RIP John Martyn

Last month we lost Davy Graham and today we have sadly lost another folk legend, John Martyn aged 60.

"With heavy heart and an unbearable sense of loss we must announce that John died this morning."

A huge inspiration and a true great.


RIP John Martyn (11th September 1948 - 29th January 2009)

New Qbico

No doubt all of these are worth checking out, but they will cost you anywhere from £71 to £255 plus postage.

Conrad Schnitzler - Silver


Peter Kowald - Bass solo


Hartmut Geerken/John Tchicai - The Kabul & Teheran tapes


Thomas Borgmann/Wilber Morris/Reggie Nicholson - Live at Tunnel


Maurizio Abate - Armonicum


Each of those will cost you between £11 and £19 (the latter price being for the Geerken and Abate releases). And there is of course the box set, or bagged set in this case.


The set at the end will cost you £210 (limited to the usual 26) and that doesn't come with the Maurizio Abate LP, so you could spend an extra £45 on top of that if you bought the handmade edition.

Qbico Records

The Abate LP may appear on here at some point in the future. Unfortunately can't afford to buy any of the others at the moment.
And also keep an eye out for new Troglosound releases in the next couple of months. They should be spectacular.

Natural Snow Buildings - Daughter of Darkness Update

News is that these are now shipping.

The 5 cassette set comes from Blackest Rainbow and sold out within a few hours. See their website to find distros/shops that will be stocking the sets (under the 'stockists' tab).


Track Listing:
A1. Daughter Of darkness
A2. Left For Dead
A3. Satanic Demona (Part 1)
B1. Satanic Demona (Part 2)
B2. Curare
B3. Carnal Flowers

C1. Her Face Is Not Her Real Face
D1. Body Double
D2. Slaves For The After Life
D3. The Source

E1. Santa Sangre (Parts 1 & 2)
F1. A Thousand Demons Invocation

G1. Will You Die For Me?
H1. Black Pastures

I1. Devil's Fork
J1. The Invisibles

(see 2000 Ruidos for more pictures)


Next to come is the 5th part and 6th cassette of the series from Ben Nash's great little label, Recollections of Knulp. According to rateyourmusic this is due to be released on the 29th Jan, so keep your eyes peeled because again, I don't think it will last long. I know Boa Melody Bar, Volcanic Tongue and Tomentosa Records have stocked his label in the past so if you miss out and want a copy I'd recommend waiting for their mailing lists to arrive.
Artwork for the cassette is apparently this...

Track Listing:
A1. Blood In The Ground Linking Us All
A2. The Damned And The Tortured
B1. Psychic Navigation
B2. Masked Marvel

Pre-order for part 5 is up on the RoK myspace page now! This one is going to be limited to just 100 copies so be fast.

Machingbyrd - The Road To Forbidden Ecstacy

This has taken me forever to sort out and the file info has driven me insane thanks to this dying computer. The album is entitled 'The Road to Forbidden Ecstacy' (the files may still be named 'ecstasy', if they are please re-title), released in 1980 by a man named Michael Engberg under the pseudonym of Machingbyrd - pronounced 'mach' (as in the speed Mach 3), 'ing', 'bird'.
I managed to pick this up about one and a half years ago off an internet store for a fraction of other prices I'd seen (ebay). It was still sealed, but because of the fact it had been sealed for 27 years the record came a bit bowl warped (hence the much lower price). Hopefully you won't notice that in this replication, to my ears the quality is very good.
Overall it's a very pleasing acid folk album, one of the many that have been lost in time.

Machingbyrd - The Road to Forbidden Ecstacy (1980)

Track Listing:
A1. The Road to Forbidden Ecstacy
A2. Illusion
A3. By Your Leave
A4. Hand-to-Mouth
A5. A Thrill in Disguise

B1. Cricket Song
B2. Stronger Than Steel
B3. His Wildest Dreams
B4. Simple Symphony
B5. Mary B. Reel

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0DAZIPNE (mp3, 256kbps)

If you download and enjoy this album please pay a visit to Michael's website.

The Future

Two things in this post regarding the future; the first being things I hope to make posts on (as a reminder to myself as much as anything) and the second is future releases/purchases (hopefully).

Posts:
Matthew Dell (Matt Valentine, MV) - Glorious Group Therapy (cassette version)
Barrabarracuda - Draft Dodging Sexual Vietnam (cassette single)
Annelies Monsere - Untitled (cassette)
Machingbyrd - Road to Forbidden Ecstacy (vinyl)
Ian Watson & Mark Jolliffe - Leaf Skeleton (3" CD)
Lightning Strike Lightning - Turn Myself Into the Ocean (CDR)

Maybe some OOP Sloow Tapes or Digitalis Limited and some slightly different style releases as well.

Purchases:
Twinsistermoon 7" (Dull Knife)
Boduf Songs lathe 7" (5MA)
Pistil Cosmos (Stunned)
MV & EE - Drone Trailer (Di Cristina)

Can't think at the moment, more will probably be added.

Mississippi Records Compilations

2009 has only just started, everyone knows the current situation with the banks and the job losses but that doesn't seem to be putting many people off spending huge amounts on music. Maybe I've been a little naive about the collectability of Mississippi Records releases, however I think most will agree that this is a surprise (especially when the tapes apparently cost just $3 each from the shop).

Thankfully Jefre Cantu-Ledesma over at the Root Blog has uploaded five of the tapes for us that don't have a spare couple of hundred dollars. I'd highly recommend checking out the soul tapes, 'We're gonna make it' (parts 1 & 2), if not all of the compilations.

1. House of Broken Hearts, Part 1
2. House of Broken Hearts, Part 2
3. We’re Gonna Make It, Part 1
4. Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven, But Nobody Wants To Die, Part 1
5. We're Gonna Make It, Part 2
6. Death Might Be Your Santa Claus
7. Trust Your Child
8. Wrong Time to be Right

These are only available from the Mississippi Records store in Portland, Oregon (USA) so expect prices to be high if you find them for sale on the net.
Many thanks to Jefre.

Natural Snow Buildings - Daughter of Darkness

"Over 6 hours from this French duo, multi-instrumental psyche ridden jams. 3 x C90s, 2 x C60s. EPIC to say the least, and totally killer. Pro dubbed cassettes. Artwork by the band. Limited to only 150 copies."

This is going to be absolutely mental. The pre-order has already sold out from Blackest Rainbow but some are due to appear at places like Boa Melody Bar, Tomentosa and Eclipse (all the usual haunts I'd guess). Limited to just 150 copies so if you missed out you best get your skates on when they appear - no idea what proportion have been sold to distros.
There is also due to be a sixth tape in the series (but titled part 5) released in the next few weeks.

You could argue that last year belonged to NSB but this year they're clearly going to be pushing it one step further. Bring it on!

Golden Jooklo Age and Richard Youngs

These are two albums I managed to pick up last year that were ridiculously limited and really deserve having a few more people listening to them.


Golden Jooklo Age - Tropical Trips (Qbico & Troglosound - 2008)

This was limited to 125 vinyl copies on Qbico and 38 CDRs on Troglosound. This Italian collective have had a spate of limited releases over the past couple of years (most projects involving the word 'Jooklo') all of which are now rather expensive or impossibly hard to find. This is one of my favourites from 2008 and the CDR version linked to here comes with a 4th track the vinyl didn't include. A bit jazzy, a bit mental, 100% amazing.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QMKXRU24


Richard Youngs - Nerston Surface (No Fans - 2008)

I can't say my knowledge of Richard Youngs music is vast, and as a result when 'three headed star' (another 2008 release on No Fans limited to 50) arrived I was a little put off, but still decided to try this album. Fortunately it headed down a rather different route and is a lot more pleasing. Just two tracks of piano really showing off two different sides to his playing and both well executed.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=THBSLR81


(Don't expect this blog to always be this generous.)