Gal Costa

by teabog on May 24th, 2007

Gal Costa
“Samba Rosgado” (From the album Gal Tropical)

Ever since I saw Os Mutantes’ last year, I’ve made it a habit to pick up every “Island Beats” or Brazillian LP that I come across. And, man, I come across a lot. Most of the records that I buy are at Goodwill, and most come in big piles since after an old person dies his or her kids send all their music to Goodwill for psychopaths like me to paw through. Aside from Christian music and classical, tropical and Brazilian albums are far and away the LPs that are most commonly found in Goodwill stores in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls metro area. I can’t explain it—it just is.

Anyhow, the majority of these albums sound exactly the same, but there have been a handful that have stuck out. Gal Costa is consistently brilliant. This track is off her 80’s release, “Gal Tropical,” and it sounds kinda like the theme from “Moonlighting” if “Moonlighting” was made in Brazil.

Buy the album at Amazon

Gruff Rhys

by teabog on April 16th, 2007

Gruff Rhys
“Gwn Mi Wn” (From the album Yr Atal Genhedlaeth )

I should probably be pimping something off of Gruff’s new album, Candylion, but I’m afraid that album suffers from the same problem as did the last SFA album: forced accessibility. This isn’t to say that neither album isn’t good (both are very good, actually), it’s just that they lack the pothead edge that you find in Rhy’s earlier, drunker works.

This song is in Welsh, and since I can’t understand a syllable of it so it just might be Gruff saying “you are a fag for listening this” over and over again. I don’t care. It’s simple—just a drum beat and a vocal harmony—but it gets me all pumped up. Great for the start of a run.

Buy the album at Amazon

Mawal “Girl Stand Up”

by teabog on February 19th, 2007

Mawal
“Girl, Stand Up” (From Choubi Choubi! Folk and Pop Sounds from Iraq)

Ahh, there’s nothing quite like hearing some music made by a group of people that we are currently indiscriminately murdering. Thankfully, this wonderful song was likely recording in the 1980s, so it’s a good bet that Mawal was killed by Sadamn, not the U.S.

Politics aside, I have to say that I’m more partial to Iraqi music than I am to the music of any other middle eastern nation. 90% of the middle eastern music that we’re exposed to in the US is indecipherable droney bullshit from Morocco, and on those rare occasions that I’ve been able to hunt down things from other countries, it’s usually USA-influenced pop (which my foreign connections always assume I’m into, since I’m American and all). Iraqi music is very noticeably middle eastern—playing it at an airport will probably get you arrested/tortured—but it has a much more fast pace, dancier feel than what you probably think of as “typical” middle eastern music. This is due in large part to the insane, rapid-fire rhythms produced by the Khishba, which overrides vocal tracks and gives the music a hustle-bustle feel of impending doom.

Thank god for Sublime Frequencies, the label that releases foundsound collections of *good* foreign music. If you’re interested in this song, I highly recommend that you check out “Choubi Choubi” and a few other of their releases, particularly their one featuring Burmese music.

The website of Sublime Frequencies, the label that releases all sorts of monster foreign shit.
Buy the CD at Amazon.

Alarma Man

by teabog on January 24th, 2007

Alarma Man

“Cheese My Dad”

2006 was the year of the Swede and, like a Viking funeral, it ended with us all being kicked out to sea aboard a flaming boat. That boat’s name? Rock and Roll. And this mathpunk quartet provided us with all of the music.

As they belong to a band that uses “math” as a prefix while describing their own sound, it should come as no surprise that this instrumental rock is fast, zig zaggy, and jerky. What separates Alarma Man from just about every math… band I’ve ever heard, though, is how well the jerky guitars coalesce over one another to form a blurry and beautiful whole.

Foreign/Punk/Instrumental
Sounds Like: Man or Astroman (their later stuff), and kinda like Don Caballero if Don Caballero didn’t suck

Official Website of Alarma Man

Myspace