-place cuts of the “Original Remix Medley” and not relying on a tired backing track like the “Arranged Medley” does. It’s also super energetic, almost like a stadium house track. If The KLF were given orders to rework Famicom tracks, I think it might sound something like this track. Dope shit all around.

Posted in Complete Albums, Game Music, remixes | 1 Comment »

Disco Beatles Octopus

March 2nd, 2018

I wrote a thing about how Queer Eye pissed me the hell off. Also penned a piece about some recent re-releases of 80s J-pop gems you need to track down. Also have a planned review of the Super Mario Odyssey Soundtrack if I can make my way through all of it enough times in order to form a writable opinion. It’s four discs!

In other news, next week I am going to Osaka for the very first time and I am incredibly stoked. I’m going to go to the massive aquarium. I’m going to check out all the cool museums. I want to see the amazing parks and gardens. And of course, I’m going to go to as many record stores as my boyfriend will allow.

You all saw that coming, right?

I’ve already done my research, I have a map, I got a plan, I’m good to go on this. But if anyone in the know wants to recommend a record store in Osaka to me, I’m going to going to stop you.

Now Disco Beatles. I’m sorry.

M. Uehara & His Disco Makers – Disco Octopus
Cover caught my eye, “disco Beatles covers” caught my wallet. Although it wasn’t much of a fight, this record was only abut five bucks and I was rather depressed when I saw it. I really should be careful when I go record shopping depressed. On the one hand, I can afford the retail therapy so yay, it makes me feel better. On the other hand, I end up with over a dozen anime soundtracks and I don’t know why.

I bought this hoping for some J-funk. I’ve mentioned before that Japanese funk is the secret best funk because it combines funk, jazz, disco and sometimes even electronic music in really amazing ways. What I ended up getting was much more disco, although I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised or disappointed about that. It’s not like the album was committing false advertising. The name of the group is “Disco Makers” after all.

But it’s still a halfway decent album. The opening cover of “Octopus’s Garden” isn’t great, but the covers of “Lady Madonna” and “Hard Day’s Night” are my jam. The albums closes strong with a funky take on “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” too. In between those bangers are covers of “Hey Jude” and “Let It Be,” as well as a medley that features “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” “She Loves You,” and “Get Back.” The medley isn’t bad, but both “Hey Jude” and “Let It Be” are probably two of my least favorite Beatles tracks. And even the most ardent “Hey Jude” defender would have to admit that it doesn’t really lend itself to the disco treatment. It’s just too slow. Ditto for “Let It Be.” Neither of these covers sound like disco, they sound like bland instrumental versions performed by an airport hotel house band.

But who were the Disco Makers, and who was their frontman, M. Uehara? Great questions, I have no idea! Can’t find anything in English about this dude or his group. I really have to step up my Japanese game at some point so I can at very least track down a modicum of information on acts like this. I’m sure there’s some insane Japanese person out there who has written about stuff like this, i.e. my Japanese doppelganger.

 

Posted in Complete Albums | 1 Comment »

Don’t perform medical experiments on DJs without their consent.

February 24th, 2018

Yo today I met HIRO, the composer behind the music to every great Sega game ever so I’m in a great mood and here’s some weird shit to celebrate my great mood of greatness I feel great yay.

Dr. Yann Tomita and Grandmaster Flash
Vinyl Beat Of Two Turntables with Cybernetics and Bio-Feedback (English Version)
Vinyl Beat Of Two Turntables with Cybernetics and Bio-Feedback (Japanese Version)

I got two turntables and…a lot of other stuff.

Dr. Yann’s full name is Yann Tomita (no relation to other Tomita). I don’t think that he is a real doctor, but judging from his discography he’s certainly a musical visionary of sorts. He seems to enjoy dabbling in just about everything in every genre, often with some form of experimental electronics.

Take this track, for instance, in which he combines the turntable skills of the legendary Grandmaster Flash with a few different biofeedback devices. Some are hooked up the Grandmaster, some to Tomita. All convert the signals they receive into some kind of sonic output. The track itself actually explains the process in the introduction (the only differences in the tracks are the introductions, by the way).

This is experimental music in the most direct sense, this is an experiment to make music. Does the experiment work? You be the judge. I certainly find it interesting even if it does kind of all apart near the end.

 

Posted in Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel, Yann Tomita | No Comments »

TPO: Synthpop for Descending into Madness

February 22nd, 2018

You know, I was having a decent enough February, current events notwithstanding of course. I was enjoying work, having a lot of fun with my boyfriend, buying a lot of stupid, weird music no one cares about but me, and even staying relatively healthy after a few months of non-serious but still very annoying health problems. Things were good.

That must be how the flu found me, it feasts on happiness.

The flu KICKED MY FUCKING ASS last week. Hitting me like a sack of bricks dipped in shit on Saturday, and leaving me pretty much entirely incapacitated throughout the weekend and into most of Tuesday with a fever breaking 104 at times. I’m about 70% recovered now, but I still feel like the alien from The Hidden tried to suck its life force out of me. Ugh.

Whilst in my feverish state, I did two things; watching Friends on Netflix, and listened to this.

TPO
Dawning
The Jet Set
Camacho Preguicosa
Dori Twisted Her Smile
I was in Shop Mecano last week (before I was struck down with the plague) and was itching to buy something. Having completely exhausted literally every single YMO-related act of note, I just asked the owner to recommend something weird. He pulled out this record, calling it “Japanese Art Of Noise.” Good sales pitch, so I bought it.

I think he might’ve undersold it. At least, it terms of weirdness.

This is a crazy record. According to the guy at Mecano, it was almost entirely composed on the Fairlight synthesizer, and it certainly sounds like it. It definitely doesn’t bear any resemblance to YMO. It’s much more complex and just features a manic intensity and bombastic flare that even the most over-the-top and outlandish YMO tracks lack. YMO primarily used Moogs, sequencers and samplers. That gave their music a more stripped down sound. IT sounds fuller and bigger than it is primarily because the hooks and melodies are so strong.

This stuff doesn’t have the pure melodic power of the best YMO tracks, but its full of energy and has a goofy, fun vibe that’s impossible to dislike. The guy at Mecano was right, it does sound like Art Of Noise, but I would also throw in a bit of Pet Shop Boys (at least in terms of instrumentation) and maybe electro-era Herbie Hancock as well; two other acts known for their use of the Fairlight.

I don’t want to share the entire album, it’s 37 songs spread out over two CDs, so I thought I would share just a snippet, my favorite tracks that I feel encompass the oddball, zany variety you can find on the record proper. “Dawning” is an over-the-top opener that damn well should’ve been the theme music to a mid-80s television news show, while “The Jet Set” is a sample-driven dance tune that definitely features that Art of Noise influence. Driving up the mania is “Comacho Preguicosa,” which features entirely computer-generated vocals, and then “Dori Twisted Her Smile” takes things down a notch with its more standard synthpop sound, complete with human vocals and a traditional pop song structure. Like I said, this thing runs the gamut.

In case you’re wondering who the hell TPO is, me too! There’s not a lot to be found online about these guys aside from their Discogs page. I think that the group’s brainchild was Fumitaka Anzai, who worked on a lot of anime and game soundtracks. He was also in the Japanese prog act Crosswind, which doesn’t surprise me, there’s a lot of prog/synthpop crossover in Japan.

TPO didn’t release a lot. After this record they just put out on more album proper, a collaborative album with someone named Linda Masters. Anyways, that album is hella rare and is currently for sale for over $160 on Discogs, so I won’t be listening to it anytime soon. They also did the soundtrack to a world’s fair that was held in Japan in 1985. My boyfriend totally went to that! That’s adorable and amazing.

This stuff serves as a great soundtrack to to fever dreams, by the way, so maybe make a special playlist for that.

Posted in TPO | 5 Comments »

Super Gun Super Funk Super Awesome

February 12th, 2018

I know I’ve mentioned this a few times already, but writing this blog is becoming increasingly difficult. Three times last week I sat down to write a post only to realize the songs I wanted to write about and share were already in print, or I covered them years ago. I’ve been doing this thing for over ten years after all.

So, don’t expect any rare or hard-to-find cuts by mainstream or even well-known cult acts for a while. Of course, that could change, I could stumble into a lucky 12″ single like I did with that PWEI one. But I don’t expect it. Instead, expect more weird Japanese synth-pop and strange experimental electronic records from the 70s. As that’s what I’m digging the most at the present time.

Also expect really odd shit like like.

SUPER GUN MOTHERFUCKER.

I’m not one for sound effects records, because they’re kind of pointless. I bet if I would’ve been aware of their existence when I was a kid I would’ve dug the shit out of them. But as an adult I really don’t need a collection of car sounds or thunderstorm ambiance.

I certainly didn’t think I needed a compilation of gun sound effects, but hey, sometimes you surprise yourself.

This is actually a bit more than just sounds of guns going off, so don’t quit on me yet. This is Super Gun, and as far as I can gather, it’s a companion album to the film The Beast Must Die, a movie about a reporter who goes off the deep end and embarks on a violent crime spree. What better to accompany a dark and disturbing film than an album that demonstrates various gun sound effects with an almost fetish-like attention to detail? It doesn’t just feature the sounds of the guns when they’re being fired, it also includes introductions (in English) by American gun experts.

Oh, and it also features DOPE FUNK.

The album opens and closes with a slow jam theme that’s good but pretty much forgettable. However, after a few tracks of nothing but dudes blasting guns, we’re given a break from the ballistics and treated to “Firing,” which is three and a half minutes of groovalicious funk for funking things up.

This song is taken from the film’s proper soundtrack album, which credits Akihiko Takashima as the composer. I think this track might’ve been performed by Arakawa Band, a jazz-funk group that’s credited as the backing band on the album. Regardless of who performed it, it’s fucking rad. So much that I’m including it as a separate download.

Super Gun (Complete Album)
Firing (song only)

Want to hear all the music and gunfire that Super Gun has to offer? Click the first link. Just wanna funk out? Then click the second.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Japanese funk is the secret best funk.

Posted in Complete Albums, soundtrack | 1 Comment »

Blue Fukamachi

January 30th, 2018

Somehow, for whatever reason, some five months after the fact, I got my damn Twitter account unsuspended. I have no idea how I did this. I sent them countless emails over these past few months, pleading my case from every possible angle I could think of. During that time, I’m happy that I never succumbed to the urge to send vulgar insults or baseless threats. Trust me, many an unsent message contained both.

Maybe my restraint paid off. Maybe someone finally realized their mistake. Maybe someone just pushed the wrong button. I don’t care. I’m just happy I got my fucking account back after all this damn time. Not because I really like Twitter all that much, but dammit it’s important for me to stay on brand. UnLostTurntable was a shitty replacement name.

Anyways, @LostTurntable, follow me for random things. Mostly art.

Blue Pearl
Mother Dawn (Buckateer Mix 1)
Mother Dawn (Buckateer Mix 2)
Mother Dawn (Buckateer Mix 3)
Mother Dawn (Lunacy Mix)
Blue Pearl was a side-project of Youth from Killing Joke and featured Durga McBroom on vocals. The group also sported guest appearances from David Gilmour and Richard Wright from Pink Floyd, albeit not on this track.

All of these remixes are by The Orb and sound very much like remixes by The Orb, so your mileage may vary depending on how excited that sounds to you. Me, I’m not a big fan of The Orb’s remix work. They often fuck up with source material too much, and to me that’s the problem with these remixes here. They just sound like ambient dub Orb tracks, save for the Lunacy Mix, which has an actual beat and vocals.

Jun Fukamachi’s 21st Century Band
Shin-Ku
This is jazz fusion but please keep reading.

I went bit of a buying spree of Japanese jazz fusion as of late, trying to figure out which albums in the genre appeal to me and which ones don’t. I’m super hot and cold on this stuff. I either think it’s the best stuff ever or it makes me want to slam spikes in my ears, and I wanted to figure out why. What makes “good” jazz fusion to me? I think I was able to pin down the criteria:

  1. Absolute minimum vocals.
  2. Guitar or keyboard-centric
  3. Fast tempo
  4. The most synthesizers the better

With all these components, I really dig this stuff. It takes on a funky vibe that I hella get behind, like this track by piano virtuoso Jun Fukamachi. It has a jazz core, that’s for sure, but it branches out from that really quickly. It has a weird prog bent, some bizarre electronic accents, and more a few dope solos. And whoever the drummer is, wow. They really kick it into gear in the second half. It’s about 10 minutes long, but it still has structure, it doesn’t feel like a bunch of guys in the room just jamming nonstop. At least, it doesn’t to me.

I get that this isn’t the kind of stuff that people come to this blog for, and that’s cool. But if you don’t like it…just, don’t tell me? No one is making you download this free music, after all.

If you do like it, or have recommendations based on it, let me know! Leave a comment or you can contact me on my motherfucking back from the dead Twitter account.

Damn that feels good to say.

Posted in Blue Pearl, Jun fukamachi, remixes | 2 Comments »

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