11/12/2021

A travel into the unknown

 
Giuliano Sorgini is an Italian composer and musician who initially created music for TV and in the '70s switched to cinema; he mixed beat, prog, funk and psychedelia with library music.

Giuliano Sorgini - Africa Oscura (2018)

Songs for life and peace

 
Groove Club Vol. 1: La Confiserie Magique is a 60’s French Pop / Garage compilation Album made by Lion Productions Label.

Groove Club Vol. 1: La Confiserie Magique (2010)

Explore the raw cultural heritage of the Mekong interior

 
Isan is the Thailand's forgotten frontier, where Lao, Thai and Cambodian folkloric traditions have conspired to create a mystifying pageantry of music and dance still relatively unknown to outsiders; The least changed part of Thailand, Isan has managed to preserve a distinct niche within the confines of Royal Thai Culture. Because of this, traditions in music, dance, festivals, legends and local dialects have developed their own unique folklore. Many inhabitants in the region speak Lao or Thai dialects that have roots in Laotian language. Within the southern borders, the influence is more Khmer (Cambodian) derived. Experience the multi-cultural, intoxicating pulse of Thailand's Tropical Northeast.

Eternal midnight dancing

 
Elias Hanna Al Rahbani (June 26, 1938 - January 4, 2021) was a Lebanese musician, composer, songwriter, orchestra conductor and reality television personality sitting as judge on a number of talent shows. He composed more than 2500 songs including 2000 in Arabic. He wrote the soundtrack for more than 25 films, a number of TV series, and also composed musical scores for the piano. He composed songs for a great number of artists including Fairuz and Sabah
 
He died on 4 January 2021, at the Rafik Hariri University Hospital, from complications of COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic in Lebanon.
 

 

 

Into entheogenic magic

 
Jean Le Fennec was a Belgian psychologist, astrologer, and musician; he was the co-founder with Jacques Vanaise of l'Institut National d'Anthropo-Cosmologie. While the veracity of the word “obscure” when it comes to music nowadays may be dubious there is still a bit of mystery behind Jean Le Fennec’s 1969 psych-rock album Le Phantastic. The album itself is nine tracks of Le Fennec’s playful, undoubtedly French, psych-pop.  Sounding like he had an orchestra’s worth of musicians backing him, Le Fennec fills out the LP with spacey instrumentation as well as vocal effects. He died in 1986.

Jean Le Fennec - Phantastic (1969)

09/12/2021

Honoring the heroes of the black and white keys

 
Leslie Thompson Baxter (March 14, 1922 - January 15, 1996) was an American musician and composer. After working as an arranger and composer for swing bands, he developed his own style of easy listening music, known as exotica; Baxter, alongside Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman, is celebrated as one of the progenitors of exotica music. He offered package tours in sound, selling tickets to sedentary tourists who wanted to stroll around some taboo emotions before lunch, view a pagan ceremony, go wild in the sun or conjure a demon, all without leaving home stereo comforts in the whitebread suburbs. 
 
 

Please take care of my mother....


Cambodian Liberation Songs is a painful call from forgotten resistance fighters. It is a captivating record, a touching testimony of Cambodian history that brings to the world the breathless voice of these resistance members from the Banteay Ampil Band

Released in 1983, Cambodian Liberation Songs is a mysterious and overwhelming record. As a genuine piece of history, this “eloquent sadness and fierce passion” runs the gamut of Cambodian music, from folk to rock, expressing their suffering and pain. 

On 17 April 1975, the Cambodian people, already crushed under national and international conflicts, was commanded by force to forget their own past; it was Year 0 of the Khmer Rouge calendar. Almost four years of genocide would follow before the start of a war between the Vietnamese army and the Khmer Rouge. Resistance units engaged in the conflict against what they considered a Vietnamese invasion. This record, produced by a resistance group, was given the reference number KHMER 001. It was undoubtedly the first record composed and performed by non-Khmer Rouge Cambodians after the tragic events of 1975-79.

The refugee camp of Ampil, near the Thai border, witnessed the creation of the Banteay Ampil Band. Musicians and female singers who had hidden their talents during the genocide, gathered around the composer and violinist Oum Dara to engage in a new struggle: the resistance. Oum Dara, who had been a composer for Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Serey Sothea among others, adapted several of his creations. It is therefore, with a poignant charm, that the Banteay Ampil Band binds together the golden age of Khmer music from the 1960s with the traditional repertoire and the context of their daily struggles. Violin, guitar and voices work together to produce melancholic and intense songs - the stirring tone of grief expressed by these resistant fighters. 

The band went to Singapore to record Cambodian Liberation Songs, the only record of the “Khmer People’s National Liberation Front”.

 Banteay Ampil Band - Cambodian Liberation Songs (1983)

Greetings mortals!!

 
Hi!! I'm Crazy Monkey from Crazy Monkey's Brainmap, and this is my new eclectic music site, trying to share and to revive all rare/freakie/unknown/discontinued stuff that has no place in my other blog; feel free to get all you want and spread the news, welcome everyone!!!
 
Be my guests on this flight through parallel universes and echoes of extinct sounds.....