Million Brazilians – Wet Dry Jungala

Million Brazilians is probably a better artist name than Three People in Maine. There may be those who don’t like surprises, though, so I feel it only fair to warn you that a) they are (probably) not Brazilian and b) there are not a million of them.

This is an early album by them. All their subsequent ones, except for one I found on Juno Download, can only be listened to in excerpts and I’m not one to buy things I’ve only heard excerpts from. The excerpts do sound good, but I’d need to be better off than I am before I start buying things I’ve only heard excerpts from.

There may be genre descriptors relevant here but if there are they are words I am yet to hear. This album sort of vaguely puts me in mind of 936-era Peaking Lights, but only sort of vaguely. Track 2 is frankly legendarily good. It’s vaguely tribal, I suppose, vaguely jazzy, vaguely soundtrack-to-a-film-that-doesn’t-existy, vaguely trancey, vaguely droney, and very good.

ZAÄAR – Magická Džungl’a

I think this might be my find of the year, saved right until almost the very end. But first I have to know – what is that accent thingy over the middle a in their name? Does it change how you pronounce said name? Me ignorant Englander. Actually, I don’t know how to pronounce any of it.

I’ve had at least three images evoked whilst listening to this – a kind of middle eastern bazaar (though I’ve never been to the middle east, or indeed a bazaar), the early stages of a long night dancing round a campfire when everyone is gradually getting into the sounds and rhythm, and a kind of sordid, late night carnival where the pleasures are unexpected and never subsequently spoken of (sadly, I’ve never been to that sort of carnival either).

It’s kind of jazz, I suppose, though very psychedelic and with regular, hypnotic pulses. Spacious, yet dense. Loads going on, but loads of room; an all encompassing sonic experience. There probably are reference points, though I know them not. Perhaps the nearest I can think of, albeit still distant, is Miles Davis’ Get Up With It, itself a very fine album and one I should listen to more.

And on that note, I wish you all a marvellous 2022. May the music you find be especially resonant to you.

Black Impulse

Hello!

Black Impulse isn’t an artist (that I’m aware of). It is a radio show.

https://www.nts.live/shows/black-impulse/

It’s proper good, it is. I’m plowing through the catalogue now, and there will be some posts up coming from which I thank Black Impulse.

 

Sungod

It is one of the ironies of doing this blog that nearly every post is written whilst at work, usually in an environment when I can’t listen to the music that my researches throw up alongside my subject of the day (in other words, on the service desk in a library in between enquiries). 

So I (re)discovered Sungod as a result of trawling the 2015 year end lists, I can’t remember which – I don’t think they had a place on said list, more that they were referenced. The album that I checked out was Contackt from 2013, and I am here to tell you that it fair blew my mind much more effectively than the howling winds that have been such a feature of the UK’s weather these last few months. My particular favourite track is ‘Smell of Physiqal’ which marries monstrous riffing a la Sleep with late 90s Goa style trance-techno, and definitely ranks as my discovery of the year so far. In fact, that description could be profitably used for much of the album, inasmuch as words have any value at all when describing music.

Turns out that buried somewhere on my hard drive was Cuts from the Ether which someone must have copied for me some time back. Turns out that’s nearly as good.

May I also commend to you Vision Space which features extra free jazz into the mix, as they cover a composition of Sun Ra, and which is also a very pleasurable listening experience? I can? Good.

So going back to my opening paragraph, I learn that Sungod now release music via Holodeck records, the home of a previous subject of mine, the marvellous Thousand Foot Whale Claw. So this makes the dipping into of their catalogue a task which I now add to the many other sonic tasks ahead of me, most of which I’m trying to accomplish back at my desk whilst at work, because home life is almost exclusively One Dog Clapping now once the kids are in bed. I also find the now neglected but nonetheless containing of intriguing links which is Sungod’s blog so there be some other stuff that my instinct tells me I must check… fun times! As I mentioned before, this is a brilliant problem to have. Would I rather there was a dearth of good music just so I could keep on top of it?