To twist or Notwist?

I'm heading down to the Fringe Arts Festival in Kansas City tonight.
I jammed out a brief mix and felt I should host these mp3s before I leave.
Some old, some new, Top 40 - obscure as hell. Jam em and tell us what you think.

Love - BARR!

Natural Resource - Negro Leagues Baseball
RIYL - KMD, Lord Finesse, Digable Planets

J-Sands - Southern Lady
RIYL - Classic Soul Beats, Accessible Indie Rap

Ice Cube - It was a Good Day
Remember 1993?!

Chrome - Future Eternal
There will be a whole blog coming soon on this avant-genius 70's band!!!!

Lee Moses - Bad Girl pt.1
Forever sad, pure deep south soul!

James Pants - We're Through
RIYL - Beck, Gorillaz, Electro NerdnB
Check out James Pants @ Stones Throw Records

The Notwist - Gone, Gone, Gone
RIYL - Postal Service, Bedroom Folk
check out the flashy Notwist site

Okay - Beast
RIYL - Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Freak Folk
I was going to post this yesterday.

I was going to only post 2 and then...I just couldn't help myself. Have a great weekend!!!!!
Enjoy this picture of James Pants!

Nick Diamonds talks shit on Vampire Weekend!

Honestly, I'm a little perplexed by Nick Diamonds persona in general. He looks like that awkward youth group kid who really wants to be cool, but in all actuality is a total WET BLANKET.



Apparently he doesn't like the new Vampire Weekend. I really liked the first Unicorns record, but his penchant for pissing people off seems to keep him around the blogosphere despite Islands kind of sucking. Why not just smoke crack Nick? Don't make us beg!!!!!

Thanks to Idolator for the tip!

Okay, OKay, OKAy, OKAY!!!!!!!

Marty Anderson is the front man of Freemon CA, very own OKAY! He writes beautiful psychedelic pop tunes. Glittering guitars duel, while synth blips swirl around his scratchy intimate voice. It's the most beautiful melancholic pop I've heard in years!

I want this to be about the music, but inevitably this will come up. Marty has Crohns disease. Which is "an inflammatory bowel disease ... that causes persistent or recurring inflammation of one or more parts of the intestine," or, to put it another way, is a really fucked-up digestive disorder that makes you shit blood and that has been known to push the 5-foot-8-ish Anderson down to 90 pounds of taut skin and bones."(1)




That being said, it's no wonder his voice brings to mind some sort of pain or anguish. I can't stress enough how fucking talented Marty Anderson is. That is why I was ecstatic to see a brand spankin new OKAY record Huggable Dust at KJHK 90.7 here in Lawrence in rotation. How about you just download the mp3's below and run out to purchase every OKAY record and cherish them forever now.


Marty even squeezes in time to paint pretty pop art!!!! What does this guy not do?

There is a 4 page article/interview with Marty in the SF Chronicle that is amazing. There is little info on the net about OKAY or Marty, but this article gives you more than you'll ever need to know. (LINK)

You can download another track from Marty Anderson's previous OKAY record High Road if you visit the Absolutely Kosher website.

Okay - My
(from the recent release Huggable Dust)

Enjoy - BARR!

Abe Vigoda, Women

Abe Vigoda

Bear Face
RIYL: the Talking Heads, Deerhoof

A little Fabulous Pleasure gossip: Earlier in the week Barr! told me he would post on these guys, but I beat him to it. Fabulous Pleasure, like most fraternal friendships, is both cooperative and competitive. Sorry Barr!, you snooze you lose. . .

WomenBlack Rice
RIYL: the Microphones, Deerhoof, the Fall

BARR! Presents OMG! Gimme that 4 FREE!

This is going to be short and sweet. I'm going to pop in now and again, to dump some links to free MP3's I've got on repeat. They will be of varying genre's according to what leg I'm posturing on that week. My radar for sweet, hip, molten gems/jams is impeccable if I say so myself. You be the judge and download away. 

My latest jam on repeat is from Cambridge, Massachusetts. I'm referring to French Kiss records new signee Passion Pit. Their debut lp for French Kiss is out 9/16! Check out the pop goodness that is their first single, Sleepy Head!!!!

 

1. Passion Pit - Sleepy Head (Mediafire Link)

Get this and tell your friends about it. I guarantee they haven't heard it yet. 

Knock their socks off. You know you'll get off on it. 

Check out Passion Pit on Myspace

French Kiss Records Official Web Page

You're welcome. 

  Love BARR!

Korean Mindwarps

Download 2 Korean Psych Masterpieces Right Here

If you haven't heard, I've spent the last two years teaching English in Seoul, South Korea. Since this is a music blog I won't go into depth about my experience except to say that, for a city of 10 million people, Seoul doesn't have much in the way of rock n'roll. The airwaves are dominated by pop and polished hip-hop, so much so that it makes the US airwaves look adventurous. There is a intriguing, if small crop of present-day groups that I'll get to in later posts, but today I want to write about the little known (outside of Korea, at least) Korean psychedelic movement of the 70's.

I came across these albums last fall while my girlfriend and I were wandering through a massive flea-market in Sindang, one of Seoul's grimier neighborhoods. Situated between a fishing supply store and a sex shop was a used record store. Somewhere in the back they had a shelf full of old Korean LPs that had been transferred to CD and re-released by Pony Canyon, a Japanese record label. Knowing nothing of the artists, we chose them based on their fantastically trippy covers. But when we played them at home we were amazed to have stumbled upon some truly remarkable psychedelic rock where we thought none existed. Wasn't Korea still reeling from the war at this time? Wasn't the government suppressing this kind of "rebellious" music?

Apparently some of it slipped through the cracks, and thank god for that. The CDs we picked up that day have gotten considerable play long after their initial novelty wore off. In my opinion these stand up to nearly anything from the west. Some claim they're cheap knock-offs of the popular American and English artists of the day, but I can't pinpoint who they're cribbing from.

Kim Jung Mi's Now is the album I enjoy the most. Some songs remind me of Motown while other bring to mind the dark pop Bridget Bardot (who is apparently disdained in Korea for criticizing their consumption of dog-meat during the '88 Seoul Olympics) made with Serge Gainsbourg. It never reaches full-blown psychedelia, but the layers of organs and harmonies drenched in reverb would allow one to put it under that tag.

Shin Jung Hyun was somewhat of a ringleader for this scene. He wrote the music for Kim Jung Mi as well as other Korean pop groups like the Pearl Sisters, who are a gem in their own right. As well as producing and arranging all these albums, he also had his own bands, one of which was Shin Jung Hyun and the Men. Unlike the music Kim and Shin made for Now, the Men take psychedelia to its most indulgent extreme. Organs swirl; guitars wind in and out of solos. Sometimes songs turn unabashedly jocular or slip into seemingly endless jazz passages. If you don't believe me, "Beautify Country" is, at 9:56, the shortest song on the album. To put it simply, this album has its peaks and valleys but no one could accuse Shin Jung Hyun of playing it safe.

It's hard to pinpoint why I find these albums intriguing. The fact that they're from South Korea does make them a little more exotic. Hearing someone singing in a foreign language always evokes an air of mystery. Plus, lyrics are often the worst part of the psychedelic rock. How many times have I winced at clumsy, drug-induced couplets that only weakened the songs themselves?

Then there's the political aspect. I realize these two came from wealthy Korean families and must have had it easy compared to most of their countrymen, but one must also consider that they were making this music under a military dictatorship, one that eventually banned them from performing and destroyed many of their records. Thank god Japanese collectors snapped up a good number of them until Korea's political climate stabilized and the government loosened its grip on pop music. These could certainly benefit from a digital remastering but I feel lucky to have heard them at all.


Shin Jung Hyun and the Men- Beautiful Country
RIYL: Simply Saucer, Stereolab, Os Mutantes
Buy it from Dusty Grove America

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