Nagorny Karabach - Kleine Exkursion

Stop The War!

"Nagorny Karabach" were the more dark part of the "Hamburger Schule". Martin Hermes, Ralf Lota Heydeck, Alexander Hoffmann, Stefan Schneider and Michael Trier played on this 1990/91 production so called "avantcorebeat".

They performed their great lyrics to a sound insprided by Suicide and other electro punk bands. And they did inspired cover versions of Kraftwerk´s "Radioaktivität" and "Als wär´s das letzte mal" by Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft.

The cover of this What´s So Funny About-release used a part of a painting by Otto Dix.


Tracks:

Der Krieg ist aus 4:13
Abgehackt (Der Ekel) 3:20
Magic Mushrooms 4:05
Kleine Exkursion 8:20
Als wär's das... 2:58
Sei schön 3:35
Sweet Childness 2:45
Ecce Homo 4:57
Die Scharmützel mausern sich zum Feldzug 6:29
Radioaktivität 3:48
Weisst du noch 5:17

Nagorny Karabach - Kleine Exkursion
(256 kbps, cover art included)

Playgroup - Epic Sound Battles Vol. 2 (1983)

Great & rare record co-produced by Adrian Sherwood! This was intended as ON-U LP 26 yet never saw release on On-U Sound and was solely licensed to Cherry Red instead. The intended ON-U catalogue number even appears on the sleeve alongside the Cherry Red catalogue number.           

The difficulty of classifying Playgroup's musical output remained long after its dispersion. Steve Barker's sleeve notes to the 1991 compilation of tracks from the original 'Sound Battles' releases are therefore probably the best way to descirbe a band that wasn't and a genre that isn't:

"If you happen to be reading this sleeve in a record shop then don't worry too much about putting it back exactly where you found it. You can put it in any rack - for there is no one appropriate section for On-U Sound products. Retailers do not suffer this confusion alone. Joining them in a consensus of bewilderment are the majority of music critics, radio programmers, record company executives, promoters and agents - the business!

On-U Sound does not codify an accepted series of words, beats and notes to elicit a desired, timely and optimum response. There is no soiled or oblique message. What On-U Sound does do, by means of an informal and informed ever-growing band of singers and players, is accumulate signs and symbols of an intuitive order communicating direct experience. Texture is compatible with pattern, space with form. Play a game - play this album to a stranger, give no terms of reference.

Absorbed members of the Playgroup include veteran British breathman Lol Coxhill, Gerry Malekani guitarist for Manu Dibango. Jancsi Hosszu Hungarian virtuoso violinist, Bubbles Panman from Trinidad but exiled in Ladbroke Grove and collusionist Steve Beresford. As to the identity of the Prisoner he or she must remain masked. [*** Ed: Hint - a certain producer :-) ***]

Someone on their last billion brain cells once said to me, 'there is but one sound in the entire universe from which the many are derived', If this is true then I believe On-U Sound will be moving their offices quite soon, from Wapping to Mars.

Don't let your ears become your first defunct organs - play this music long and loud."

Tracklist:

1. Ballroom Control
2. Going Overdrawn
3. Going For A Song
4. Haphazard
5. Squeek Squawk
6. Shoot Out
7. Lost In LA
8. Burned Again
9. Night Shift

Musicians:
Bass - George Oban (Tracks: A2, A3, B4, B5)
Drums - Bruce Smith (Tracks: A2, A3, B4, B5), Style Scott (Tracks: A1, B1, B3)
Keyboards - Steve Beresford (Tracks: A2, A3, B3, B4, B5)
Percussion - Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah (Tracks: A1, A3, B1, B5)
Producer - Adrian Sherwood
Saxophone - Lol Coxhill (Tracks: A3, B3, B5)

Playgroup - Epic Sound Battles Vol. 2 (1983)
(320 kbps, cover art included)

Jacques Brel - Au Printemps (1958)

Jacques Brel's third album was his first to be conceived and recorded from the position of indisputable fame paved by the success of "Quand on N'a Que l'Amour" two years earlier. It also remains, so many years later, his most understated and, in turn, underrated.

Only one of the songs herein, "Litanies Pour un Retour," has seen anything approaching a high-profile English-language version (by Marc Almond), while a mere handful of its contents have appeared on subsequent compilations. Yet in many ways, it is the finest of Brel's Philips-era albums, bearing songs which may not have been raised to classic status by future translators, but are nonetheless remarkable for all that.

"Dites, Si C'etait Vrai," a poem first released on the "Quand on N'a Que l'Amour" EP two years earlier, is especially astonishing, oozing mystery in both the churchy accompaniment and Brel's dark tones. Two arrangers contributed to the album - Andre Popp and Francois Raubert; indeed, the latter would also step up to share co-composition credits with Brel on five of the album's nine tracks (Gaby Wagenheim would be co-credited on a sixth, the jaunty "Le Colonel"). For anybody familiar with Raubert's earlier work with Brel, it was doubtless no surprise to discover these to be the most flamboyant efforts in sight, with "Dors Ma Mie, Bonsoir" a virtual epic of concert piano and soaring strings, and broken into veritable mini-movements as well. From the same pens, "Litanies Pour un Retour" offers a delicate shopping list of an unnamed lover's virtues, while "La Lumiere Jaillira" drifts to stately organ, a cathedral of sound around a cavernously echoing voice. The most potent statement of the Brel/Raubert partnership, however, is "L'Homme Dans la Cite," which nudges the same fascination with revolutionaries and messiahs that flavored "Le Diable" on his debut. It is the accompaniment which captivates, however, rattling along to an understated military drumbeat while the orchestra builds almost imperceptibly (but, ultimately, unmistakably) behind the vocal, a sublime bolero.

Jacques Brel - Au Printemps (1958)
(256 kbps, cover art included)

Donovan - Catch The Wind (EP, Pye, 1965)

Donovan's folky 1965 recordings for Pye Records (they were released in the U.S. by Hickory Records) bear only a superficial resemblance to the more famous pop material he began issuing a year later when he switched to Epic Records. True, the fey gypsy and flower power sensibility was already present in songs like "Turquoise" (which is as gorgeous as it is ridiculous), but the pre-"Sunshine Superman" Donovan had a good deal more Woody Guthrie in him than he did Timothy Leary.

His work from this period has been compared (usually unfavorably) to Bob Dylan, but the strongest influence at play in these songs is probably Bert Jansch. In the end, the Pye tracks form a complete and distinct cycle in Donovan's canon, separate from - but not necessarily lesser than-his more ornate pop material.


Side A:
01. Catch The Wind
02. Every Man Has His Chain

Side B:
03. Josie
04. Why Do You Treat Me Like You Do

All tracks by Donovan P. Leitch.

Musicians:
· Donovan: vocals, acoustic guitar and mouth harp.
· Brian 'Liquorice' Locking: bass.
· Skip Alan: drums.

Donovan - Catch The Wind (EP, Pye, 1965)
(192 kbps, front cover included)

Chumbawamba – English Rebel Songs 1381-1914 (1988)

When Chumbawamba recorded the first version of "English Rebel Songs 1391-1914" in 1988, it was a very unusual step for a band of anarcho-punks. After all, a bunch of unaccompanied traditional folk songs was in direct contrast to the loud noise of electric music.

But the album spoke very eloquently, showing the band was committed to learning - and disseminating teaching - from history. And the singing was far better than anyone expected. Fifteen years on, they've learned a lot more about their voices, about music, and about the world. Additionally, the use of folk samples on "Readymades" has increased their folk credibility (which should never have been in doubt in the first place). And the songs remain utterly relevant - anthems of the downtrodden and oppressed through the ages, from the 14th century to today and the miners' strike of 1984.

The songs actually range from real folk pieces, like "The Cutty Wren" with its potent political symbolism, to music hall ("Idris Strike Song") and the cynical marching pieces of soldiers ("Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire").

Tracklist:

"The Cutty Wren (Part 1)"
"The Diggers Song"
"Colliers March"
"The Triumph of General Ludd"
"Chartist Anthem"
"Song on the Times"
"Smashing of the Van"
"The World Turned Upside Down"
"Poverty Knock"
"Idris Strike Song"
"Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire"
"The Cutty Wren (Part 2)"

Chumbawamba – English Rebel Songs 1381-1914 (1988)

(320 kbps, cover art included)

Kingston Trio - At Large (1959)

In the history of popular music, there are a relative handful of performers who have redefined the content of the music at critical points in history - people whose music left the landscape, and definition of popular music, altered completely. The Kingston Trio were one such group, transforming folk music into a hot commodity and creating a demand - where none had existed before - for young men (sometimes with women) strumming acoustic guitars and banjos and singing folk songs and folk-like novelty songs in harmony.

On a purely commercial level, from 1957 until 1963, the Kingston Trio were the most vital and popular folk group in the world, and folk music was sufficiently popular as to make that a significant statement. Equally important, the original trio - Dave Guard, Nick Reynolds, and Bob Shane - in tandem with other, similar early acts such as the Limeliters, spearheaded a boom in the popularity of folk music that suddenly made the latter important to millions of listeners who previously had ignored it. The group's success and influence transcended its actual sales. Without the enviable record of popularity and sales that they built up for folk music, it is unlikely that Columbia Records would ever have had any impetus to allow John Hammond to sign an unknown singer/guitarist named Bob Dylan, or to put Weavers co-founder Pete Seeger under contract, or for Warner Bros. to record the Greenwich Village-based trio Peter, Paul and Mary.

The Kingston Trio's first stereo album. "At Large", was also the first LP on which they adopted the more sophisticated recording techniques that would characterize their subsequent records, including multiple overdubs and separate recordings of the different players of vocals and instrumentation. It shows in the far more complex sound achieved by the trio throughout this album, with voices and instruments more closely interwoven than on their earlier studio recordings and achieving control over their volume that, even today, seems astonishing.
The group also sounds very energized here, whether doing Calypso-style numbers like Bob Shane's "I Bawled," soaring bluegrass-style harmony numbers such as "Corey, Corey," or the gossamer-textured "All My Sorrows."
The hits "M.T.A." and "Scarlet Ribbons" helped propel "Kingston Trio At Large" to the number one LP spot, but it was the rest of the album - including "Early in the Mornin'" (a skillful adaptation of the song best known to most of us by its opening line, "What do you do with a drunken sailor") and "The Seine," which anticipates the later trio's classic "Take Her Out of Pity" - that helped keep it at the top spot for 15 weeks, an amazing feat for a folk album. Dave Guard's banjo playing, in particular, shines throughout this album, and it was beginning here that Guard was to exert a separate influence on a whole generation of aspiring folk musicians and even one rock star (Lindsay Buckingham) with his banjo.

Kingston Trio - At Large (1959)
(320 kbps, cover art included)

Kurt Weill - Die Dreigroschenoper with René Kollo, Ute Lemper, Milva, Mario Adorf, Helga Dernesch and the RIAS Berlin Sinfonietta

The son of a cantor, Kurt Weill was one of the 20th-century lyric stage's great innovative geniuses. With Die Dreigroschenoper, he and collaborator Bertolt Brecht (and Brecht's often unacknowledged partner Elisabeth Hauptmann) created a cultural landmark that is still the most resonant emblem of the heady days of the Weimar Republic.

Although Brecht has usually taken the limelight for his acerbic social satire of bourgeois complacency - adapting the 18th-century John Gay's original Threepenny Opera, itself a parody of operatic conventions - Weill's sly amalgam of jazz, cabaret, and art song idioms vividly colors the work as one unforgettable number follows the next. While Brückner-Rüggeberg's 1958 recording has long held pride of place due to the authority of Lotte Lenya--Weill's original Jenny and lifelong muse--this 1990 release is a strong competitor and perhaps an even better introduction to the work.



John Mauceri, a passionate advocate of Weill's less well-known works for the Broadway stage, achieves a tight sense of ensemble from the composer's iconoclastic scoring and gives the abrupt transitions of the piece a highly effective, jagged-edged quality. The spoken part of the text is drastically cut, and on the issue of which musical direction to pursue - operatic technique or cabaret campiness - this version sensibly recognizes the diversity of authentic Weill performing styles, making room in its cast for the classically trained Helga Dernesch and René Kollo as well as Ute Lemper's cabaret smarts. The result is engrossing and gives the spotlight to Threepenny Opera's subversive blend of irony and humor.

Kurt Weill - Die Dreigroschenoper - RIAS Berlin Sinfonietta
(192 kpbs, front cover included)

Lin Jaldati - Jiddische Lieder (Amiga, 1982)

...another album produced by Charly Ocasek.

Lin Jaldati was sent to concentration camps when the Nazis occupied Holland. She didn't speak Yiddish, but learned Yiddish songs from her fellow prisoners. Jaldati survived Auschwitz; being a communist, she came to East Germany to help establish a socialist German state. She married Eberhard Rebling, a German Gentile communist who later became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and started to perform Yiddish songs for a German audience with Rebling accompanying her on piano. Later they were joined by their daughters Katinka and Jalda. Lin Jaldati dedicated her art and her life to communist East Germany. This didn't prevent her from being banned from performing in the late sixties; the hysteria had gone so far that even performing Yiddish songs was interpreted as a pro-Israel statement. For a long time Lin Jaldati, who was highly accepted by what later became the East German Yiddish and klezmer scene, was the only Yiddish performer in East Germany.

 

In the GDR there was no connection to the world centers of Yiddish culture. Israel was seen as an aggressor and song collections, for example from New York, were exchanged among friends but could not be found in any libraries. There were a few recordings by the Leipziger Synagogue choir, mainly religious songs, symphonically arranged. And the well known singer Lin Jaldati: she had survived Auschwitz. Occasionally, official politics made use of her good name. In 1966, she was allowed to release her interpretations of Yiddish resistance and folk songs on one side of a record, and in 1982 an entire record was released. This album, "Jiddische Lieder", with orchestra conducted by Martin Hoffmann, catches her in the last decade of her career. She can be heard intoning, speaking, shouting, and occasionally approximating notes amid the mostly world-weary singing.

Tracklist:

1. As der Rebe Elimelech
2. Dem Milners Trern
3. Nisim fun Rabejim
4. Hungerik Dajn Ketsele
5. Rabojsaj
6. Schwartse Karschelech
7. In Kamf
8. Jome, Jome
9. Schustersche Wajbelech
10. Ojfn Bojdem
11. Tsip Tsapekl
12. A Semerl
13. Dort bajm Breg fun Weldl
14. S' brent

Lin Jaldati - Jiddische Lieder (Amiga, 1982)

(192 kbps)

Pete Seeger - Darling Corey (1950)

Folksinger and banjoist Peter Seeger has made other recordings, including as a member of the Almanac Singers in 1941-1942, but "Darling Corey" is his first solo album. He devotes it to traditional folk songs, some of which were introduced to him by folklorist Alan Lomax, who employed him at the Archive of American Folk Song, part of the Library of Congress, in 1939-1940, and who penned the annotations for this collection.

There are songs about long-lost loves who come back to their beloveds ("John Riley") and about "no good" wives who get their heads cut off by their husbands ("I Had a Wife"). The title song is about a moonshiner and his woman, and "East Virginia Blues," which begins, "I was born and raised in East Virginia," is a romantic lament. Lomax acknowledges in his notes that Seeger himself was born in New York City, the son of a musicologist and a "longhair" violinist, and attended Harvard. It is not surprising that he makes no attempt to affect the kind of rural accent that might be expected in these songs. Instead, he picks his banjo steadily and renders the songs in a clear, direct manner, as if in the aural version of a musicologist's transcription. In so doing, he preserves some valuable musical folklore.                


Tracklist                           

A1	John Riley
A2	Risselty-Rosselty
A3	Devilish Mary
A4	Come All Fair Maids
A5	East Virginia Blues
A6	I Had A Wife
B1	Skillet Good And Greasy
B2	Darling Corey
B3	Banjo Pieces
B4	Jam On Jerry's Rocks
B5	Penny's Farm
B6	Danville Girl
B7	Get Along Little Dogies

Pete Seeger - Darling Corey (1950)
(256 kbps, front cover inlcuded)