don cherry – “mu” (first part, second part)

another $3.00 find from a little while back, this single-disc reissues what was originally released as two separate LPs and finds one-time Ornette Coleman sidemen Cherry and drummer Ed Blackwell in duo-mode collaboration. Cherry had traveled to countries like India, Turkey, Morocco and South Africa and the influence of those excursions is well-documented here, both in the variety of instruments he played throughout and the inspiration of musical elements indigenous to the places he’d visited. next is the part where I avoid saying anything about that other obnoxious asshat with the same name who makes me a little embarrassed about our mutual Canadian heritage… but enough about that.

listen

sasha frere-jones / loren mazzacane connors – “standing upright on a curve”

among last month’s $3.00 scores was this: a split release of guitar improv from two names that should be well-enough known to preclude much preamble from yours truly. apparently this was the fifth in a series of similar releases on the Sub Rosa label. why not read their description for a bit more elaboration… or, just listen

Social Junk – “Champs 06″

“gettin’ no respect since ‘02″… or so says their myspace page. truthfully, I wasn’t sure what to make of this during the first half of my initial listens… found that about half-way in, during the longer tracks, it finally hits a stride, catches more attention and starts to make sense. for some reason, all the descriptions I’d read of Social Junk led me to expect something fairly saccharine in terms of their sound, so maybe it was the relative abbrasiveness – compared to my initial expectations – that caused my appreciation to take a while to sink in. as best as I can tell this is an earlier, now-unavailable release (there’s a “Champs 08″ K7 presently available on Night People, the label run by the equally amazing Raccoo-oo-oon), since no evidence of it seems to turn up on any search engine I’ve tried… at any rate, fans of the aforementioned Raccoo-oo-oon or any of the other indie-leaning noise/improv/psych/mish-mash scene sprouting up these days would do well to give this a listen.

here

Marfa and Ne-af – live on KFJC

here’s another group from the comp. I posted the other day with a live radio performance from last year. files are WMA, which i don’t normally use, but that’s how i found em, so deal with it. iTunes will auto-convert em to AAC if yer that picky.

get it here and don’t forget to check their myspace

Strip Mall Seizures – “Summer Action Journey” tour ep

from what I can tell, this was a limited edition thingy sold, as the title suggests, during one of their tours. no longer available, though some of the songs have appeared elsewhere. at any rate, enjoy this and check out their myspace while you’re at it.

V/A – “A Modern Mutant’s Music Book”

so, I’m not sure if this is an official release or not… truthfully, I found it in someone’s folders on slsk and grabbed it b/c it had tracks by a few artists I’d been wanting to hear… the tags (or lack there-of in some cases) kind of suggest that someone cobbled this together from their own collection and google wasn’t too helpful, but, whatever… either way, it serves as an excellent primer to a ton of excellent bands who I’ve enjoyed full albums by over the past couple of years… and a ton more I hadn’t heard before who are equally worth investigating. here are some photos of a few who should be more familiar:

Architecture in Helinski

Factums

Gang Gang Dance

Love of Diagrams

Midori

These Are Powers

Yip-Yip

altogether it comes in around 315 MB, so…

artists beginning with A-L here

artists beginning with M-Z here

yer not too lazy to put em back together in one folder yerself afterward, right?