Grunts behind the veil

 

Basil Kirchin (8 August 1927 - 18 June 2005) was an English drummer and composer; he pioneered techniques which are now commonplace but were considered radical at the time. These included recording sounds he came across and then cutting, splicing, slowing down or stretching the tape to create strange, new noises.

 

Basil Kirchin - Quantum (A Journey Through Sound In Two Parts)

Deep tracts of the unknown

 

Sven Libaek (1938) is a Norwegian-Australian composer, record producer and musician. He composes film and TV soundtrack music and, as the staff producer for the Australian division of CBS Records, influenced the Australian popular music scene in the mid-1960s.

 

Sven Libaek - Inner Space (The Lost Film Music Of Sven Libaek)

Reaching transient states of consciousness

 

Ali Akbar Khan (1922 - 2009) was an Indian Hindustani classical musician of the Maihar gharana, known for his virtuosity in playing the sarod. Trained as a classical musician and instrumentalist by his father, Allauddin Khan, he also composed numerous classical ragas and film scores.

 

He established a music school in Calcutta in 1956, and the Ali Akbar College of Music in 1967, which moved with him to the United States and is now based in San Rafael, California, with a branch in Basel, Switzerland. Khan was instrumental in popularizing Indian classical music in the West, both as a performer and as a teacher. He first came to America in 1955 on the invitation of violinist Yehudi Menuhin and later settled in California. 

 

He was a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

 

Ustad Vilayat Khan (1928 - 2004) was an Indian classical sitar player. Along with Imdad Khan, Enayat Khan and Imrat Khan, he is credited with the creation and development of gayaki ang (an attempt to mimic the sound of the human voice) on the sitar.

 

Ustad Ali Akbar Khan & Ustad Vilayat Khan - Psychedelic Music Of India

Swallows flying over the pyramids

 

Nostalgique Egypte - Chansons d'amour, de charme et improvisations 1925 - 1960 is an Egyptian tribute compilation made by French label Buda Musique.

 

During this golden age that runs from the interwar period until the early 1970s, Egyptian music will literally flood the region, from the Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean, undergoing profound and complex change; the greatest are all there: Oum Kalthoum, Mohamed Abdel Wahab, Abel Halim Hafez, Farid El Atrache, but also remarkable artists, less known outside the East, like Laure Daccache, Egyptian of Lebanese origin, not only a singer but also one of the first Arab women to compose her own songs and to accompany herself on the 'oud, or even Asmahane, sister of Farid El Atrache.

 

(This post is dedicated to the wonderful crew of Dream Weapons, who have allowed to open portals of awareness and learning for many years to those who are eager for this ancestral knowledge).

 

Nostalgique Egypte 1925 - 1960

Not suitable for claustrophobic minds

 

Basil Kirchin (8 August 1927 - 18 June 2005) was an English drummer and composer; he pioneered techniques which are now commonplace but were considered radical at the time. These included recording sounds he came across and then cutting, splicing, slowing down or stretching the tape to create strange, new noises.

 

Basil Kirchin - The Shuttered Room

Nights under the red moon

 

Tandy Love (real name: Andrew Shallcross, AKA Andy Votel, 1975) is an English producer and musician who co-operates Finders Keepers Records, Pre-Cert Home Entertainment & Dead-Cert Home Entertainment.

 

 

Tandy Love - Turk Jerk • Anatolian Anagrams

Expressions that arise from the deep interior

 

Daniela Casa (1944-1986), also known under the pseudonym Elageron was an Italian singer, composer and synthesist . A genuine pioneer of experimental pop music, abstract electronics, Giallo jazz and even heavy drone rock jams, her elusive and infectious music joins the dots and loops between other Italian female electronic composers such as Giulia De Mutiis (later Giulia Alessandroni), Doris Norton and Suzanne.

 

Daniela Casa - Arte Moderna

The essence that motivates life

 

Giancarlo Barigozzi (1930-2008) was an Italian jazz saxophonist, flautist, clarinettist, composer and sound engineer; he has played with Franco Cerri, Gianni Basso, Gil Cuppini, Giorgio Gaslini, Tony Scott, Milt Jackson, Percy Heath, Jack Teagarden, Frank Sinatra and many others.

 

Barigozzi Group - Woman's Colours

Rhythmic echoes coming down from Ararat

 

The Armenian musician Hamlet Minassian was born in Tabriz (North-Western Iran) in 1940. After graduating from the music school of his native city, he attended advanced courses at the Teheran Conservatoire followed by musical research work in Europe and the United States. His career began with composing chanson type songs. 

 

He then moved into the film industry where he rapidly built up a reputation as the composer of a number of popular themes. Hamlet Minassian has also produced original vocal and orchestral arrangements of Armenian folk tunes and has composed a number of romances and the ballet.

 

Awinsome and dizzying spin on disco pop, recorded in westernized Iran during the last moments before the 1979 revolution. All but criminalized in the wake of Ayatollah Khomeini's theocratic repression, Hamlet Minassian's solo masterpiece is a testament to the Middle East's forgotten dance music culture.

 

Hamlet Minassian - Armenian Pop Music

A journey furrowing dark skies

 

Босса Нова Навсегда Самая Красивая Музыка В СССР is a Russian Bossa Nova Tribute compilation made by Мелодия Label.

 

 

Босса Нова Навсегда Самая Красивая Музыка В СССР

A dance for two serpents

 

Michel Legrand (1932 - 2019) was a French composer, arranger, conductor, and jazz pianist. Legrand was a prolific film and television scores composer and wrote many memorable songs. His scores for the films of Jacques Demy, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg - 1964) and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort - 1967) earned him Academy Award nominations and he won his first of three Oscars for the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). 

 

 

Michel Legrand - L'Empire Du Soleil

Overwhelmed by the vertigo of modernity

 

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).

 

Alessandro Alessandroni - Ritmo Dell'Industria N°2

The beauty of psychotic thoughts

 

Suzanne Ciani (Indiana, 1946) is an USA musician, sound designer, composer, and record label executive who found early success in the 1970s with her electronic music and sound effects for films and television commercials. Her career has included works with quadraphonic sound. She has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Age Album five times. Her success with electronic music has her dubbed "Diva of the Diode" and "America's first female synth hero".

 

Suzanne Ciani - Flowers of Evil

Harmonies to relive the past

 

 

Gogo People - Fabulous Gogo Music From Tanzania is an Ethnic African Compilation made by Kenyan label Sapra Studio.

 

(The Gogo/Gongwe are a Bantu ethnic and linguistic group based in the Dodoma Region of central Tanzania).

 

Fabulous Gogo Music From Tanzania

Overdose of flashing lights

 

Serge Gainsbourg (born Lucien Ginsburg 2 April 1928 - 2 March 1991) was a French singer, songwriter, pianist, film composer, poet, painter, screenwriter, writer, actor and director. Regarded as the most important figure in French pop whilst alive, he was renowned for often provocative and scandalous releases which caused uproar in France, dividing its public opinion; as well as his diverse artistic output, which ranged from his early work in jazz, chanson, and yé-yé to later efforts in rock, funk, reggae, and electronica. Gainsbourg's varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorize, although his legacy has been firmly established and he is often regarded as one of the world's most influential popular musicians. 

 

His lyrical works incorporated wordplay, with humorous, bizarre, provocative, sexual, satirical or subversive overtones, including sophisticated rhymes, mondegreen, onomatopoeia, spoonerism, dysphemism, paraprosdokian and pun. Gainsbourg wrote over 550 songs, which have been covered more than 1,000 times by a range of artists. 

Since his death from a second heart attack in 1991, Gainsbourg's music has reached legendary stature in France, and he is regarded as France's greatest ever musician and one of the country's most popular and endeared public figures. 

 

Jean-Claude Vannier (born 1943) is a French musician, composer and arranger. Vannier has composed music, written lyrics, and produced albums for many singers. Vannier is regarded as an important musician in his native country; music critic Andy Votel noted his Eastern music influences and named him a pop-culture icon of 1970s France, alongside Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin.

 

 

Serge Gainsbourg & Jean-Claude Vannier - Les Chemins De Katmandou

Scary sounds from Punjabi

 

Andy Votel (Andrew Shallcross, 1975) is an English producer and musician who co-operates Finders Keepers Records, Pre-Cert Home Entertainment & Dead-Cert Home Entertainment.

Votel name derived from the acronym VOTEL for Violators Of The English Language, a hip-hop crew on the Manchester scene at the time of early releases on the Fat City and now defunct Grand Central imprints.

Andy Votel - Hindi Horrorcore

Messages from eternal ice

 

Olox duo is the creative union between Snow Raven (Haar Suor) and Andreas Jones, which is a fusion of heart rhythms and electronic sounds mixed with ethnic songs from the native Sakha people from Siberia characterized by animal, bird and deep nature vocals.Snow Raven was born in a small village in Sakha (arctic Siberia) and was three years old when she started to learn the language of the birds and animals. Her voice takes its breath from traditional Sakha culture and is truly an instrument. She is the creator of "Arctic Beatbox" - the reindeer breath and is the author of "Neoshamanic Healing"

 

 

Olox - Ús Dojdu

Lullaby in the rain

 

Shushā (Shamsi Assār, 1935 - 2008), was a writer, editor, actress and - under the name of "Shusha" - a singer of Persian and Western folk-songs.

 

Her first album produced when she was a student in France in the late 1950s was under the name Chucha Assar.  She had lived in London since the early 1960s. She was also a talented amateur documentary filmmaker who was even nominated for an Oscar (a First for an Iranian) back in 1976 for her feature documentary People of the Wind co-directed with Anthony Howarth which was narrated by British Hollywood Star James Mason. 

 

Her books were reminiscent of the very first generation of Iranian expatriates to study and live outside Iran and who redefined and enriched their Persian heritage within a cosmopolitan identity both by necessity and choice.

 

Shusha - Persian Love Songs And Mystic Chant

Journey into the unknown

 

Danger, Suspense Et Eprouvettes is a Jazz/Funk/Easy Listening compilation made by French Editions Montparnasse 2000 label.

 

Danger, Suspense Et Eprouvettes

The survival of the weakest

 

Partisans of Vilna: The Songs of World War II Jewish Resistance is a World/Folk WWII compilation made by Flying Fish Records label.

 

Partisans of Vilna - The Songs of World War II Jewish Resistance

Opening brains until universal borders

 

Ennio Morricone (1928-2020) was an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, and former trumpet player, writing in a wide range of musical styles. Since 1961, Morricone composed over 400 scores for cinema and television, as well as over 100 classical works.

 

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.

 

Here Vol. 1 Here Vol. 2 Here Vol. 3 Here Vol. 4 Here Vol. 5

Snow over Corcovado

 

Босса Нова: По-Прежнему Самая Красивая Музыка В СССР is a Russian Bossa Nova Tribute compilation made by Мелодия Label.

 

Here

Embracing the dark side of soul

 

Nico Fidenco (Real name: Domenico Colarossi, 1933 - 2022) was an Italian singer and songwriter with a long and prestigious career who gained considerable popularity from 1960 onwards, after the release of the song What A Sky (Italian Su Nel Cielo), included in the soundtrack of the movie by Francesco Maselli I Delfini and composed by Giovanni Fusco. With his angelic voice he made millions of lovers dream not only in Italy, but all over the world, singing dozens of songs in English as well.

 

Nico Fidenco - Emanuelle E Gli Ultimi Cannibali

A song for underprivileged children

 

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.

Selda Bağcan - Güvercinleri De Vururlar

In the heat of japanese nights

 

Maki Asakawa (浅川マキ, 1942 - 2010) was a Japanese jazz and blues singer, lyricist and composer. She was an important voice of the Japanese urban counterculture.

 

In addition to writing and composing, she also released cover versions of traditional American folk and blues freely rendered into Japanese, such as "Kimyō na kajitsu (奇妙な果実)" (Strange Fruit), "Asahi no ataru ie (朝日のあたる家)" (The House of the Rising Sun) and "Gin House Blues", among others.

 

She became popular in the 1970s and had more than 30 releases by the end of the 1990s, after which she was mostly known for performing live. Asakawa collaborated with musicians such as Yosuke Yamashita and Ryuichi Sakamoto. She continued performing live until the time of her death. Scheduled to perform in Nagoya January 15-17, 2010, she died before her show on the 17th, at the age of 67, of heart failure, just 10 days before her 68th birthday. 

 

Maki Asakawa - Maki Asakawa

Surrounded by spring butterflies

 

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 Halet (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).

 

 

Alessandro Alessandroni - Butterfly

Voices from wood ancestors

 

Iluani was a Spanish/Canadian band formed by Felipe Ugarte, Imanol Ugarte, Oliver Schroer and Tanya Tagaq.

 

The project is a fusion between experimentation with Basque folklore and Inuit overtone throat vocal tradition; the txalapartaris Ugarte anaiak (Imanol and Felipe, the Ugarte brothers), the Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq and the Canadian violinist Oliver Schroer came together to create this unique sound project. 

 

The Ugarte brothers play the Txalaparta, a musical instrument of Basque origin from the group of percussed idiophones that is played between two people. The composition of the txalaparta has evolved over time; today, the txalaparta is usually made up of four tables placed on trestles, insulated with a sponge to achieve a clean sound. 

 

 

Iluani - Erren

Entheogeny facing the rising sun

 

Planets In Rock Age is a Japanese Jazz/Psych Rock compliation made by Columbia Records label.

 

 

Planets In Rock Age

Pain reflected in multiple eyes

 

Ennio Morricone (1928-2020) was an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, and former trumpet player, writing in a wide range of musical styles. Since 1961, Morricone composed over 400 scores for cinema and television, as well as over 100 classical works.

 

Ennio Morricone - La Corta Notte Delle Bambole Di Vetro

Discordant voices against injustice

 

Ziad Rahbani (1956) is a Lebanese composer, pianist, performer, playwright, and political commentator. He is the eldest son of Fairuz and Assi Rahbani. His compositions are well known throughout the Arab world, especially because he is responsible for Fairuz's musical works from 1980s onwards. Many of his musicals satirize Lebanese politics both during and after the civil war, and are often strongly critical of the traditional political establishment.

Ziad Rahbani - Abu Ali