the of mirror eye

* DJ Shadow: Building Steam With a Grain of Salt (9.0 mb) | What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 1 - Blue Sky Revisit) ** Transmission 3 (9.0 mb)
From Endtroducing… (Deluxe Edition) : Island Records

Almost ten years have passed since DJ Shadow first dropped his album Endtroducing… on the general public, and it still sounds as fresh now as it did when I first heard it. This album rules, plain and simple. It’s instrumental hip-hop (or just plain hip-hop), constructed entirely from samples of lost soul/funk classics and horror movie soundtracks, at its finest. From start to finish, from the piano on the first real song of the album to the sax riff on the last song, this album is as perfect as an album can be. It’s an aural masterpiece that has passed the test of time.

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* Curtis Mayfield: Keep On Keepin’ On (5.5 mb) | We’ve Got To Have Peace (5.5 mb) | Superfly (7.0 mb) | Back To The World (7.0 mb)
From Keep On Keepin’ On : Big ‘Fro : BF-005

I was perusing Soul Sides, one of my favorite mp3 blogs and noticed that Mr. O-Dub had posted some great tracks by Curtis Mayfield. Listening to those sublime tracks made me remember just how much I love Mr. Mayfield. That dude has one seriously amazing voice.

These tracks are from a bootleg that was floating around awhile ago that collects a bunch of tracks from various live performances. The first two tracks posted are from the “Old Grey Whistle Test”, London 01/1972. The second two tracks are from “The Midnight Special”, Los Angeles 06/08/1972.

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* Jandek: Naked In The Afternoon (7.5 mb) | First You Think Your Fortune’s Lonely (12.0 mb) | What Can I Say, What Can I Sing (7.5 mb)
From Ready For The House : Corwood Industries : Corwood 0739

I’m still reeling (slightly) from the cancellation of the Jandek show this past Thursday. I was even going to call off from work and everything. But then another hurricane came along and Jandek had to cancel. There is however, some solace in the fact that the show will be rescheduled. I just hope that it’ll be on a day that I can go.

So, I’m sure you’re wondering just who this Jandek fellow is. Well, unfortunately I don’t really know either. Here’s what I do know. He’s from Houston, TX and may or may not be a Mr. Sterling R. Smith. He has quietly released 42 albums so far, over a span of thirty years through the record label that he also runs, Corwood Industries. Until 2004, he never gave live performances and previous to that, only one person had managed to possibly track him down and interview him. Jandek (or a “representative from Corwood Industries”) finally gave his first live performance in Glasgow on Oct 17th, 2004 and has since performed a half dozen times.

But what does his music sound like? That’s a difficult question to answer. Jandek has his own, immediately recognizable sound, that is very hard to describe. It’s maybe like some sort of atonal blues using either acoustic or electric guitar and vocals. Everyone once in awhile there’re some other collaborators who help sing or play the drums, but this is pretty much a solo project.

And what does his music sound like? Like pure desolation. Jandek is not just solo but profoundly alone on most of his recordings, picking distractedly at a guitar tuned to no particular notes, moaning in no particular key about thinking and love and wandering around and staying in the same place and God. Beyond that, there’s just emptiness — each off-key ping floats out separately into black space. Sometimes Jandek sounds as if he’d internalized the grimmest death-letter blues of the ’20s and is pulling them back out of himself, thoroughly dismembered, hair by hair. His songs have no choruses, no hooks, no melodies, no rhythms, no internal progression, nothing but the inexorable Chinese-water-torture plod of Samuel Beckett’s The Unnameable: “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”

(from Mystery Man)

These tracks are from his debut album. Released in 1978, it’s interesting to note that even at this point in time, his incredibly singular musical vision is large and in charge. Well, if you’re interested in learning more about this fellow, definitely check out the definitive A Guide To Jandek by Seth Tisue. Also quite essential is the documentary, Jandek On Corwood.

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So, I woke up this morning to find a bird in my bedroom. Well, actually, the bird woke me up because it kept flying into the window trying to get out of my room (which, now that I think about it, is actually what Jandek kind of sounds like). What makes this so strange is that I can’t figure out how the bird got in. My door was closed, my windows were closed and there’s no holes in the walls/ceilings/floors that I can see. It’s just totally bizarre.

* LSD-march: When I die, hell awaits (6.5 mb) | Clepsydra flames (4.0 mb) | The Lamp - Tomorrow’s Godard (13.0 mb)
From Suddenly, like flames : Last Visible Dog : LVD 064

Latest in a long line of uber-underground/ultra-mysterious Japanese psychedelic groups is this one, LSD-march. This band dares to tread on the hallowed grounds that Les Rallizes Denudes (look here and here) so carefully laid out, but manage to come out of it alive and kicking. LSD-march was started in 1997 by then seventeen year old(!) guitarist and vocalist Shinsuke Michishita.

He may have copped the pose of the gloomy, psychedelic aesthete straight from the gauloise-smoking Rallizes, but Michishita’s obvious delight in smearing fistfuls of feedbacking, reverbing gunge over minimally plodding basslines is every bit as compelling as his heroes’.

(from the liner notes)

With a handful of rediculously limited self-released albums out, it’s no wonder that they haven’t garnered as much acclaim as they should. But luckily, Last Visible Dog have re-issued the second album by LSD-march and made it widely available to the public.

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So, Jandek was canceled. I am so sad.

Also, I hate Apple software even more now, if that’s possible. So to recap, when I’m browsing the inter-web and left-click on an mp3, a dialogue box used to open up that asked me if I wanted to open the mp3 in winamp or download it to my desktop. This was great. I loved the options. Now Quicktime automatically loads a player within the page and starts playing the track. No options at all. I hate that.

So, taking the advice of one of my readers, I decided to uninstall Quicktime. Now, when I left-click on an mp3, a little dialogue box pops up that says I don’t have Quicktime installed, please go to (cr)apple.com and install Quicktime before you can play this track. WTF?!?! This is insane behavior, there is nothing in my browser preferences that associates mp3 with Quicktime, I’ve unchecked everything in the Quicktime settings that I can. And it still takes over my browser. Can you say Virus!??

* The Singing Loins: Hauling In The Slack (4.0 mb) | We Got Lurve (4.0 mb) | The Ghost Of Old Rose (5.5 mb) | One More Bottle To Drink (5.0 mb)
From The Complete And Utter : Damaged Goods : DAMGOOD231

Ok, so The Singing Loins might not sound exactly like some sea faring punks (they’ve got the “Hum-dum-a-hey-ho” refrains working for them), but they don’t really sound like any sort of genre out there. I suppose they could vaguely be classified as folk by virtue of the acoustic instruments used, but that wouldn’t really be correct either. Or maybe we can just use the genre that the band so cheekily coined for their own music: Authentic raw folk from the Medway Delta”.

We formed around Christmas time l99O. I’d been fronting various line-ups of a group for ten years, but after a couple of scrapes with wanky major labels I became fed up and decided to strip it all down to an acoustic duo with our then bass player Chris (Arfur) Allen. He hadn’t written before, but was a fine acoustic player with a genuine rootsy feel, stemming from his Irish upbringing. We just wanted to write honest, bare songs, outside of any particular style, just songs, whatever that means. The first thing we came up with was “Hauling In The Slack”, so, that set the precedent. Now, of course, you can’t operate in England without being pigeonholed, so we coined the phrase ” Authentic raw folk from the Medway delta” and started playing what local pubs and clubs would have us. It was good fun, getting up people’s noses. We came across some truly bigoted deadheads who thought new folk songs were an anathema; these idiots tended to be chartered accountants by day, and at the weekends whined in nasally tones about working down the mines. They really believed they were protecting sacred texts and that the whole folk genre was complete & pickled and never to be tampered with. There were also a few good souls who at least admitted they couldn’t decide if what were doing was “either shit, or brilliant.”

(from the liner notes)

At any rate, all this “genre” talk is nonsense anyways. What really matters is that this is some great music. Sure, there’s nothing really complex or groundbreaking about their songwriting. But that doesn’t matter either, because these are songs that go straight from their hearts into yours.

The Singing Loins have been on permanent rotation in my various players since I got it a month ago. I remember the first time I heard this, about two years ago. I had been flipping through the cd racks at my local emporium when the band name caught my attention. I also saw that it was on Damaged Goods, which is a great label for all things garage rock related. Since the store had some listening stations, I decided to take a listen. I remember thinking “what the hell is this!!?!” I thought it was total crap and I couldn’t wrap my head around the music. I just didn’t get it. So, I decided not to buy it. But then about two months ago, they came back into my head. They had been incubating there for awhile and finally decided to come out again. It was weird. I was just sitting there one day, when The Singing Loins just popped into my head. So I went on a search for them and finally came across their cd again. But this time, their music sounded like some long lost friend. And I finally realized just how great The Singing Loins are.

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Holy Crap!!! I just found out (thanks rah) that due to visa issues with the Acid Mothers Temple who were supposed to headline the concert, that Jandek is playing tomorrow night at the Empty Bottle in Chicago. That’s September 22nd, 2005. Holy Crap!!!! I can’t believe it.

* Ike Turner & The Kings Of Rhythm: Down And Out (aka How Long Will It Last) (3.0 mb) | I’ll Weep No More (2.5 mb) | Tell Me Darling (2.0 mb) | You’ve Got To Lose (2.0 mb)
From King Cobra: The Chicago Sessions : Fuel 2000 Records

Before meeting Anna Mae Bullock (aka Tina Turner), before the totally amazing soul music of the Ike and Tina Revue and before the drug addiction, control issues and abusive relationships, Ike Turner was already making waves in East St. Louis as a rhythm and blues star. The Kings Of Rhythm concentrated more on the blues side of the equation, with Ike Turner playing a mean guitar and singing some decent vocals. These sessions were, as the title indicates, recorded in Chicago. Luckily, they were in Chicago at the same time that the lovely Betty Everett was, and were able to add her considerable vocal talents to the mix.

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