031: Live at Sin-é: Legacy Edition, by Jeff Buckley

Jeff Buckley (USA)
Live at Sin-é: Legacy Edition (2003)
34 tracks, 157 minutes (2CD)
Spotify · iTunes

In the summer of 1993, Jeff Buckley recorded a couple of his sets at one of his usual haunts, the Sin-é coffee house in New York. Four of the best cuts were taken from those sets and assembled into the Live at Sin-é EP later that year, to get the world ready for his debut album Grace that was to be released the year after. The tracks on that EP were beautiful, but we had to wait until 2003 – six years after his untimely death – to hear more of those legendary sets as this ‘Legacy Edition.’ And more there is: there's over two-and-a-half hour’s worth of material in this double album. That’s a lot of listening, and totally worth it.

It’s a very vulnerable position. Just him and an electric guitar, in the corner of what was literally just a small café. The setting lends itself to the music, which goes through a lot of emotions throughout the set, but always retains that same vulnerability. His guitar-work is generally understated but lets through glimpses of brilliance, and his voice is just astonishing. He can blast and bark when necessary, but then he switches it up and becomes soft and delicate. His range is massive, and it’s when he uses his falsetto – soaring but fragile – that the neck-hairs really stand on end.

His studio stuff is great, but this concert shows a bit of a different side. I suppose Jeff Buckley would usually be put into some ‘rock’ box, but he does absolutely all sorts here. He proves himself just as talented as a jazz singer, in blues or folk idioms. Out of the 21 songs on the recording, 15 of them are covers, everything from Led Zeppelin to Édith Piaf. He’s just so wildly versatile. Earlier this month, I referred to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan as ‘simply the greatest singer ever recorded.’ It would seem that Jeff would agree. In one of the many bits of chat recorded between the songs, he remarks “It's Nusrat, and he's my Elvis. That's my guy. I listen to him everyday...I know his nickname as a child” …and then he goes on to cover one of Nusrat’s pieces ‘Yeh Jo Halka Halka Saroor Hai’! In Urdu! Just guitar and voice! It’s frankly absurd and I love it.

There are so many tracks I can mention here: ‘Je N’en Connais Pas La Fin,’ ‘The Way Young Lovers Do,’ a spellbinding version of ‘Strange Fruit,’ the ballsy a cappella opening ‘Be Your Husband,’ and that’s not even mentioning his originals...but I’m supposed to be writing one of these a day, and it would take forever to mention every cool bit on the album. At one point he says to the audience “I’m a ridiculous person...you’re lucky you paid no money to see me” – damn right they’re lucky, but not just because of the free entry.

030: True Democracy, by Steel Pulse

Steel Pulse (United Kingdom)
True Democracy (1982)
14 tracks, 62 minutes (2005 CD reissue)
(This album seems to have disappeared off any streaming or digital download services for some reason, but you can still listen to it on YouTube and buy a well cheap second-hand CD copy on Amazon.)

Honesty time. You’ll find a few video game soundtracks on this blog over the year. This ain’t one of them, but even though Steel Pulse are one of the most exquisite reggae groups ever (certainly to come out of the UK), I first came to them via the PS2 skating game Tony Hawk’s Underground 2, which featured one of the tracks from their album African Holocaust on the soundtrack. I sort of feel ashamed at that, but that’s bullshit – it doesn’t matter how you hear about great music, only that you do. So in the spirit of loving my life, I dedicate today’s post to Tony Hawk and the music supervisor of the game that bears his name, Brandon Young.

Non-musical things first: Steel Pulse is a wicked band name. Don’t get what it’s supposed to mean, but it sounds cool anyway (a quick Google tells me it’s from the name of a racehorse, which is boring. Ignorance is bliss, I guess). The cover is also groovy – and it tells you that you’re gonna hear some truth when you stick the record on.

Obviously, it’s top-notch, musically. Steel Pulse were already notorious by the time True Democracy came out; it’s their fourth album, and their first releases included the legendary Handsworth Revolution. But this is the one for me. The themes are rather serious and political for most of it, but the music is still a fun listen, good for bounce-skanking around a dancefloor. It’s quite bluesy and there’s occasional rocky bits, but in the most part it’s just sublime roots reggae.

The top track is definitely ‘Worth His Weight in Gold (Rally Round),’ an anthem for Garveyism and Black liberation. It’s just a perfect reggae piece, really. Angry and insightful lyrics, a bunch of really catchy hooks, and a groove that feels like it could go on all night. Which is good, because the track comes around twice, at the end of both sides if you’re listening on the LP: the original finishes Side A, and its dub ‘Dub’ Marcus Say’ at the end of Side B. Lovely.

The copy that I have, the remastered CD version from 2005, also contains a handful of extended 12” and dubbed-out versions of album tracks. I’m always up for a dub version of pretty much anything (the heavier the better), and with such a high-quality album of reggae to work off, this additional material slots perfectly in place.

029: Vol. 4: Liwalo Na Liwe, by Jagwa Music

Jagwa Music (Tanzania)
Vol. 4: Liwalo Na Liwe (2000)
6 tracks, 59 minutes
Awesome Tapes From Africa · YouTube

This is my first feature on here of an album sourced from an online blog. This one in particular is from one of the most well-known and best of them, Awesome Tapes From Africa. The guy who runs it, Brian Shimkovitz, is understandably putting much more time and effort into the record label of the same name nowadays, but the website is an amazing repository of music from all over the continent, almost all of it stuff you would never find outside of its home region. (I actually interviewed Brian for an article in Songlines Magazine last year, check it out on my other blog).

Jagwa Music play mchiriku, a style from Dar-es-Salam. It’s a super-fast clash of tinny, overdriven Casio keyboards and traditional drumming. The stylistic origins lie in Zanzibari taarab and Congolese rumba, maybe with hints of funk and reggae, but those are only particularly noticeable now and then – otherwise it is just unrelentingly frenetic, major-keyed, looping madness. Yep, it’s my love of ostinatos again: one tiny phrase on the keyboards repeated over and over and over for ages. Play this late at night, in a sweaty club and you could dance yourself into a purely natural ecstasy with this stuff. In a typical act of injustice, mchiriku is banned in its city of origin…not that it stops it from being popular of course; that sort of stuff never does.

As you would expect from an album sourced from Awesome Tapes from Africa, this is a locally-produced cassette, volume four of over a dozen. It’s not the greatest sound quality – it’s probably a copy of a copy of a copy and so on – so it’s kinda wavy and distorted now and again, but that all works with the DIY aesthetic. ATFA puts it brilliantly: ‘In its own way, this whole tape feels punk to me.’ The group made a worldwide release on Crammed Discs in 2012, Bongo Hotheads, but it just doesn’t have that rawness. The tracks are shorter, there’s less distortion, it’s not quite as fast…it just feels too clean. Better to stick to the tapes. Liwalo Na Liwe is obviously the one I’d recommend, and if you’re hooked, ATFA also has Vol. 5: Tumechoka Hoi to feast your ears on. Enjoy!

028: Un Fuego de Sangre Pura, by Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto

Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto (Colombia)
Un Fuego de Sangre Pura (2006)
14 tracks, 53 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

Cumbia is the most recognisable sounds of Colombia and one of the biggest party sounds in world music: catchy horns, ripe for fusions with psychedelia, club and pan-Latin styles, and all of it with that unique shuffling rhythm. But that wasn’t always what cumbia was: those horns and rhythms have their roots in the traditions of the indigenous people of Colombia’s Caribbean coast mixed with those of African slaves.

The original sound of cumbia continues today – and is having somewhat of a resurgence – as a folkloric style, and Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto are one of its leading exponents. The group have been going in some form or another since the 1940s (some say 1930s), and their music captures the original spirit of the cumbia and other related forms. As their name suggests, their sound is based on the gaita wooden flutes, which are played in pairs, one providing the higher-pitched melody, the other giving harmonies and counter-melodies. They are accompanied by sets of traditional drums, shakers and other percussion and usually sung poetry.

With so many interlocking rhythms and melodies, the overall result is quite complex but just as danceable as this style’s modern relatives. Listening to this type of cumbia is important in recognising the indigenous roots of a lot of modern Latin music, and it’s interesting to hear the folk sound that became today’s pop – much like blues is to rock. Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto are the masters of this traditional cumbia and this album, released on the always fantastic Smithsonian Folkways label and a Latin Grammy winner in 2007, is a great place for you to start.

(Side mention: Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto also did a few collabs with dubmaster general Adrian Sherwood, called Dub de Gaita. They’re a fun set of sonic experiments with some groovy, if unexpected outcomes. Available on Bandcamp in Vol. I and Vols. II & III flavours.)

027: Inherent Vice (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), by Jonny Greenwood and Linda Cohen

Jonny Greenwood and Linda Cohen (United Kingdom/USA)
Inherent Vice (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2014)
17 tracks, 55 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

Inherent Vice is a really cool film. It’s a darkly humorous detective film set in the hippie’s Los Angeles of 1970. It’s quite like a noir in a way, but this film’s private investigator is well-baked instead of hard-boiled. It’s got a wonderful aesthetic, thanks to director Paul Thomas Anderson and director of photography Robert Elswit: it’s romantic and wistful and bittersweet; the colour is slightly washed-out and the film is grainy; it’s like a pot-hazed memory of twenty-odd years ago.

It also sounds just like it looks – the sign of a great soundtrack. The soundtrack as it exists in album form (we are 365 Good Albums after all) is about half-and-half for original soundtrack composed by Jonny Greenwood (best known as guitarist for Radiohead) and licensed music as selected by music supervisor Linda Cohen.

Greenwood’s compositions for this soundtrack serve mostly to evoke feelings and play with tensions – making you feel a bit nervous or suspicious here, relief or sadness there. It’s mostly performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, with Greenwood and others guesting on the less orchestral instruments now and then. You can hear the noir influence in these pieces, I think – quite late-Romantic (in the Western art music sense) with the slightest of influence of jazz, in some cases a big dollop of Philip Glass, and hints at Greenwood's experimental rock pedigree all the while. In a different film, this would be perfect music for slinking around dark New York streets, but for Inherent Vice, it fits equally well with wandering around Los Angeles in a heat- and dope-induced daze.

It’s the licensed tracks that stick with me. Whereas Greenwood’s orchestral OST helps build the emotions of the film, these tracks give a real sense of place – even when that place is a bit disturbing and jarring. The highlight is Can’s psychedelic ‘Vitamin C,’ which gets stuck in my head every single time without fail and is exactly as cool as the film itself. There’s also the laid-back country of Neil Young and soul from Minnie Riperton and Chuck Jackson...but then you’re hit out of left-field with the creepily cheerful crooning-and-whistling of Kyu Sakamoto or sort-of surf from the Marketts. It’s all pretty strange and it works.

There’s also a couple of tracks that are somewhere in the middle – technically-OST and Jonny Greenwood-composed, but tracks instead of orchestral pieces that do an excellent job of knitting the two together. It’s seamless in some cases, especially with Joanna Newsom as narrator, reading beat-like monologues from the film over the music every so often.

This album is a great distillation of the film’s soundtrack, and enjoyable enough to listen to on its own. But don’t let that suffice: its real magic is its place in one of my favourite films. Come over and we’ll have a smoke and a giggle and watch and listen and then we’ll have, y’know, world peace.

026: Music Furthest from the Sea, by Various Artists

Various Artists (East Turkestan)
Music Furthest from the Sea (2006)
19 tracks, 74 minutes
Download from RO&GC

I first found this free download via WFMU when I was studying the the classical and folk music of the Uyghurs. The Uyghur people are a culturally and linguistically Turkic people, mostly Muslims, from the area of Central Asia known as East Turkestan. The reason you may not have heard of East Turkestan is that it is currently internationally considered as part of China, where it is known as Xinjiang. The classical and folk music of the Uyghurs is based on the muqam, a set of melodic modes and compositions similar to the Arabic maqam. It’s often quite reminiscent of their Central Asian neighbours, especially Uzbekistan, but with occasional hints at their East Asian connections.

But this isn’t classical or folk music – this is pop, through and through! This album is a compilation of music from the streets of the capital Ürümqi, a mix of whatever was popular with the pirate CD sellers back in 2006. As such there’s all sorts in here – mostly Uyghur but with some Uzbek music too. Obviously, as with the pop music from literally anywhere, there’s a lot of musical tat within these 19 tracks, but even then it’s mostly still good fun, and they almost all have that thing that I really love – they’re so rooted in place, these sound so Uyghur, whether it is in their vocal ornamentations or the way they play their instruments or the scales they’re using. It’s pop music, but it all owes at least a little bit to the folk and classical music of the elders.

There are some proper gems in here too. There’s two stand-outs for me: the opener, a piece called ‘Dutarim’ by an unknown artist - it’s extremely cheesy but charming, the singer is talking about his dutar (a long-necked two-stringed lute), but the dutar itself is replaced in the music by a tinkly keyboard sound that is frankly nothing like one. Brilliant. The second is the piece ‘Hasret’ by Yurrekke Tolghan Dert – this is just a really short piece of acoustic guitar and vocals with bad audio quality, but his voice is filled with emotion and the piece itself sounds quite like American folk music. I’d love to hear more by this bloke, but I have no idea where I’d find anything else. Probably have to head over to East Turkestan.

There is a problem with that plan, though. It would be utterly remiss to talk about Uyghur art without mentioning the grave injustice and oppression currently being inflicted upon them by the Chinese government of Xinjiang. Huge restrictions have been imposed on Uyghur culture, religion and language, enforced by heavy surveillance and the restricting of movement, expression and association. Ostensibly for the purposes of ‘anti-extremism,’ we should call it by its name: this is a purge and attempted cultural extermination. Millions of people have been placed in the euphemistically named ‘re-education camps’ and public figures have been arrested and imprisoned without charge. As is always the way, musicians have been targeted especially, and detainees include such popular figures as Sanubar Tursun, Ablajan Awut Ayup and ‘king of dutar’ Abdurehim Heyit, who is featured on this compilation. While this has been covered in the British media once or twice, there is nowhere near the international outcry that such a huge humanitarian crisis deserves. If you are interested in learning more about this, have a look at the links in this text, and below:

• The CESS Blog - Securitisation and Mass Detentions in Xinjiang
• The Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia, a blog by Daniel Byler
• BBC - China's hidden camps: What's happened to the vanished Uighurs of Xinjiang?
• Human Rights Watch - “Eradicating Ideological Viruses”: China’s Campaign of Repression Against Xinjiang’s Muslims

Thank you to Rachel Harris for the links and advice.

025: Introducing Bela Lakatos & the Gypsy Youth, by Bela Lakatos & the Gypsy Youth Project

Bela Lakatos & the Gypsy Youth Project (Hungary)
Introducing Bela Lakatos & the Gypsy Youth Project (2006)
15 tracks, 45 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

It’s already becoming clear that there are some gaps in my music knowledge, and – as we saw with the Bisserov Sisters – that Eastern European music is one of them. Which is fine, we can’t all know everything about everything. But my lack of knowledge doesn’t stop me from enjoying or listening to as much as I can! So with that said, let’s stumble through some thoughts on this album, from Hungary.

Béla Lakatos put together the Gypsy Youth Project to keep the endangered culture of the Hungarian Roma people, including their music, language and stories, alive into the next generation. Any undertaking that aims to continue folk traditions is important, but when they sound as good as this, it would surely be a crime to let it be forgotten.

The whole album is worth your eartime, obviously, but I think this is one of those that is perfectly encapsulated in the first track. The piece is called ‘O Bijav’ and it’s bloody good – it’s got everything that makes the rest of this album so enjoyable. It’s got some really bluesy, heartfelt vocals, choppy guitars and tinkly little mandolins even give it a bit of a country feel now and then. There’s nonsense syllables and encouraging shouts from the ensemble-at-large, some exquisite whistling and harmonies to die for – the ensemble can start all singing in unison before branching off into some proper extended chords before all ending up back on the same note at the end of the phrase. It’s all so charming, and an interesting mix of the jolly and rueful. The rest of the album contains each of these in bigger or smaller amounts, but this opener sets the scene perfectly.

I particularly like the production of this album and the atmosphere it provides. Although it’s obviously made in a studio, I still feel like it would sound exactly the same if you were to slip a microphone into the Lakatos’ kitchen after everyone had gotten suitably merry. It doesn’t sound slick or that every note has been rehearsed to death. There’s no mistaking that these are accomplished musicians, but they keep their music sounding vibrant and alive, rather than a dusty museum piece.

The real shame about this album is that it’s the only recording I can find by the group…or so I thought, until I did a little bit of reading before writing this and found out they’re better known in Hungary as Ternipe (meaning 'Youth') and they’ve got quite a few albums out there by that name. So that’s good! I’m off to do some more listening, I’ve got some to catch up on…

024: The Mandé Variations, by Toumani Diabaté

Toumani Diabaté (Mali)
The Mandé Variations (2008)
8 tracks, 58 minutes
Bandcamp · Spotify · iTunes

With 70 generations of jeli griots behind him, and his father known as the king of the 21-stringed Mandinka bridge-harp, the kora, Toumani Diabaté's path was all but laid out for him. By the time The Mandé Variations came out, he was already a star. Launching his career with an accomplished solo album, Kaira, in 1988, he’d gone on to release albums in collaboration with Taj Mahal, Damon Albarn, Danny Thompson, Ballake Sissoko and his own dance orchestra, and even won a Grammy for his duets with Ali Farka Touré. By 2008, twenty years since that first album, he decided to record another solo album: not as a talented young musician stepping out of his father’s shadow, but as the greatest living exponent of the kora.

This album is breathtaking. Every track is perfectly considered, and there is not one note out of place. Toumani’s nylon strings ripple like water, taking in unorthodox tunings to give textures traditionally inaccessible to kora players. There are breezes of influence from all through his career – flamenco here, Hindustani music there – but it all slots entirely into place. As is the way with the kora, it’s sometimes quite hard to get your head around the fact that what you’re listening to is just one person playing with two fingers and two thumbs; that’s even more the case with Toumani. It can sometimes feel like there’s three or four different melodies all happening at once, somehow juggled in the mind of a master.

The Mandé Variations is an album for contemplation. It’s always gentle, often bittersweet, and sometimes downright sad, but in the most beautiful way. Even one or two fun quotes (such as referencing The Good, The Bad and the Ugly theme in the track ‘Cantelowes’) don’t take away from the profundity of the piece, but just gives a glimpse into Toumani’s personality. For all his genre-bending projects before and since, this album remains the definitive Toumani Diabaté, and even quite possibly the last word in solo kora.

023: O2, by Son of Dave

Son of Dave (Canada)
O2 (2006)
11 tracks, 39 minutes
Bandcamp · Spotify · iTunes

Son of Dave is a phenomenon. A powerful comedic mind wrapped up in a harmonica player and crammed under a big hat. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him several times and interviewed him too; that was one of the most surreal conversations I’ve ever had sober. He’s as odd backstage as he is on it, but he’s also genuinely friendly and supportive – a lovely rebuttal to the adage about never meeting one’s heroes.

So you can tell he’s a man that I hold in very high esteem, and I’ve not even got to his music yet. It’s just wonderful, of course. O2 is Son of Dave’s second album (under that moniker, anyway), and it basically shows him as he is live: one-man-banding with his harp, his surprisingly versatile voice, beatboxing, shaker in hand, stomping the floor with one foot and loop-peddling with the other, occasional eccentric banter with his audience (in this case, the sound engineer). With those limbs, lungs and his electric box, he makes so much sound that you will eventually just have to get up and dance yourself silly.

There are nods to more traditional blues with a handful of covers, including possibly my favourite – and the least macho – version of ‘Mannish Boy,’ but it’s actually hard to call what Son of Dave does ‘blues.’ He’s a superb harp player and can certainly raise the roof when he gets on a blues riff, but there’s so much more in there that it really becomes something entirely his own. Most of all, he’s a showman. It doesn’t matter whether he’s playing stonking beats for moving feets, or just a laid-back soulful groove (perchance with singer Martina Topley-Bird, a guest on this album), you know you will come out of it entertained. He’s a force of nature and everyone should see a Son of Dave live show at least once in their life – O2 give you a little bit of an idea of what to expect.

[A little postscript: Son of Dave is also a wickedly funny essayist. He wrote regular columns for the late Stool Pigeon music paper, some (but unfortunately not all) of which are collected in the book We Need You Lazzaro, You Lazy, Greasy Bastard, which you can get from his Bandcamp. As of writing, there are only two copies left, so literally go and buy it now while you can. Hard recommend!]

022: Axis: Bold as Love, by the Jimi Hendrix Experience

The Jimi Hendrix Experience (USA/United Kingdom)
Axis: Bold as Love (1967)
13 tracks, 38 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

Let’s get this out of the way: Hendrix is God tbqfhwy. He’s one of those artists (see also: The Beatles, Robert Johnson) that I know I love, but that I take for granted occasionally for a while until I listen again and get blown away all over again. Every time I listen to Hendrix it just seems to get better and better.

That sort of goes doubly for my relationship with Hendrix, because for some reason I always come to his live albums when I do come back to him, for whatever reason, so the studio albums get left behind. Well, dear reader, don’t make my mistake. This album in particular is just an insane artefact of genius. But you know that already.

It’s not just Jimi’s earth-shattering skill at guitar or the way he presents it, which, considering it’s all over the album, is somehow understated. It’s not the just-the-right amount of psychedelia or blues or avant-garde distortion. It’s not the hundred of takes and retakes and overdubs that somehow sound like you could’ve rocked up at the studio and heard them playing it in one live session. It’s not Mitch Mitchell playing half the album as if he was in a jazz quartet, or Noel Redding’s hilariously terrible singing. It’s not the beautiful (although slightly culturally appropriative) artwork. It’s just all of it coming together, in the right place at the right time – three musicians from different musical and social backgrounds, bouncing off each other perfectly and making magic. Surely the best trio ever…?

Okay, maybe it really is not Noel Redding’s hilariously terrible singing. Leave it to Jimi, come on. Hell of a bass player, though.

If you’ve not listened to Axis: Bold as Love for a while, come back to it and have your mind blown all over again. If you’ve never listened to it…you’re in for a treat.

021: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat, by Charanjit Singh

Charanjit Singh (India)
Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat (1982, reissued 2010)
10 tracks, 50 minutes
Spotify (not in the UK though) · YouTube · Boomkat

Acid house is often mentioned in relation to this album – the music contained within shares lots of similarities to acid house, not least the use of the TR-808 and TB-303 that provide the linchpin of the sound. It just so happens that Charanjit Singh’s music predated acid house by five years – this has led some hysterical commentators to suggest that this record shows ‘the invention’ of acid house and rewrites the history books, but really, this is something completely different.

I mean, he says it right there in the title: this is ten ragas - Indian classic melodic modes and associated performance rules - played to a disco beat. Disco was big in Bollywood at the time, and Charanjit had been messing around with his fancy synthesisers for long enough to actually use them together convincingly. Instead of record a straight-up disco album, he lugged his synths to the studio, programmed in his ragas and jammed for five minutes each. The subsequent record did not sell well, and Charanjit carried on his way as a reasonably successful session musician, sometimes-composer and hobbyist synth-wrangler. And that’s how it stayed until the record was ‘rediscovered’ by some Dutch blokes in the 2000s and eventually reissued to huge acclaim in 2010, allowing Charanjit to tour the world until his death in 2015.

It’s a fun story, and quite a familiar one that seems to come around every few years with different artists, but the main draw of this one for me is literally just how it sounds. We’ve already established that I love loops and repetition, and they make the basis of this record. Add on the retro synths playing in all these interesting scales and patterns and it’s intoxicating. Okay, it does sound quite a bit like acid house, but if history had pinged off in a different direction at some point. This is one of those ones that will stick in your head; not necessarily the melodies themselves, but the vibes it creates, with your brain filling in the blanks and improvising to itself for hours.

In the end, it does have a very filmic quality to it, and I would love to see a retro technofuture cyberpunk sort of thing with this as the soundtrack. An Indian Akira, something like that. In fact, now I just want to see that.

(I have to dedicate this one to Stephen, astral voyager and gonest cat as he is, for hipping me to this one in the first place – cheers!)

020: Renegades, by Rage Against the Machine

Rage Against the Machine (USA)
Renegades (2000)
12 tracks, 51 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

Hmm, there does seem to have been quite a few angry albums in the last few days, right? I don’t think this is exactly representative of my standard levels of anger, but who am I to argue with the list (in conjunction with random.org)?

Rage Against the Machine sound quite angry, anyway. I mean, it’s right there in the name. Chill out lads. Their best known album is probably their self-titled debut from 1992 (the one with ‘Killing in the Name Of’ on. Chill out lads!!), but it’s this one that I come back to the most. I don’t really know the details, but Renegades smacks of contractual obligation: it was released months after the group split up, and it’s a full cover album, no originals at all. As far as I can tell, it had a mixed reaction from fans, but the critics seem to like it, and so do I.

It’s another one for me where one song completely dominates the rest of the album. The tracks are good quality throughout, I don’t think there’s any clangers in there, but when it gets to their version of Cypress Hill’s ‘How I Could Just Kill a Man,’ it blows everything else out of the water. It’s got a wonderful trifecta: funk, hip-hop and metal, all in equal measures and all mingling into a tasty, tasty Victoria sponge of a track. It’s gotta be a high point in rap metal. Compare it to something like Anthrax and Chuck D’s ‘Bring the Noise’: a classic, of course, but in a fun and cheesy way, with a cheeky wink – rap..and metal??! Wacky or what?! - but this one from Rage feels so sure of itself that it could have been the original. It all works so naturally in their hands.

That track’s a bomb, but as I say, the rest is definitely worth your ears too. It’s not all rap metal either. The proto-punk of the Stooges and MC5 work particularly well with Tom Morello’s electrics-soaked guitar adding interesting new flavours to ‘Down on the Street’ and ‘Kick Out the Jams,’ respectively. I reckon the most unexpected cover would have to be the last track, Bob Dylan’s ‘Maggie’s Farm,’ but they do a good job of it – and completely unlike the original, of course.

If you’ve gotta end your band’s run with a contractually-obliged album without writing a bunch of new songs, follow Rage’s example and absolutely smash it like they did with Renegades.

019: Star Rise, by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook (Pakistan/Canada)
Star Rise (1997)
9 tracks, 58 minutes (original CD version)
Bandcamp · Spotify · iTunes

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is, for my money, simply the greatest singer ever recorded. And he was recorded a lot. Every time I listen to him, the shivers are real. At the heart of everything he did was qawwali. Qawwali is a style of poetry and song used by Sufi Muslims of South Asia to praise god. It’s a very powerful music, and its sound can send listeners into fits of religious ecstasy. A chorus of heavenly voices, a couple of harmoniums, tablas and hours of powerful handclaps – a qawwali performance is one of the most electrifying live experiences you can have.

But as much as he was undisputed Shahenshah-e-Qawwali – the King of Kings of Qawwali – Nusrat was super open with his collaborations with producers and fellow musicians. This is totally evident on Star Rise. The tracks on this album are remixes taken from Nusrat’s two collabs with Canadian producer Michael Brook. Each of the remixes were made by a leading light in the UK’s Asian Underground scene, which, at this point in the mid-90s, was in full swing. Just look at those names: Joi, Talvin Singh, Asian Dub Foundation, State of Bengal, Aki Nawaz and Fun^da^Mental, Black Star Liner, Nitin Sawhney, Earthtribe and The Dhol Foundation. It just goes to show the esteem that Nusrat was held in – when the call comes to work with him, you don’t say no.

Because of the number and variety of remixers taking part, the remix styles are similarly broad, with bits and bobs from techno to electronica, bhangra to Bollywood, and the ever-present dub, and there’s the whole range here from bangers to pure chill-outs. On the ‘banger’ end of the spectrum – I would go as far to say it is an ‘absolute banger’ - is the Asian Dub Foundation’s remix of the track ‘Taa Deem.’ This is my favourite piece of music of all time. ADF use Nusrat’s vocals with respect but without piety, and turn it into a hardcore dub-dance-punk with some exquisite drops. Words can’t really describe, just go listen.

Make sure your bass is properly set up before you press play on this album, though. If your insides aren’t wobbling all the way around your torso, you’re missing out.

018: Dead Bodies in the Lake, by Ho99o9

Ho99o9 (USA)
Dead Bodies in the Lake (2015)
10 tracks, 26 minutes
Soundcloud · Spotify · iTunes

This is terrifying. I admit my taste in music isn’t exactly hardcore, and so I’m sure this stuff is tame for some of you lot out there, and you’ll probably be rolling your eyes throughout reading this (leave me alone, I’m a delicate flower). But I remember the first time I listened to Ho99o9 (pronounced Horror) was on my way to a house party – I was on edge all evening.

And that’s great! I always find it interesting when music – or any art – invokes such a visceral reaction. It’s why I get so frustrated at music that is ‘nice.’ I often use the word ‘nice’ in a negative way when talking about music – not to mean that it is gently enjoyable (there’s lots of music that is nice in a nice way, of course), but to mean that there is a complete lack of anything to inspire emotion. It’s musical ‘meh.’ Sometimes a visceral reaction can tip over into revulsion and any chance for enjoyment disappears, but at least you feel something. But to be ‘nice’ – that’s a sin.

Dead Bodies in the Lake is not nice. It’s sludgy metal with electronics, it’s dark hip-hop with hardcore punk. It’s like a psychological horror film in audio form. It’s disturbing and disorientating, and it’ll get your hackles right up. The version I know is the mixtape – no gaps between tracks means there’s no let up and no way out. It forces you through the experience and it’s thoroughly uncomfortable. How amazing is it that music and art can make us feel like that? To feel such strongly negative emotions and come out the other side having had a whale of a time. Ho99o9 do that as well as any band I’ve discovered. I think this 26-minute long mixtape is enough for me for now though.

017: Diwân, by Rachid Taha

Rachid Taha (Algeria)
Diwân (1998)
11 tracks, 69 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

Rachid Taha was a revolutionary of raï. The style started as Bedouin folk music used for weddings, but when it evolved to take on the characteristics of chaabi and Latin music and European pop styles in the 1980s, it became the all-pervading sound of Algeria, and the Maghreb in general. Then Rachid Taha came along, all anger, alcohol and cigarettes, and kicked down the door. He brought a real punk aesthetic to the music, with screaming guitars, heavy beats and his own growl, as well as his overall demeanour and dress-sense. In the West, he’s particularly known for his brilliant (and Arabic-language) take on the Clash’s ‘Rock the Casbah.’

This album is a bit different, though. Diwân takes Rachid back to his roots, with a bunch of covers of classic pieces from raï’s forefathers and early stars. He hasn’t left the punk entirely behind (the production and electric guitar of Steve Hillage assures that), but it’s not the foundation of the sound this time around. Instead, oud (lute), gasbah (flute), riqq (tambourine) and bendir (frame drum) dictate the whole feel of the album, with Rachid and Steve being able to imprint their own personality on it from there.

The opening track is Dahmane El Harrachi’s ‘Ya Rayah,’ one of the most famous anthems of raï and chaabi music, and Rachid’s take on it here is as definitive a version as you can get for a song that has been covered so many times in so many different styles. His version of the Egyptian film song ‘Habina Habina’ by Farid El Atrache is similarly iconic, with a really well-utilised club beat and heavy bassline laying a great foundation beneath the massed strings and qanun (plucked zither).

Rachid Taha’s punk redefined a genre that was already the biggest musical phenomenon in the region, but for me, Diwân is his best work. The music is unmistakably his but it retains the beauty of the originals, and shows his deep respect (and huge skill) for that classic raï sound.