HARRY PARTCH..."THE WORLD OF HARRY PARTCH"

harry partch is one of my most beloved composers, and his levity and humor are only superseded by his spirit of invention and originality. partch's music shares several percussive affinities with traditional gamelan music, also using microtonal scales that have scant presence in traditional western music. though bartok, penderecki, varese, lamonte young and terry riley have explored similar realms through the use of quatertones or intonations, employing what is often referred to as "avant-garde" tuning to extend sound intervals through octaves, no one raised it to the heights of partch. he not only patented a 43 tone scale but wrote music almost expressly for his own created instruments - everything from marimbas that were meant to emulate a bass and xylophones forged from disused hubcaps and bottles. though some of it is expectedly atonal and dissonant (as is much if not all avant-garde music), there is a great deal of partch's compositions that are diffuse and dream-like, some of it bordering on absolute joy.

personally, there's so much partch music out there - and the majority of it is all so damned good - that any starting place seems ideal if you haven't heard much. "the world of harry partch" adequately conveys his musical personality, and is much more tersely assembled than some of the the more comprehensive, unassailably-massive boxsets and collections out there.


download "the world of harry partch"

http://www.mediafire.com/?tmizflzhjdt

DONOVAN..."HURDY GURDY MAN"

"hurdy gurdy man" is one of donovan's strangest releases and possibly my favorite, as it takes the formula of "sunshine superman" and develops songs that employ a textural drone (in "peregrine," "river song" and "tangier"), as well as featuring his obligatory paisley pop whimsy in songs like "jennifer juniper." the album also displayed mangled folk songs with a palpably dark influence as in the title track and "get thy bearings," which utilizes a rambling saxophone (that literally effervesces out of nowhere). sadly, none of those tracks are found on youtube, so the two singles from this album shall have to suffice for the time being. anyway, definitely worth hearing as it expands the dimensions and dynamic of donovan's music. after a string of four terrific albums in "sunshine superman," "mellow yellow," "gift from a flower to a garden," and "hurdy gurdy man," he would begin to scale back his productions and gravitate towards a sparer sound.




i'm having trouble uploading this to mediafire, so here's a link from "psych spaniolos" blog

http://rapidshare.com/files/99056338/Donovan_-_The_Hurdy_Gurdy_Man.rar.html

DONOVAN..."SUNSHINE SUPERMAN"

and yet another donovan album (because i'm verging on proselytism). "sunshine superman" was donovan's first album to escape the foul cloud of accusations that he was a talentless, desalinated dylan imitator. it is pronouncedly more psychedelic than either the beatles or dylan, more inflected with the spell of eastern ragas and ascending sitars than harrison's compositions for "revolver." obviously the title track is the most well-known of nearly all donovan's wonderful songs, and i can't dispute nor mitigate its perfection; fortunately he's written songs that actually surpass "sunshine superman," and several of them appear on this album.



"season of the witch," much like most of donovan's songs, is irremediably strange and possessed of a rather pliant meaning - as to what it or anything else here or elsewhere means, i have no idea; "season of the witch" has a terrifically bare atmosphere that seems to swell from the its interior, bursting like a collapsed star.

here's my favorite song from the album:



download "sunshine superman"

http://www.sendspace.com/file/0e1stv

DONOVAN..."A GIFT FROM A FLOWER TO A GARDEN"

in the unlikely event there was any lingering doubt, donovan leitch is among the higher echelons of singer/songwriters from the 60s, an insuperable presence whose work is largely left to fritter to waste in the dustbins and gutters of history, generally written off as a novelty with songs like "mellow yellow" and "sunshine superman."



today is reserved for the preservation and laurels of donovan, whose career and legacy have been stigmatized by the "dylan-lite" tag that followed him throughout the 60s. there is a tremendous line of demarcation between dylan and donovan, and the existent dissimilarities are so obvious as to seem self-evident; dylan's music is substantially void of whimsy, noticeably more rife with political and literary allusions, and his instrumentation is much more deeply rooted in old black music, rock and roll, etc. dylan electrified and personalized his own kind of rock and roll, mercifully brought surrealism to popular lyricism, but never strayed too deeply from his musical influences. donovan's music is exceptionally more trippy, more aesthetically psychedelic and otherworldly (though never forsaking his childish impulses).



the first album that's posted here is "a gift from a flower to a garden," a double album that is obscured by donovan's hit singles that preceded and succeeded this effort. the record is split into two distinct halves, with the first album ("wear your love like heaven") more musically built around electric instrumentation, organs and percussion. the second part of the album is more sparingly composed, relying entirely on acoustic guitars and a few intermittent flutes. the second portion of the double-set is intended to be a children's record of some kind, though it does retain appeal for adults who aren't impossibly jaded as well.



of the two i'm more closely aligned with the first record, but its counterpart doesn't disappoint, necessarily, it's just different from the more trippy, pop-oriented approach of the first.


download donovan's "gift from a flower to a garden"

http://www.zshare.net/download/5316215817afe9e7/

TALK TALK..."SPIRIT OF EDEN"

slow, submerged english music to which you can ably sit around and decay on a late night. their last album "laughing stock" is usually subject to most of the laurels and praise, but this one is every bit as good (some nights i enjoy it slightly more). if all you remember of Talk Talk is their single (later covered by no doubt) "it's my life," this will be an alarming surprise, as it has virtually none of the qualities that distinguish the early incarnation of the band.

this is a vinyl rip that i picked up off the terrific blog holyfuckingshit40000, in two parts. well worth a listen.

talk talk "spirit of eden"

part 1
http://lix.in/-7e5d8c

part 2
http://lix.in/-76bc71

beautiful.

GUIDED BY VOICES..."VAMPIRE ON TITUS"

"vampire on titus" contains the most abrasive, penetrative and hostile fidelity of any of the early gbv recordings. i would make a casual guess and say that i listened to it nearly 10 times before anything remotely appealing began to emerge from the density and fog of tape hiss, feedback and oddly-mixed vocals; now it's among my favorite guided by voices albums, so what the hell do i know? the album also contains some of the more puzzling and strange songs that robert pollard has ever written, and at what point that statement becomes a hyperbole - i simply don't know. you never know, try it out - it certainly has its out sound to it, however unpleasant it appears at first.





download "vampire on titus"

http://www.sendspace.com/file/w2j42i

HALF JAPANESE..."OUR SOLAR SYSTEM"

this isn't the most representative song of the album, but it remains the sole track from this album available on youtube.



"our solar system" is the third half japanese album, following shortly after the release of the "horrible" e.p. brothers david and jad fair created their own little musical universe, requiring little to no musical knowledge or technique, singing songs about sexual frustration and their collective inability to understand girls. half japanese is one of my favorite groups, and "our solar system" is just slightly behind "sing no evil" as my favorite record in their career. their early music had an astounding lack of concern for listenability, but it is among the most passionately made music i've ever heard. synthesizing a sound that was itinerant, deprived of an attention span, and sounding something like a even more cacophonous and nebbish version of DNA (with saxophones too!), their early music was typified by an almost free jazz approach to composition (no doubt to compensate for their absence of traditional talent). "sing no evil" is certainly a better record from the perspective of songwriting, production and performance, but the atmosphere and manic quality of this album hits me straight the chest. "girl athletes," "danger rachel lang," because i love you," "classical music," "electricity respect" and "esp" are the epitomization of this early style. i'm not as enamored of their later work (after the two subsequent albums, "sing no evil" and "music to strip by"), as jad became the sole focus of the group, emphasizing a bizarre sentimentality to the songs in later albums that went so far as to tame their sound and turn down the saxophones and feedback. jad went on to record an album with daniel johnston as well, though i've never quite had a taste for it. jad is comparable to johnston in a way, how both of their early work was much more visceral and unique, while their later work became subject to an almost uncomfortable sentimentality, victim to repetition and the dreaded "cute and misunderstood weirdo artist" category. jad still puts out good stuff periodically, and if you send him a check he'll personally write you a song. there's a terrific documentary on half japanese called "the band who would be king" that's available on youtube that is well worth the time to watch.

download "our solar system"

1. dance when i say dance
http://www.mediafire.com/?ejngmywxjwx
2. girl athletes
http://www.mediafire.com/?zkwnzae3kjm
3. because i love you
http://www.mediafire.com/?ltyjhdzmjkd
4.danger danger rachel lang
http://www.mediafire.com/?zogyn2mmihe
5.esp
http://www.mediafire.com/?5jfgt2wgdqm
6. classical music
http://www.mediafire.com/?n1iz4zbtjjj
7. you're gonna miss me
http://www.mediafire.com/?qzgm3qmm3hz
8. little girls have to be home early
http://www.mediafire.com/?nqmjincty0o
9. too much adrenaline
http://www.mediafire.com/?jxnmfnazd5o
10. fire to burn
http://www.mediafire.com/?nhwieommc2n
11. rhonda
http://www.mediafire.com/?ymmjaj3yuxy
12. electricity respect
http://www.mediafire.com/?jkiwzoowz1n
13. knocked down on the dance floor
http://www.mediafire.com/?mbrtu5t3kmb
14. european son
http://www.mediafire.com/?nzxauenwmfm
15. there's a girl
http://www.mediafire.com/?mjzmdymulvm
16. hall of mountain king/ louie louie
http://www.mediafire.com/?uydjghymnyy
17. young hearts break
http://www.mediafire.com/?tzyndyczyxc
18. did you miss me
http://www.mediafire.com/?zzim4dt2jod