Tag: uk

Brenda Ray – Walatta, 2005

A personal favorite. Brenda Ray rolled around with a handful of musical projects in the UK post punk scene, where she explored African rhythms, dub, hip hop, and electro grooves. After hitting it off with the legendary Roy Cousins in the early 90’s, she helped him remaster and reissue titles from his label, Tamoki Wambesi. Legend has it that it was Cousins’ idea that she make an album using original tapes of Tamoki Wambesi roots reggae tracks. I think this was mostly recorded in the late 90s, released in limited numbers via Tamoki Wambesi, and reissued by Japan’s EM Records (I’m still working our way through their catalog, because holy cow it is good).

Unlike anything else. Responsible for vocals, melodica, keyboards, koto, pixiephone, chimes, claves, bells, cymbal, cowbell, ashtray (?), clavinet, xylophone, cabasa, triangle, idiophone, tambourine, vibraslap, scraper, whistle, recording, and mixing, Ray draped her breathy, 60’s-chanteuse vocals all over her reworkings of some of the best dub and reggae tracks ever made, resulting in what Forced Exposure called “very disturbing slices of psycho-dub/doo-wop/jazz-fusion/exotica music.” Grooving all over Turkey, West Africa, and of course, Jamaica. Alternately shimmery, bossa-nova-flecked, and funky, with appearances by Prince Far I and Knowledge. The sonic equivalent of pink plastic palm trees. A salve for a brutally cold February day. Enjoy!

N.A.D. – Dawn of a New Age, 1990

Guest post by Dru Grossberg

In 1990, Mustafa Ali had little under his belt before he began recording his sole 8-track LP as the perfectly suited nom-de-plum New Age Dance. Predicting several of the new decade’s themes and tones for Detroit, it’s not hard to imagine this as the precursor to Drexciya’s subaquatic sensibilities; here, however, synth washes that would be reserved for diving instead mimic interstellar flight. Displaying an otherwise distinctly American sound for a British record, Dawn of a New Age cameod his native isle’s bleep techno before Warp established a serious audience. It was prime for reissuing on Rush Hour, following the like-minded Virgo Four, Larry Heard, and Dream 2 Science.

On Dawn of a New Age, disillusionment with the modern world, primarily its spiritual state, runs rampant. Each composition opens and repeats a bar emulating archaic visions of cosmic technological disclosure in sound, strewn with a variety of samples from dinosaurs to the day the earth stood still. Tracks like “Everything Seems Different” and the eerie coda “Let There be Light” emulate the hauntingly simple NES sci-fi side scrollers. “Soul Search” delivers even bleaker synth waves, yet also draws attention to how N.A.D.’s narration co-dependently pairs to its musical counterpart: his repeated mantras weave in and out of the track’s minimal flourishes.

Much of this album plays like a disaffected, dystopian sermon in one’s own private diary. At its end, Dawn of a New Age leaves you exasperated, carnal, and dispirited. While the masses may never sip this brew, part of Dawn‘s ambitious thesis has triumphed by predicting spiritually imbued curation all throughout dance music culture. Mustafa left behind the sense he’d die more than happy pouring his soul into this recording, placing it as an unknown artifact never to be found again. Lucky for us that wasn’t the case.

Cocteau Twins & Harold Budd – The Moon and the Melodies, 1986

Today I’m posting a record that matters a whole lot to me, and has been an ongoing reference point in my musical conversations with many people in my life. It’s also weirdly overlooked, possibly because there’s confusion over to whom the record is credited, and possibly because Robin Guthrie left it out of the catalog of Cocteau Twins records that he remastered in recent years. As far as I know, there haven’t been any major write-ups about it.

It’s an uncategorizable work, one which far exceeds the sum of its parts. It’s egoless. It’s a fluid, restless record, moody and aloof–it peaks several times, ecstatically, only to retreat back into itself. Startling synergy between these masterminds means that ambient and new age fans will find a lot to love here–it’s Harold Budd, after all, and there are long stretches of huge, hulking instrumental tracks. But the record is darker than typical new age–it feels like climbing through a cavernous skeleton, and the instrumental tracks (like “Memory Gongs”) are echoing and sometimes sinister. It’s not as effusive as Cocteau Twins, and perhaps not as immediately gratifying–many tracks fade out right when you want more the most. It has its rock moments (“Eyes Are Mosaics”) but this isn’t daytime music, and it’s not background music. Clocking in at just under 40 minutes, it’s a perfect on-repeat record, folding in on itself like water.