Customer Top 5 no. 2

Our new customer top 5 list is by another one of our favorite customers, Sal.
Do you like the photo of him?? I took it. This was my inspiration...

WINDY WEBER: I Hate People
(Blueflea)

"Windy Weber, known for being half of the ambient drone duo WINDY & CARL, has recorded a solo album. It is quite different from what you may be thinking it has none of the soothing characteristics you may be expecting & instead is full of heavy & brooding music. It’s comprised of two tracks Sirens, coming in at 24 minutes, is instrumental & is filled with the sound of guitars crying, rising & falling like waves crashing on the rocks. Sirens is ominous, and haunting. It is not music to sleep to, but instead could make you tense & anxious. The second track is Destroyed. It is 32 minutes long, and comprised of 3 suites. The first being layers of vocals, woven together to make a chorus of breathing & breathlessness, layers to make you feel as if you may be drowning in the sea..whether that sea be the ocean, or the sea of life, the day to day world in which you must deal. The second suite becomes noisy, agitated, rumbling & distorted guitars, bass & feedback, and makes you sit on the edge of your seat wondering what is about to happen. The third suite takes you to the end of the album with it’s subsonic frequencies & strange unrecognizible sounds. This is not music for the faint of heart ."

V/A Give Me Love: Songs of the Brokenhearted: Baghdad, 1925-1929 (Honest Jon)
"This is the second in Honest Jon's series of albums exploring the earliest 78s held in the EMI Hayes Archive. In the mid-1920s, The Gramophone Company -- soon before it became EMI -- employed two or three Europeans to criss-cross Iraq. They logged regional demographics, assessed the German competition, and checked out the scores of record shops and hundreds of musical venues. In Kerbala, its man fearfully disguised himself as an Arab. This was the groundwork for three sessions, conducted in Baghdad in the second half of the decade, which produced nearly 1,000 recordings. Business was good -- the first group of records, though deemed aesthetically unsuccessful by the Company, immediately produced 12,000 sales to just two outlets in the city. Drawing on the full range of these Baghdad recordings, it is a wondrous, deeply poignant glimpse of social living since obliterated, in which ethnicities, faiths and traditions appear woven richly and meltingly together, however precariously. There is dance music featuring Arab folk singers from the countryside, backed by professional Jewish musicians in Iraqi styles popularly termed "Egyptian," and perfected in nightclubs where the first duty of the secular women singers on this album was prostitution. Also including some Arabic word-play, in a nod to the musical form of the Arabic mawwal, a Hebrew hymn is kick-started with a cry of "Allah!," most likely from one of the Jewish performers. There are pieces from Bahrain and Kuwait; sometimes mixed together in one performance -- the different dialects are far-flung. There are beautiful, high and lonesome Kurdish violin improvisations; and some unaccompanied circular breathing on a zourna so unearthly it seems to cross late Coltrane with Sun Ra. All the songs are characterized by searing emotion and crises of feeling, many by erotic urgency. As with the other titles in the series, the recordings have been startlingly restored at Abbey Road; and they are presented with full translations, rare photographs (in this case, several performers), and notes -- including an extensive interview with a citizen of Baghdad throughout this period, who knew many of the musicians here personally."

TOWNES VAN ZANDT: Delta Momma Blues & Flying Shoes
(Fat Possum)

"This is another strong collection from Townes Van Zandt, and not a dud in the bunch. The melodies here are strong, the lyrics full of Van Zandt's razor-sharp insight, and the production is sparse and to the point, bringing to mind the inconspicuous polish of High and Low and In Between. The feel here is a balance between folk and country, with Van Zandt's voice and guitar up front, letting the songs speak for themselves. The tunes are full of heartbreak and hopelessness, making it a great album to put on during, or right after, the breakup of an affair."

THE DEAD C: Secret Earth
(Ba Da Bing)

"Along the axis of The Dead C's recordings, Secret Earth sounds like it was created between Eusa Kills and Harsh '70s Reality. It contains a straightforward (for them) expression of sound, while continually pushing their vast improvisational techniques into a realm of subconscious genius."



CURRENT 93: Dogs Blood Rising & Nature Unveiled
(Durtro/Jnana)

Current 93's seminal first two albums have been reissued!!