Yoru No Bangaichi - Tokyo Hostess Jingi Konketsuji Rika is a Japanese Psychedelic/Funk compilation made by Japanese reissue label Solid Records.
04/11/2022
Falling into a deep trance through the soul
Sufi Soul (Échos Du Paradis) is a World compilation of Sufi sounds, made by Network Medien label, a German label with focus on world music, set up in 1979 and run by Christian Scholze.
This is a culturally and geographically diverse compilation of music taken from all corners of the Islamic world. There are songs on this compilation from West and North Africa, Turkey, across the Middle East, Iran, and Central Asia to Pakistan.
Sufism is the mystical (but not monastic) branch of Islam; for hundreds of years, Sufis have used music in religious ritual (Sama) for ecstatic dance to achieve a state of trance. This is really some of the first trance music in history.
Sufi Soul (Echos Du Paradis)Living within biogeochemical cycles
La Natura E L'Uomo is an Italian Easy Listening/Jazz compilation reissued by Italian Milan-based label Intervallo.
A walk through the inner clock
George Antheil (1900 - 1959) was an American avant-garde composer, pianist,
author and inventor.
In 1923 Antheil moved to Paris, where he had the support of many influential friends, among them his idol Igor Stravinsky, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and Man Ray.
His inventions included a patented torpedo guidance system and a
broad-spectrum signal transmission system which then was called
frequency skipping, co-authored with actress Hedy Lamarr.
He wrote his autobiography Bad Boy of Music in 1944.
Lowell Percussion Ensemble - Ballet Mécanique Strange drops on the abandoned body
Bruno Nicolai (1926, Rome - 1991, Rome) was an Italian composer, conductor and keyboardist (organ, piano). Notably the
composer and director of numerous film and television scores. He also
served as musical director for other composers' film scores, prevalently
those of Ennio Morricone, Carlo Rustichelli and Luis Enriquez Bacalov.
Nicolai studied piano, organ and composition at Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia, studying piano under Aldo Mantia, and composition and organ under Goffredo Petrassi. Whilst at the conservatory, he met fellow student Ennio Morricone who also studied under Petrassi. A friendship began that would last many years.
Throughout the 60's and 70's, Nicolai scored a number of films, working several times with directors such as Jess Franco, Tinto Brass and Alberto De Martino for their giallo and exploitation films. During this time, he also composed library music, primarily for his own labels Gemelli and Edi-Pan, but also for other labels like RCA. His big break came in 1965, when he was musical supervisor for the Sergio Leone film "For a Few Dollars More", scored by Ennio Morricone. In 1966, he reprised this role for "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". Nicolai's last score was for the 1988 TV series "La coscienza di Zeno", directed by Sandro Bolchi.
Sunny afternoons in Siberia
Ленивый Шейк (Lenivyy Sheyk) is a Easy Listening/Bossa/Jazz Russian compilation made by Мелодия Label.
Go forward until total freedom
Selda Bağcan is
a Turkish female folk singer and guitarist; born in 1948 in Muğla,
Turkey. Her career as a professional musician started in 1971, during
her final
year at the university The six singles she released that year, in which
she interpreted
traditional Turkish folk songs in a strong, emotional voice, accompanied
by a simple acoustic guitar or bağlama, carried her to national fame.
Many of her songs carried strong social criticism and solidarity with the poor and the working class, which made her especially popular among the left-wing activists and sympathisers during the politically polarized 1970s.
She experimented with rock and roll and with synthetic and electronic sounds in her LPs, although her musical style remained firmly rooted in the folk tradition. After the 1980 Turkish Coup d'État, she was persecuted by the military rulers due to her political songs, and was imprisoned three times between 1981 and 1984. Her passport was confiscated and held by the authorities until 1987, which, among other things, prevented her from attending the first WOMAD Reading festival in 1986. Partly thanks to pressure from WOMAD, her passport was returned in 1987 and she immediately started a European tour, giving concerts in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom in the same year.
Since then, she has produced several albums and given concerts in many cities in Turkey and all over the world, and remains active in the Turkish musical scene. Bağcan currently lives in Istanbul and runs the music production company Majör Müzik Yapım.
Resting in a blue flowers field
Charlotte Walters is a French singer from 60's; on this 1969 album (the only one officially known), she sings two songs composed by her sister Chloe Walters.
The cadence of bloody nights
The B-Music Of Jean Rollin Volume One: 1968-1973 is a Psychedelic/OST compilation from French movie director Jean Rollin soundtracks, made by Finder Keepers Label.
28/10/2022
The art of air painting
Somei Satoh (佐藤聰明) was born in 1947 in Sendai (northern Honshu), Japan.
He began his career in 1969 with "Tone Field," an experimental, mixed
media group based in Tokyo. In 1972 he produced "Global Vision," a
multimedia arts festival, that encompassed musical events, works by
visual artists and improvisational performance groups. In one of his
most interesting projects held at a hot springs resort in Tochigi
Prefecture in 1981, Satoh places eight speakers approximately one
kilometer apart on mountain tops overlooking a huge valley. As a
man-made fog rose from below, the music from the speakers combined with
laser beams and moved the clouds into various formations. Satoh has
collaborated twice since 1985 with theater designer, Manuel Luetgenhorst
in dramatic stagings of his music at The Arts at St. Ann's in Brooklyn,
New York.
Satoh was awarded the Japan Arts Festival prize in 1980 and received
a visiting artist grant from the Asian Cultural Council in 1983,
enabling him to spend one year in the United States.
He has written more than thirty compositions, including works for
piano, orchestra, chamber music, choral and electronic music, theater
pieces and music for traditional Japanese instruments.
21/10/2022
The soul is filled with flags
Selda Bağcan is
a Turkish female folk singer and guitarist; born in 1948 in Muğla,
Turkey. Her career as a professional musician started in 1971, during
her final
year at the university The six singles she released that year, in which
she interpreted
traditional Turkish folk songs in a strong, emotional voice, accompanied
by a simple acoustic guitar or bağlama, carried her to national fame.
Many of her songs carried strong social criticism and solidarity with the poor and the working class, which made her especially popular among the left-wing activists and sympathisers during the politically polarized 1970s.
She experimented with rock and roll and with synthetic and electronic sounds in her LPs, although her musical style remained firmly rooted in the folk tradition. After the 1980 Turkish Coup d'État, she was persecuted by the military rulers due to her political songs, and was imprisoned three times between 1981 and 1984. Her passport was confiscated and held by the authorities until 1987, which, among other things, prevented her from attending the first WOMAD Reading festival in 1986. Partly thanks to pressure from WOMAD, her passport was returned in 1987 and she immediately started a European tour, giving concerts in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom in the same year.
Since then, she has produced several albums and given concerts in many cities in Turkey and all over the world, and remains active in the Turkish musical scene. Bağcan currently lives in Istanbul and runs the music production company Majör Müzik Yapım.
Ahmet Kaya (1957-2000) was a Turkish–Kurdish folk singer; Kaya was persecuted by Turkish nationalist celebrities and authorities; he left Turkey in an act of self-exile, and moved to France, where he would shortly after die of a heart attack.
Singing under the monsoon
Ali Akbar Khan was Born in 1922 in Shibpore, East Bengal, now Bangladesh, as son of the legendary Acharya Baba Allauddin Khan;
died at 87 at his home in San Francisco on June 18, 2009, having
suffered four years of kidney-related illness. His vocal training began
at 3 and, after studying the Surbahar, Sitar and Tabla, focused on the Sarod.
Ali Akbar Khan was one of today's most accomplished Indian classical musicians. Late American violinist Yehudi Menuhin,
who became one of his earliest champions in the West, said he
considered Ali Akbar Khan "an absolute genius, the greatest musician in
the world." Regarded as a "National Living Treasure" in India, he is
admired by both Eastern and Western musicians for his brilliant
compositions and his mastery of the Sarod (a beautiful, 25-stringed
Indian instrument).
Life in dangerous times
Alessandro Alessandroni (1925, Rome, Italy - 2017, Rome, Italy) was an Italian composer, arranger, vocalist,
whistler, conductor and multi-instrumentalist (guitar, sitar, keyboards,
mandolin, mandocello, accordion, banjo, flute, harmonica, jew's harp,
recorder, melodica and ocarina). He was the founder of the vocal
ensemble I Cantori Moderni di Alessandroni. Husband of Margaret Courtney-Clarke. Previously married to Giulia Alessandroni (Kema) until her death in 1984.
Also collaborated with his childhood friend Ennio Morricone on a number of soundtracks for Spaghetti Westerns.
Morricone's orchestration often calls for an unusual combination of
instruments, voices, and whistling. Alessandroni's twangy guitar riff is
central to the main theme for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Alessandroni can be heard as the whistler on the soundtracks for Sergio Leone's films, including A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Pervirella. He also collaborated with Morricone in scoring the 1974 film Around the World with Peynet's Lovers.
He founded the octet vocal group I Cantori Moderni in
1961. The group, which included his wife, Giulia De Mutiis, performed
wordless vocals on several Italian movie soundtracks. Most notably, I Cantori Moderni are featured on the song "Mah Nà Mah Nà", written by Piero Umiliani for the 1968 Luigi Scattini mondo film Svezia, inferno e paradiso and popularized on The Muppets Show.
Alessandro has also composed film scores, including Any Gun Can Play (1967), Johnny Hamlet (1968), The Reward's Yours... The Man's Mine (1969), Lady Frankenstein (1971), The Devil's Nightmare (1971), The Mad Butcher (1971), Seven Hours of Violence (1973), Sinbad and the Caliph of Baghdad (1973), Poker in Bed (1974), White Fang and the Hunter (1975), Blood and Bullets (1976), L'adolescente (1976), La professoressa di scienze naturali (1976), The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), Women's Camp 119 (1977), Killer Nun (1978), L'imbranato (1979), and Trinity Goes East (1998).
I am not a number!
Ron Grainer (1922 - 1981) was an Australian
television and film composer. He worked mainly in the UK and wrote the
theme music for television shows, including Maigret (1960), Steptoe And Son (1962-65, 1970-74), The Prisoner (1967) and Edward & Mrs. Simpson (1978), but he is best remembered for composing the "Doctor Who" theme.
Psycho moogs from outer space
Samuel Lloyd Spence (1927 - 2016) was an American soundtrack composer best known for his work with NFL Films.
In the early 70's he was an expat working in a community of German rock
musicians.
As a student of music composition at the École Normale de Musique de Paris with the great composers Arthur Honegger and Francis Poulenc,
Spence settled in Europe making his way to Germany to find symphony
orchestras to help him develop music for film and television. To balance
his classical composition, Spence was able to use his Hollywood
credentials to score German TV commissions making dozens of groovy
symphonic scores with electronic flourishes.
Meditations on air
Klaus Hashagen (1924 - 1998) was a notable German electroacoustic and
experimental music composer. He incorporated numerous styles and
techniques in his music: choral, chamber pieces for solo instruments and
orchestra, Chanson, "musique concrète," serialist and aleatoric
elements, "radiophonic" compositions, spatial sound, and live
electronics.
Klaus co-founded Ars Nova Ensemble Nürnberg in 1968 with Werner Heider, served as the Founding Chairman of "Förderverein" (Friends' Association) at the Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg and was Honorary Professor in electronic music and radiophony at Hochschule für Musik Würzburg.
The power of extraterrestrial music
J.M. Pagan is the cosmic creative musical-mind working behind Swiss/Catalan studio whizz, Zeleste
Nightclub engineer, Video Nasty film composer, occasional Jaume Sisa
(Música Dispersa) collaborator and future electronic music therapy
pioneer; from his mind comes this synth-ridden vocoder-loaded 1984 sci-funk soundtrack
to Barcelona's daytime TV response to the universal E.T. phenomena.
Kiu i els seus amics (Kiu and his friends), was a Spanish television series (1985-1986) of 17 episodes, written and directed by the now famous director Bigas Luna, where a group of children discover an alien who comes from a musical planet, who with his powers helps them to live fantastic adventures.
20/10/2022
Vapors of imagination
Louis De Meester (1904 - 1987) was a Belgian violin player, piano player, conductor and composer.
Rendre des harmonies à l'univers
Nino Nardini (Georges Achille Teperino) was a French composer, arranger, engineer, conductor and producer. Frequent collaborator of childhood friend Roger Roger.
Nardini was
born in 1912, to an Italian father and French
mother into a family of musicians. His father, a violinist and composer,
was his main music teacher. He started his musical career early, at the
age of seven, directing a philharmonic orchestra. While still a child,
he formed the 5-piece orchestra "Les Diables Rouges" with his friend
Roger Roger, which performed at local swing clubs on weekends between
the 1920's and 30's.
After the Second World War, he worked conducting and composing Spanish and Mexican ethnic and folk-related music.
He formed the Nino Nardini Orchestra
in 1951. They were, among other things, featured in "La Chansons de
Paris", a weekly musical program wich took place at the Theatre des
Champs Elysees. The orchestra continued to perform dance and pop music
live at the "Circus 58", allowing Teperino to fine-tune his arrangements
in dance styles like paso doble, foxtrot and cha cha cha. He also conducted the orchestras of Radio Luxembourg, Radio Circus
and Radio Theatre in Paris as well as taking conductor duties at a
French circus, learning with it the arrangement 'trickery' and
instrumentation to back the circus' gags and jokes.
In the early 1960's, he, along with Roger Roger, started work
composing for music libraries, recording in various styles, often
featuring instruments like the harpsichord, marimba or electric organ,
and later analog synthesizers and electronic keyboards, instruments
which he also featured in his pop arrangements at the time. In the
mid-60's, he constructed Studio Ganaro
with Roger Roger and Francis Gastambide, which him and Roger used to
record and produce their compositions. Teperino and Roger both had
fruitful careers in library music, composing a large amount of works for
French and British libraries, also experimenting with electronic music
in the late 60's and early 70's onwards. Their library music has been,
and continues to be featured in numerous radio programs, animations, TV
shows and films all over the world.
06/10/2022
Singing songs of wonder
Muhammad Ashraf (1942 - 2007) was a Pakistani film composer; he was the most dominating and the most productive music director
in Pakistan, and had the highest number of super hit film songs compared
to any other music director in Pakistan.
By the end of his 45 years long career, he had composed more than 2.000
film songs for over 400 films compared to many other music directors in
Pakistan, and was
popular in both Urdu and Punjabi films.
A fantasy on Lara's theme
(Peter Thomas was a German composer and arranger, born 1st
December 1925 in
Breslau, Silesia (today Poland) and came a little later to Berlin, where
he remained up to his beginnings as a film musician. He wrote a lots of
soundtracks for movies and television series. His music oscillates
between easy listening/lounge and electronic/space-age styles. The
musician is abroadly well known as director of the incredible musical group The Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra. He died 17th May 2020 in Lugano, Switzerland).
This is not a time to argue
Jacques Denjean (Igny, 1929 - Paris, 1995) was a French singer, pianist, composer, arranger and orchestra
director. Jazz pianist of
some reputation and much sought-after as a record arranger in the 1960s.
As a performer and arranger, he worked with the likes of Dionne
Warwick, François Hardy, Johnny Hallyday, and many others. In 1964, he
arranged and conducted Luxembourg's Eurovision entry 'Dès que le
printemps revient', performed by Hugues Aufray. Founded Studio Frémontel in 1971.
07/09/2022
Diving into Mare Germanicum
Cloud Cuckooland is a Psychedelic/Experimental/Abstract compilation made by Finders Keepers Records.
06/09/2022
Honoring the House of Árpad
Sarolta Zalatnay (Budapest, 1947) is a Hungarian singer. She has been noted for a flourishing popular music career under Communism, and evolved from teen pop to rock music.
03/09/2022
Sounds from a synthetic rainforest
Emerald Web was an Electronic/Experimental music duo of Kat Epple and Bob Stohl,
existing from 1978-1990. In addition to recording and touring the US,
Emerald Web performed in Planetariums and composed soundtracks for Carl
Sagan. They released 11 albums, including "Catspaw", which was nominated
for a Grammy Award in 1986.
Composing with keyboards, digital orchestrations, flutes, and
Lyricon, they created a unique blend of "electronic space music" and
acoustic instruments. The Lyricon is an unusual hybrid
synthesizer/woodwind instrument that creates a variety of sounds such as
electric guitar, oboe and french horn.
Keyboardist, Lyricon player, and flautist Bob Stohl passed away in
1989 at the age of 34. Flautist, keyboardist, and vocalist Kat Epple
continues to release albums under her own name, composes television and
film scores, and performs concerts around the world. Other musicians who
performed or recorded with Emerald Web include Barry Cleveland, Jonn Serrie, Ben Carriel, and Steve Weiner.
Jump into a psycho-party
Les Papyvores was a French Psychedelic/Beat cult act band formed by Antonio Munda and Serge Koolen.
Shaking hips around the globe
Merit Hemmingson (born August 30, 1940) is a Swedish organist,
composer and singer; she became famous in the late 1960's for her modern
pop arrangements of Swedish folk music.
Chant for the beloved one
Baligh Hamdi (7 October 1931 - 17 September 1993) was an Egyptian
composer who created hit songs for many prominent Arabic singers,
especially during the 1960s and 1970s; he frequently said that he drew
upon musical ideas and aesthetics in
Egyptian folk melodies and rhythms in composing his songs. He also drew
on ideas that were floating around in the contemporary music of his
time. His sound has a classical flavor due to the heavy use of the
string orchestra. But he also made some use of electronic keyboards and
guitars in harmony with the strings, or alternating with the strings, in
many songs.
Dive into the Great Red Spot
John Hill is a US. American composer, producer, and songwriter whose songs
have been featured in Beverly Hills, 90210; Felicity; and That 70s
Show. A former staff producer for Columbia Records, he also has
produced records for Epic, A&M, and Arista. He also has composed the
scores for over ten feature films and several TV shows for companies,
including Cinemax, PBS, BBC, CBS, BMG Films, Intermedia, and Studio
Canal +.
The King of Punjab
Muhammad Ashraf (1942 - 2007) was a Pakistani film composer; he was the most dominating and the most productive music director
in Pakistan, and had the highest number of super hit film songs compared
to any other music director in Pakistan.
By the end of his 45 years long career, he had composed more than 2.000
film songs for over 400 films compared to many other music directors in
Pakistan, and was
popular in both Urdu and Punjabi films.
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