Supermax - Types of Skin & Meets the Almighty

AGH! Crazy time of year for me. Forgot what it was like to be a student again, then tax season came along. Here's another bit I've nabbed over time, between projects and class I haven't had time to rip anything new. That said, I'll not do you wrong. Lordy.

CD rip of two albums of disco-style funk-punk-rock-whatever. Imagine the Talking Heads around this period, except not afraid either of rocking hard or laying down some proper dance shit. Like Nat Glover (Kid Creole) but freaked like Damião (pick your spelling, I've no idea) doing house. It's not P-Funk, but it could fit in the pantheon. I wouldn't be even remotely surprised if it was produced by Bill Laswell (check this though it's probably on this blog somewhere since I ripped my copy long ago).

Shit, don't take my word for it.



Supermax - Types of Skin & Meets the Almighty (1980/81)

Mandrill - Mandrill Is...

Mandrill - Mandrill Is... (1972)

Wild funk, fucked fusion, acid soul. This record easily places among the most impressive achievements of the era, ranging from Sly-style soul-funk (Ape is High), JBs doling out the hard-edge shit (Git it All), to straight up acid narrative tracks (the eminently samplable Universal Rhythms) and psych ballads (Central Park). Hell, forget Universal Rhythms, the whole album is chock full of great breaks and instrumental compositions worthy of breaking out the old MPC. This record is certainly a production of its' time, but only more amazing for it. Honestly, best suited to headphones and a couple of rips rather than dropping at a party. There's a lot here to enjoy, give it your best attention & enjoy.

I have this LP, but as I recall this particular rip was one I found on a now defunct blog (that one with four different interconnected blogs I can't remember the name of anymore). The quality is roughly equal to my own rips, but starting in the next week or two I'll finally have myself set up once again to rip records. I've got a grip of house singles, a couple of mix records, and a few LPs. Added to that, I've spent the last few days getting my old MP3 collection transferred from my several old hard drives to my new dual 1.5tb external mirror raid setup, so I've got a few hundred tidbits to share. Stay tuned...

One Plus One - 1+1 EP

Four track EP from this obscure (only one mention of them on the internet and a track on a discogs comp) NJ minimal synth duo, featuring a synthy cover of 'Time Has Come Today' and three other synth rock tracks. Reminds me a little of Nash the Slash without the virtuosity and much more of a punk edge to it. To guess, that's an 808 and a pro one or minimoog, alongside some guitar and bass. Enjoy.

One Plus One - 1+1 EP

The Passage - Degenerates

Second LP of the night, highly literate english synth-pop from The Passage. First track is one of my favorites of the genre, 'XOYO' is a paean to gender & sexual equality and features some of the lushest synth work I've ever heard. That synth work carries on through the rest of the album, and should strike a chord with both minimal synth fans and fans of more grandiose works (Schulze, for example, or the various albums I've posted in the past). 'Fleck', for example, is a mean little song with a couple of aggro little monosynth basslines, while '(Ourselves)' is a bit like Vangelis-gone-synthpop. Punky up-tempo synth lines and intelligent lyrics found here in spades. Enjoy.

The Passage - Degenerates (1982)

Omar Khorshid - Rhythms From The Orient

Omar Khorshid - Rhythms From The Orient

This one's been tossed around on a few blogs but it's tough to track down since most of them have gone down over the years. Khorshid was the greatest guitarist of Lebanese descent in my opinion, even including Dick Dale. Listen to this album and you'll see what I mean. I posted an old tape rip I had of his tribute to Oum Kalsoum as my first post on this blog, but nothing I've ever heard of his other work compares to this. An extremely limited range of comparison, since his LPs go for about $50 on ebay and I've never been able to find rips of them anywhere and his catalog is totally out of print aside from bootlegs. which you can only track down if you read arabic. Believe me, I've tried. Everyone should hear this.