LISTEN UP: NEW RELEASES OF VARYING DEGREES OF BRILLIANCE (1.25.2022)

 



BALIGH HAMDI - INSTRUMENTAL MODAL POP OF 1970'S EGYPT

Sublime Frequencies unleashes an essential compilation from 1970’s Egypt.  Modal instrumental tracks from Baligh Hamdi - one of the most important Arabic composers of the 20th Century (writing for legends Umm Kalthum, Abdel Halim Hafez, Sabah, Warda, and many others).  Featuring his legendary group the “Diamond Orchestra” with Omar Khorshid on guitar, Magdi al-Husseini on organ, Samir Sourour on saxophone, and Faruq Salama on accordion.  All of these musicians were discovered and recruited by Hamdi to interpret his vision of a modernized, hybrid Arabic music.  Under Hamdi’s direction this orchestra charted a new melodic direction and created a new musical language.  This compilation is culled from a specific era of Hamdi’s long career, a decade where he fully realized an international music which incorporated beat driven Eastern tinged jazz, theremin draped orchestral noir, tracks that feature searing guitar solos from none other than Omar Khorshid, and a selection of buzzing, sitar driven, Indo-Arabic tracks establishing a meeting of mid-east and eastern psychedelic exotica, and a vision that created some of the hippest music coming out of the Middle East from the late 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s.





THE CIRCULAR RUINS & MYSTIFIED - FANTASTIC JOURNEY

Fantastic Journey is an homage to writers such as Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and other pioneers from the early age of science fantasy.  Stunningly adventurous dark ambient, dronescapes, pulsing synths, melancholic strings, and exploratory ambient electronica take you on a journey of imagination and ingenuity. Tales are woven of fantastic voyages and feats of scientific endeavor, through subterranean worlds, mysterious unexplored islands, Utopian societies, travels through time, and the farthest reaches of outer space.  Fantastic Journey perfectly encapsulates the wondrous visions of these futuristic writers over the last one hundred and fifty years. Designed for serious listening and exercising your imagination . . . Originally released in 2013, Cold Spring release Fantastic Journey on CD-proper for the first time, with an exclusive ten-minute bonus track, taking the intrepid listener on one last marvelous adventure.  Composed and performed using various samples, synthesizers, and field recordings by Anthony Paul Kerby (The Circular Ruins) and Thomas Park (Mystified).





THE NAZGUL - THE NAZGUL

Lost-in-time kosmische/kraut/avant-garde artifact produced by Toby Robinson, aka The Mad Twiddler, circa 1975 for his private Pyramid label.  Tolkien-inspired dark ambient soundscapes with spooky/ritualistic atmosphere, treated percussions, gongs and guitars, trippy Hammond and Mini-Moog, tape loops, weird noises, and drones . . . File under dark ambient, proto-industrial, kraut, experimental.   Includes insert with detailed liner notes by Alan Freeman. LP version includes download code.  "A major work of electronic avant-garde -- high quality deep esoterica of the weird and spooky kind."  - Alan Freeman




VARIOUS ARTISTS - THIS IS TEHRAN

Tehran - Iran's cultural melting pot with a population of fifteen million.  There is a broad and lively music scene about which little is known in the West.  In Tehran, traditional music from Baluchistan in the south or Kurdistan in the west meets the hip trends of the metropolis.  This Is Tehran? invites you to discover this music scene and marvel at its diversity.  From contemporary classical sounds with Saba Alizadeh on the Iranian spiked fiddle Kamanche or Siavash Molaeian together with Kasra Faridi on the piano to the well-known experimental electronic musician Ata "Sote" Ebtekar.  The electronic beats of a cooperation of Ehsan Abdipour and Andreas Spechtl stand naturally next to almost jazzy sounds of a Parastoo Ahmadi or Mina Momeni.  The Otagh Band invites you to the dark, trip-hop laden, "Rotenburg 2020," which they wrote about the cannibal of Rotenburg.  




HELIOCHRYSUM - WE BECOME MIST

LA based composer-sound designer duo, Heliochrysum, present the release of their debut album.  A sculpted journey into new aural and imaginative cosmology utilizing analog and digital processes to mine the depths of industrial, science-fi and psychedelic soundscapes.  Often cinematic in tone and texture, the composers take their cue from a shared palette of sounds, textures and rhythms to grace us with a score that is at once improvisatory and yet sonically precise.  The name Heliochrysum evokes the Latin for sunflower while suggesting a healing tincture in the overlaid orchestration and distorted lightness, the roiling, life-giving pour of solar textures.  Simplicity washed with emotional intensity, the remembered dreams of fading epiphanies. 




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