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Welcome to the second album we’ve done with string maestro, Joseph Allred. Unlike O Meadowlark (FTR 451), this one features a smattering of Joseph's vocals, although his main thrust is still glistening instrumentals.

The title song is a goddamn sad one, sung with reedy elegance, dealing with a kidnapped dog that serves as a stand-in for all earthly beings, full of both frailty and resilience. Another vocal track, "The Crown" (which inspired the cover art), stems from a long conversation Joseph had with Max Ochs.  It squeezes the inherently surreal aspects of dream-walking into semi-conventional blues tautology, and the fit is just right.  The third and last vocal, "O Columbia," is a particular favorite, based as it is upon the some of the same melodies Fahey swiped for "In Christ There Is No East or West," although Allred takes things in all new directions.  I had been a tad leery when I heard Joseph would be singing on this new session — being so enamored of his unadorned instrumental technique — but these tunes won me over in the course of a few plays.  Maybe there'll be more verbal-content in his future?  We would not say "no."

But the meat of this album remains Joseph’s splendid inventions for guitar and banjo.  His piece for Glenn Jones, "The Giant Who Shrank Himself," is a beautiful suite, worthy of its concept (that Jones is a behemoth who has to shrink himself in order to deal with us normals).  It flows like the sweetest stream of wine you, I or anyone might imagine.  "Single Me a Stranger" is another literal killer, with sliding chords evoking the 1872 lynching and curse-fulfillment of an unlucky newcomer in the small Tennessee town where Allred grew up.  It's spell-binding.  As is "Mark’s Overture," a banjo piece inspired by by a homeless music critic in Cambridge, Mass.

Another top-notch album by this great player. If you don’t know Allred already, you will soon.

-Byron Coley, 2019

More information can be found here.

Parent Category: News & Events

Category: Buzz Bin

Published: 04 January 2020

Hits: 3490

Super Natural is a spell spun by the inner guides: sometimes they have your best interests in mind but other times....you're wanting it to go this way...

Jonnine's songs swim in part-spoken, part-sung suspension, sophisticated wordplay amid languorous instruments and devotional invocations with allegorical weight.  Written and produced by Jonnine and co-produced by Nathan Corbin (Excepter, Blazer Sound System, Psychic 9-5 Club), Super Natural was conceived as a soundtrack to the surreal Venice-set feature film the two are destined to one day make together, a testament to eight years of friendship and musical / visual collaboration.  Super Natural has a chimeric quality – fleeting and, like any good thriller, pulsing with potential but paced with restraint (as Jonnine says, "it's what you don’t see that keeps you imagining").

Jonnine's first solitary offering carries the refinement of her work in the Australian band HTRK.  With this EP, a creative block was overcome after years of being urged by her therapist to forge a solo musical identity. It began with a first attempt to play her brother's broken stringed guitar, unused since 2001, and became these four songs.

Starless and clandestine, the spoken-word delivery of "You're Wanting It To Go This Way" is streaked with discordant guitar, tripped rhythm and sanguine, fluttering melodic ornament. A rapt rendering of self-sabotage, but patient and alluring, this introduction is reminiscent of Leslie Winer's Witch.

"I Don't Seem Myself Tonight" confesses ethereal harmonies with waveless vocals, earthy strums and keyboard sceneries (in Sceneries Not Songs likeness).  A tribute to love at first sight as a little death.  Subconscious gong in whale tones from Mona Ruijs (Sound Interventions).

The penultimate "You Can Leave The Vampires" is fettered by guitar from HTRK bandmate Nigel Yang against a moody, cautionary libretto.  This collaboration yields ritualistic results as the object of the spell is appealed to break with an addictive game of chance by the overlapping mantras "If I can leave you / you can leave too" and "Please, you can be free"
The playful "Scorpio Rises Again" simmers with Audrey Horne cheek; bass guitar, finger clicks and a whistle from Conrad Standish (CS + Kreme) in beguiling denouement.

With stories unlocked by the interior dreaming of Super Natural, Jonnine and Nigel's collaboration as HTRK opened up and new material (their 2019 album, Venus in Leo) sprang forth immediately after.  The inner guides may delude when kept quiet: their expression is a way towards healing, even their most haunted song.

More information can be found here.

Parent Category: News & Events

Category: Buzz Bin

Published: 04 January 2020

Hits: 3457

After being blown away by a few tunes – probably just as you will be after listening to this - Samy Ben Redjeb traveled to the infamous capital city of Somalia in November of 2016, making Analog Africa the first music label to set foot in Mogadishu.
On his arrival in Somalia, Samy began rifling through piles of cassettes and listening to reel-to-reel tapes in the dusty archives of Radio Mogadishu, looking for music that "swam against the current."

The stars were aligned: an uncovered and unmarked pile of discarded recordings was discovered in a cluttered corner of the building. Colonel Abshir - the senior employee and protector of Radio Mogadishu's archives - clarified that the pile consisted mostly of music nobody had manage to identify, or music he described as being "mainly instrumental and strange music." At the words "strange music," Samy was hooked, the return flight to Tunisia was cancelled.

The pile turned out to be a cornucopia of different sounds: radio jingles, background music, interludes for radio programs, television shows and theater plays. There were also a good number of disco tunes, some had been stripped of their lyrics, the interesting parts had been recorded multiple times then cut, taped together and spliced into a long groovy instrumental loop. Over the next three weeks, often in watermelon, grapefruit juice and shisha-fuelled night-time sessions behind the fortified walls of Radio Mogadishu, Samy and the archive staff put together Mogadisco: Dancing Mogadishu, 1974–1991.

Like everywhere in Africa during the 1970s, both men and women sported huge afros, bell-bottom trousers and platform shoes. James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and The Temptations' funk were the talk of the town.

In 1977, Iftin Band were invited to perform at the Festac festival in Lagos where they represented Somalia at the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture. Not only did they come back with an award but they also returned with Afrobeat. While Fela Kuti's "Shakara" had taken over the continent and was spreading like wildfire throughout Latin America, it was the track "Lady" that would become the hit in Mogadishu.

At the same time, Bob Marley was busy kick-starting reggae-mania in Somalia, which became such a phenomenon that even the police and military bands began playing it. Some say that it was adopted so quickly because of the strong similarities with the traditional beat from the western region of Somalia, called Dhaanto.

But then suddenly the trousers got tighter as the disco tsunami hit the country. Michael Jackson appeared with a new sound that would revolutionize Somalia's live music scene. You couldn't walk the streets of Mogadishu without seeing kids trying to moonwalk.

"Somalia had several nightclubs and although most use DJs to play records, some hotels like Jubba, Al-Uruba and Al Jazeera showcased live bands such as Iftin and Shareero" - so ran a quote from a 1981 article about the explosion of Mogadishu's live music scene. The venues mentioned in that article were the luxury hotels that had been built to cover the growing demands of the tourist industry. The state-of-the-art hotel Al-Uruba, with its oriental ornaments and white plastered walls, was a wonder of modern architecture. All of Mogadishu's top bands performed there at some point or another, and many of the songs presented in this compilation were created in such venues.

Mogadisco was not Analog Africa's easiest project. Tracking down the musicians - often in exile in the diaspora - to interview them and gather anecdotes of golden-era Mogadishu has been an undertaking that took three years. Tales of Dur-Dur Band's kidnapping, movie soundtracks recorded in the basements of hotels, musicians getting electrocuted on stage, others jumping from one band to another under dramatic circumstances, and soul singers competing against each other, are all stories included in the massive booklet that accompanies the compilation - adorned with no less then 18 pictures from the '70s and '80s.

As Colonel Abshir Hashi Ali, chief don at the Radio Mogadishu archive - someone who once wrestled a bomber wielding an unpinned hand-grenade to the floor - put it: "I have dedicated my life to this place. I'm doing this so it can get to the next generation; so that the culture, the heritage and the songs of Somalia don't disappear."

More information can be found here.

Parent Category: News & Events

Category: Buzz Bin

Published: 14 December 2019

Hits: 3756

For Patrick Flegel, Cindy Lee is more than just a recording music project. It is the culmination of a lifelong exploration of art, the electric guitar, queer identity and gender expression. "Singers like Patsy Cline and The Supremes carried me through the hardest times of my life," explains Flegel, "and also provided the soundtrack to the best times."

Following the dissolution of Canadian experimental indie band Women, Flegel would delve deeper into songwriting that bends further toward high atmospherics and bracing melodies – a unique space where splendor naturally collides with experimentation. Delivering moments of sheer beauty through somber reflections on longing and loneliness, Cindy Lee is something to hold onto in a world of disorder.

What's Tonight To Eternity, Cindy Lee's fifth long-form offering, showcases the project's most entrancing strengths: ethereal snowdrift pop and sly nods toward classic girl-group motifs. Recorded at Flegel's Realistik Studios in Toronto and featuring younger brother Andrew Flegel on drums, the album travels hand in hand with a spectral guide.

Flegel found inspiration for Cindy Lee in the form of Karen Carpenter, drawing on the singer / drummer's early recordings as well as her look and style. "I found a deep interest and comfort in Karen's story, which is a cautionary tale about the monstrosity of show business, stardom at a young age and being a misfit looking for connection. The darkness and victimizing tabloid sensationalism she suffered is easily tempered and overwhelmed by her earnest output, her artistry, her tireless work ethic. Something utterly unique and magical takes shape in the negative space, out of exclusion. What I relate to in her has to do with what is hidden, what is unknown."

What's Tonight To Eternity remains a mix of pop culture indoctrination, pain and suffering, hopes and dreams, fierce confrontations and wide-open confessional blurs. Closing with the song "Heavy Metal" (dedicated to the memory of former Women bandmate Chris Reimer) and adorned by Andrea Lukic's Journal of Smack artwork, the album continues the bold and rewarding path on which Cindy Lee has embarked.

More information can be found here.

Parent Category: News & Events

Category: Buzz Bin

Published: 14 December 2019

Hits: 3736