Beautiful, cold, warm, psych, noisey, drunky, urban folk tunes from and by LOWER PLENTY. It is a suburb of Melbourne and also a band

Its members are from e.g. Total Control, The UV Race, Dick Diver or Terry. About their music I could write that sometimes like VU and Nico, but I do not want to write it, so forget it. This song is taken their 4th album Sister, Sister out now on Bedroom Suck Records (AUS). It was recorded in a kitchen of another suburb of Melbourne, Collingwood.

On that place which is today Lower Plenty the first settler was a Hungarian political immigrant Sigismund Wekey in the mid of the 19th century. He was a lawyer, but during the revolutiuon and war of independence of Hungary in 1848/49 he became a captain and adjutant of the political leader Kossuth. After the fall he went to London, learnt mining, and wrote the first Hungarian grammar for the English people.

He arrived in Australia in his late 20s. On the site which is today Lower Plenty he purchased land as a manager of a shareholder company he founded with a vision to start the wine industry of Melbourne, but the company went to bankruptcy within two years. During this time he was the secretary of Philosophical Society (later Philosophical Institute) of state Victoria. But because the cost of the society’s publications were paid by himself for two years finally he resigned.

He also was a correspondent of some journals, later registrar and postmaster of a gold mining town Gaffneys Creek. He applied for patents of some mining machineries, and became a director of the Aladdin and Try-Again United Gold Mining Co., but he was placed under charge of conspiracy with his two co-directors in 1870. He was sentenced and spent one year in gaol where he wrote a pamphlet about the elastic laws and the political corruption which endangered of the liberty of the subject, titled The Institution Of The Land We Live In. After his release he left Australia, travelled around the world with his family, and finally settled in Budapest.

Bela Lugosi originally was a locksmith lad but became an actor of the National Theatre of Hungary. During the short lived Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 he was a member of the workers and soldiers’ soviet in the 2nd district of Budapest. He was charged with communize the Hungarian theatres by the Commissariat of Public Education.

He „was a dangerous communist”. In revolutionary meetings at Club of Artists and National Theatre he agitated for communism and the dictatorship of proletariat. And he presented it. Mayor of Budapest was evicted from his flat by our hero. After the fall he escaped, but a warrant of arrest was issued by the Royal Prosecution Office against him.

„A frightful hobgoblin stalks throughout Europe. We are haunted by a ghost, the ghost of Communism” – wrote Marx and Engels in their Communist Manifesto in 1848. But the Americans were haunted by the Dracula himself. And now also the Englishmen, thanks to The Severed Limb

They are very DIY . „The Severed Limb began life as a punk skiffle trio, recording a cassette in the cellar of drummer Charlie Michael’s south London pub in 2008. With Bobby Paul on guitar/vocals and Charlie’s half brother Leo Lewis on washboard they began gigging in South London pubs. With no actual bass player they asked members of the audience to fill in on tea-chest bass.”

But maybe you also don’t know what is „skiffle.” Well, it’s a music genre with jazz, blues, folk and roots influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments. Exactly like Mama Rosin does it.

Today there are six men in The Severed Limb, even with so trivial instruments like standard drum-kit or organ, so the shadow of heresy is on them. Dr. Orloff should to make an inspection in this case.

„Bela Lugosi” 7″ vinyl will be released on Drastic Decline Records on November 12.

Fucker is a Japanese musician, the founder of Less Than TV, an outsider record label, which tends to be even more outsider than usual. He plays weird folk punk alone, and as a member of Folk Shock Fuckers with his wife Blue Yukari from all-girls ni-hao! („just like Melt-Banana with Cibo Matto with Boredoms with Takako Minekawa with OOIOO with Omoide Hatoba”) on bass, and Takeda Kazunaga, who plays on Cajon, a Peruvian box shaped percussion instrument.

First song from Fucker debut album, will released on 20 April, second one (In My Riffle) from Folk Shock Fuckers debut from 2014, it has been re-released now by Aussie label Tenzenmen. Listen to the full album

Keel Her / Claire Cottrill split cassette

Keel Her aka Rose Jayne Keeler-Schäffeler is a London based alien-obsessed hyperactive girl from Brighton. Makes high standard lo-fi sometimes noisy bedroom pop. And managed by Satan. In 2012 the godfather of lo-fi, and World Champion of DIY home recordings, R. Steevie Moore invited her to play together at his studio in Memphis. And she is in The Bin Bags where playing violin, keys and vocals. Just released their first EP on Permanent Slump Records. (The third song in this playlist is from them.) She said in an interview: Being a female musician: it’s really fun, but sometimes lonely. I’m an outsider, but I always have been, regardless.

Claire Cottrill is a very young girl from Boston (Massachusetts, US). With her guitar she makes music under the influence of sixties soul and r’n’b and Korn.

Split cassette on Third Floor Tapes (Ardmore – formerly Athensville -, Pennsylvania, US)

In my mind there are some cases when a band suddenly changed radically its style. For example when hc/punk Beastie Boys changed to hip-hop in 1983. When new wave synth pop Ministry became an industrial metal act around 87. When Metallica lost himself in 90. When one of the most thrilling thrash metal bands Voivod made a psychedelic rock album Angel Rat in same year. When industrial band Laibach became a successful cover band first, and then became a synth-pop band during the years gradually. And now here is the long awaited new Lantern album Black Highways and Green Garden Roads. And as if it were made by an other band.

After their sensational wild rock’n’roll album they have released an easy, almost distortion free, sometimes dark psychedelic folk rock album, „taking ideas from the work of Hieronymus Bosch, Carl Sagan, and Mikhail Bulgakov”. „It’s an exploration of the natural world and the cosmos, and a celebration of the wonderful, the serious, and the absurd.” They also said that it’s a result of many oversteeped pots of black tea.

It was recorded at The Bottle Garden, a home studio in Montreal filled with vintage gear and an array of instruments during 22 non-sequential days over a year and a half in 2013/14. More so than previous recordings, it is a collaborative effort born of studio improvising and collective exploration. They used new, unfamiliar instruments, such as organ and kalimba, and they experimented with tape loops and group harmonies.

Really fine songs – except for the cover version of Solomon Burke’s Cry To Me from 1962. It’s a mistake, just like the Rolling Stones’ version. (Listen to the original one.) The songs come Roy Orbison, 60s Rolling Stones, psychedelic era Voivod, and Illés (Hungarian beat legend) to my mind. And there is the bass theme of Dead Kennedys’ Holiday in Cambodia in the song We Are Here:

But the album is too long. And unfortunately badly edited, so it is hard to listen from first to last. It would have been better if there an LP with 10 songs and an EP with 4 (He Is A Pinball; Wait, Wait; Cry To Me; We Are Here Again) had been released.

Cassette by Fixture Records (Can) & LP by Sophomore Lounge (US)

Listen to it here

For example there was the Trinidad calypso musician Lord Executor (1884-1952), he could not imagine it. This song is a late answer to him by Swiss mish-mash folk pop band Pussywarmers

from their latest album I Saw Them Leaving (Wild Honey Records). You can find chansons, folk ballads, psychedelic beats, rocks and seagulls on it. Listen to it in full! Buy here

Bloodshot is a Chicagoan independent record label where punk, country, soul, pop, bluegrass, blues and rock’n’roll mix and mingle and mutate. One, that is six, or rather seven from their brand new realeses

Bloodshot Six Pack to Go

Six 7″ singles featuring drinking songs. A collection where punk, country, roots and good times meet with many covers. For example:

Dead Kennedys’ „Too Drunk To Fuck” by Nashville outsider Elizabeth Cook. Black Flag’s „Six Pack” by bluegrass road man Al Scorch. Merle Haggard’s „Drink Up and Be Somebody” by JP Harris & the Tough Choices. JP Harris (see the picture above) „plays Country Music. Not “Americana,” not “Roots,” or “Folk”. Pogues’ „If I Should Fall From Grace With God” by Deer Tick

The second track is a Bad Lovers’ song performed by Banditos.

Limited edition box set (1000 copies). First 500 copies feature special 7th single featuring Chicagoan Devil in a Woodpile and Tijuana Hercules…they call it a Chicago Sixpack. Drink It Up & Be Somebody!

Somebody who is called a „guruzsmás” is a person who’s able to put a spell on someone else, or who himself/herself is being enchanted. The band Guruzsmás sounds like if Béla Bartók was doing a guest apperance in an episode of The Simpsons which took place at the land of the Csangos or somwhere at the Transdanubian parts of Hungary. After losing all his knowledge of music theory, he is still playing tunes relying only on his instincts. It’s a cross-section between some formation of the ancient infinity and a smart, tricky country fellow who has a philosopher lost deep inside of him. There are three kinds of stuff we play: songs, compositions and stories.

Guruzsmás is a band from the deep RNR666 brotherhood between the 3Elvis and our author TIMUR77 who plays guitar in Guruzsmás band.

A new photo album with 134 historic images at deluxe size by Dust to Digital. A book with lots of found images. Among those aren’t photos of Bill Hayley, Elvis Presley or any usual person, but there’re ordinary, nameless men, women, and children. Most of the people in the photos wouldn’t have heard of rock’n’roll, much less thought of themselves as rock’n’roll progenitors. Instead, the images capture the gangly musicians, the giddy dancers, and the drunken antics found in smalltown America from the 1930s to the 1960s and beyond. All the musical genres that influenced what we know of as “rock” are represented: everything from jump blues and gospel to boogie woogie and Western swing.

The author, Jim Linderman says: “We have this notion that rock’n’roll started in Memphis in 1955, and it really didn’t. Bob Wills was playing in the ’30s and ’40s in Oklahoma, and Chuck Berry modeled Maybellene on a Bob Wills song. The roots of rock go back a lot further than we realize. It came from the church, from vaudeville, from the music played in after-hours clubs, from juke joints. The whole point was pretty much to get together, get drunk, and get laid. That’s the real history of rock ’n’ roll.”

As Muddy Waters said, “The blues had a baby and they called it it Rock and Roll.”

New York – BedStuy – Franklin Avenue – 8 pm – pouring rain – no umbrella – soaked and wondering why I am walking in such a weather on a Friday night – lost in loud streets – surrounded by the sound of sirens that, for a moment, made me forget about my own thoughts…

Though I know where I’m heading to and no stormy apocalyptic weather could stop me! YES, Workman Song is playing tonight, and I’m sure that as soon as I’d get to Friends and Lovers, with a glass of whisky in my hand, all would make sense…and indeed it did! Even got an interview with the 27 years old musician (who won’t fall into the curse).

Get closer dear reader, it’s storytelling time…

Once upon a time in Massachusetts, a little Irish curly haired boy named Sean (not Sue thankfully) was dreaming of becoming a priest. But destiny had a slightly different plan for him. On one of these childhood boring days, little 10 years old Sean decided to sneak into his older brother’s room and steal his guitar. Days, weeks, months and years passed, little Sean MacMahon got to know his new best friend, and became the mad scientist known by the name of Ion Zelig. After playing in a trash jazz band, enjoying improv on stage, he decided to start his own career as a peace messenger. But Ion Zelig was wondering where he could spread his gift of faith. Adventure was calling our poet, just in time, a very good friend of his told him

Join me in New York City to fulfill your destiny

He grabbed his guitar, his bohemian suitcase, kissed pa’ ma’ bra’ goodbye and left on a journey to the center of the world, where you’ll find him singing hope in churches, bars, hotels and apartments, for the greatness of us all.

Then what’s left for the end of our tale? A new album? A big family? A house? A prophetic music label? The road has just begun, and our hero must seek for inner focus in order to make a living with his art. But one thing is for sure, Ion Zelig does not believe in shame, only trust, trusting that people will comprehend his message.  Well, he’s lucky, I’m one of those…how about you? To find out, follow the link

Vrystaete is a record label founded to release free spirited music, more or less related to psychedelic, folklore and lo-fi sounds. Sub-label of electronic music publisher Enfant Terrible Records in Netherlands. New albums

Brunnen is a Dutch minimal psych folk project of Freek Kinkelaar from the very experimental pop band Beequeen. It’s sounding a bit like a lo-fi Legendary Pink Dots. He is a modern day acid troubadour telling small stories accompanied by minimal instrumentation

„I have been active in the experimental music scene since 1984, when I first started recording my battered homemade electric guitar, plugged in my 1940s tube radio system, which had been a precious gift from my grandparents. The resulting tapes featured a lot of abstract and loud noise, which I loved but the neighbours hated. (…) In the winter of 1988 long time friend Edward Kaspel of The Legendary Pink Dots asked me to fill in as support act for a live Pink Dots performance in January 1989. Since I didn’t have a clue what to do, I contacted Frans de Waard (whom I had met a few years previously) and together we formed Beequeen. This collaboration was initially based upon our mutual admiration of the ideas of German conceptual artist Joseph Beuys.”

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Two German experimental projects in one: Baldruin + Brannten Schnüre = Diamantaner Oberhof. Subtle electronic sounds are mixed with snippets of accordion melodies, even though this is contemporary folk music it sounds very pure and authentic, like obscure lo-fi field recordings, bringing to mind some of the better Fonal recordings from the past (think Kemialliset Ystävät, Paavoharju and Islaja) or a more folklore minded Kaa Antilope, this is a sort of new primitivism and nothing less as in between archaic-electronic-ambient-folk-Dada-pop music

info about the albums and snippets