Give the Drummer Some's
Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere
One of the great bloggers is calling it quits. Five years into a dazzling run of thoughtful earfuls, the chap behind Continuo's Weblog, the music-sharing site that originally described itself as "Reassessed aural delicacies," has decided to focus on other projects.
Some blogs were more prolific. Others dropped rarer records, but no other site I've come across traveled as adventurous a path through the wonder of sound. Do yourself a favor and visit the site before the links go belly-up. (A good place to start is this page where Continuo generously re-upped a ton of past posts.) Whether it's field recordings you crave, or maybe mechanical music, Cuban avantgarde, sound sculpture or théatre sonore—some of the many categories to be ravenously picked clean—you are likely to encounter sonic thrills you may never otherwise have had the good fortune to know. It has been great fortune knowing Continuo's Weblog.
Marran Gosov ~ Baby Mann
(Blog: Continuo's Weblog)
For the Love of Mother
"Self-published in 1977, the Baby Mann LP was the debut release of actor and film maker Marran Gosov (born 1933) and part of his “Dilettantische Lieder” project which included song cycles and home-made short films of selected songs (see previous post). An intensely nostalgic disc, Baby Mann was composed in memory of his mother and refers to the period when Gosov left Bulgaria to emigrate to West Germany in 1960, leaving behind his younger brother Sehn, whom he met again for the first time in Munich in 1973. In Baby Mann, no mention is made of Marran’s father, for whatever reason." (Description by Continuo)
Sonny Simmons ~ Rumasuma
(Blog: 9 Grey Chairs)
Still on the Watch
"As a result of years of dedication (like Bird, he's the kind of musician who keeps his alto saxophone by his bedside), Sonny has developed into an astonishingly flexible and expressive player. His major influence after Parker was Art Tatum.... The "cry" heard in Sonny's playing is part of his blues background. (Sonny was born in Sicily Island, Louisiana, population 800, in the heart of blues country, and moved to the Bay area at the age of ten.) But there is also passionate involvement in the world today. You hear all this in the music of Sonny Simmons who believes "life is music itself—each one of us has a tone to play in the symphony of life." (From liner notes written by Ross Russell)
Pilgrim Outlets ~ Do You Know Him
(Blog: An Ism to Horns and Beats)
To Know Them Is to Love Them
"Pilgrim Outlets was a six-piece Gospel outfit. They had a large dose of soul in their mix as heard on the title cut with a nice array of singing between the different members. That soul influence gets even more apparent when the group covers the Parliaments’ hit "I Want to Testify" with some extra drum fills added to the original. The slow jam "A Letter" is also good with a heavy blues feel to it. That’s followed by the upbeat "Get On Up" that has a nice groove." (Description originally posted at Soulstrut)
Dennis Alcapone ~ Belch It Off
(Blog: You & Me on a Jamboreee)
Rude, Boy
Cover your mouth and open your ears.
Various ~ Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century
(Blog: Zero G Sounds)
The Holy Greil
"It happens. You feel alien. You are other. Nothing in your culture, in your experience gets near to what you feel. You want to be elsewhere. If you can't be elsewhere, you want to see everything brought down. These thoughts explode in your head. You can't sleep, you grind your teeth. You get migraines. You shake. Then you walk into a room. You see or hear four people making a noise, playing the limits of electricity and the room's ambient space: like a switch tripping, your life is changed forever. Out of nowhere, the terrain is cleared and the possibilities stretch before you. This will only happen once, with that certainty. It may happen before and afterwards, in precognitions, aftershocks, conscious attempts to recapture that first shock of recognition: when you find the piper that calls your tune." (From the liner notes)
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