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- Birchville Cat Motel Endless Cassette
- Artificial Memory Trace Blue Reverie/Fragment (1980, Prague- Czechoslovakia)
- Nmperign Mhere'd
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Just as Rejoicing in the Hands of the Golden Empress represented the maternal principle, Nino Rojo represents the principle of the child. Following in a line of primal symbolism going back to the Egyptian deity Horus ("the crowned and conquering child"), the title depends upon that fundamental consonance between Sun and Son. The "red sun" disc of the Eye of Horus, casting the light of knowledge upon mankind; and the "red son" of Banhart's title, an "exuberant and foolish" child full of passion and curiosity. This symbolic conceit works to unite these two halves of the same generative source.
 
Nino Rojo comprises a second volume of 16 songs from the same fruitful recording sessions that produced Rejoicing, and far from a collection of outtakes or castoffs, represents another stunning album from one of the most uniquely talented individuals currently working in this medium. As if to enforce the frolicsome exuberance suggested by the album's title, the songs here focus on energy, dynamism and the spirit of communal play. To that end, many of these tracks are more orchestrated than I'd come to expect from past albums, with guest players contributing voices and instruments. Benefactor M. Gira contributes his voice and harmonica to "Electric Heart," the album's transcendent coda, celebrating the light-bringing, conductive properties of collective love. On a few tracks tracks, Julia Kent of Rasputina and Antony and the Johnsons contributes her exquisitely expressive cello. Andy Cabic from Vetiver, one of the newer groups to emerge from the Golden Apples of the Sun new-folk scene, joins Devendra for a lovely vocal duet on "At the Hop," a buoyant tribute to romantic codependency. The disc is also enhanced with an MPEG video for the song, which mutates into a group sing-along, with a psychedelicized video heavily indebted to the hippie ruralism and communal spirit of Incredible String Band's Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending. Of course, Nino Rojo also contains plenty of tracks of Banhart playing solo, fingerpicking remarkably complex guitar figures, drawing on a seemingly endless reservoir of gentle acoustic melodies that each trigger the spooky resonance of deja vu. The album begins with a sad, sweet rendition of children's songwriter Ella Jenkins' "Wake Up, Little Sparrow." Banhart sings in his native Spanish on "Ay Mama," a lament for his mother in which he repeatedly sings "No hay que llorar" ("You don't have to cry"). There are more hauntingly simple songs on Nino Rojo, from the outsider anthem of "Noah" to the chilling surrealism of "Sister." Along with the remarkably fast-tempo playing on "Horseheadedfleshwizard," Devendra weaves a remarkably sinister assemblage of images: "I put the ovaries in my mouth/And all the dogs will die/And the devil will call the cats home/And he looks up to the sky." Banhart's guitar virtuosity continues to improve by leaps and bounds, with tracks like "The Good Red Road" matching the proficiency of guitar legends like Elizabeth Cotten and John Fahey. Nino Rojo is a joyful, magical work of unrestrained creativity, and taken together with its earlier counterpart, represents as strong a statement of artistic integrity as any musician could hope to produce.
samples:
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A decade or so ago, I worked part-time in a CD shop that specialized mainly in strange and obscure imports. One of our favorite pastimes was scouring the catalogs from distributors in places like Germany and Japan to find the most unlikely reissues and greatest hits collections, and at one point, we had a list posted in the stock room of the "Top 10 Greatest Hits albums that should be a CD single." Number one with a bullet was a German anthology of tracks by Carl Douglas, the Jamaican-born singer behind the 70s pop-disco classic "Kung-Fu Fighting" and, well, a lot of other songs that no-one cared about.
Released in the UK in 1974 at the height of the craze for chop-socky kung-fu flicks, the song spent weeks on the charts, and had similar success in North America the following year. 30 years later, the folks at German neo-dub label Echo Beach decided that it would be a good idea to have a bunch of people remix this slice of 70s cheese, and given the current popularity for reconstructed & deconstructed kung-fu films like Kill Bill and Hero, the release has a perverse sense of the "expert timing" mentioned in the lyrics. The big question, though, is whether or not the world really needs 16 new versions of what is essentially a novelty record by a long gone one-hit wonder. After forcing myself to listen to the entire 78 minutes of 30 seconds of the album, I'd have to say that the answer is a powerful and resounding NO. It doesn't start off too badly, as the opening mix by Noiseshaper turns the track into a surprisingly enjoyable chilled-out reggae number. But as the album moves on through one dub-based variation after another by Dreadzone, Kid Loco & Rob Smith, it doesn't take long for the novelty of the project to wear off. Seeing Adrian Sherwood listed in the credits offered some promise, given his reputation as an adventurous producer who often pushes the limits of dub techniques, but his mix is sadly one of the weakest in a generally weak bunch. The only bits that stand out are the Pole mix, which drops a handful of vocal samples into a downtempo composition that is one of his best works in quite some time; and G-Rizo's version which completely reworks the track into a mellow broken beat number with breathy female vocals. If this had been a 4-track EP, it would've been a fun release worth grabbing to add some humour to the dance floor at your next house party, but as an album, it's really quite excruciating. Given that this isn't the first time Echo Beach has done this sort of thing— they released a similar album a couple of years ago featuring a multitude of mixes of their namesake song by Martha & The Muffins—I can only shudder to think what mouldy oldie will be next in line for this treatment. 
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- This is Your Last Chance (Before I Sleep)
- Evening Without Atonement
- The Lines We Walked When We Walked Once Together
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- 52nd Street - Express
- Quando Quango - Genius (Pt 2)
- New Order - Video 5-8-6 (Edit)
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- 52nd Street - Can't Afford To Let You Go
- Section 25 - Looking From A Hilltop (Megamix)
- Marcel King - Reach For Love
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