Ground Zero – "Plays Standards" (Nani Records – NCD-201) 1997

There was something about the Nineties that were distasteful in the upmost. Digital recording and the CD's themselves were primarily culpable. The silence of the silences were disconcerting,as was the fact that if you scratched a CD it was fucked instead of just making a click like vinyl did. Also because of the longer running time, the advent of the 80 minute track infiltrated the avant-garde, with albums that never seemed to fucking end. Then we had 'Sampling'......oh gawwd.....from bedroom dwellers with impeccable record collections,and even worse, impeccable taste!

Tony Wilson once said that the kids in Manchester had the best record collections....wrong.....The Japanese did,and its all here on Ground Zero's "Plays Standards CD", which at least keeps the duration down to a manageable 70 minutes.

I hated all this pop music culture in a perfectly recorded raspberry smoothie thang at the time, where the DJ became the centre of attention simply because he had a bunch of jazz records under his arm, and a fucking AKAI sampler in his bedroom.....as we all did in 1997.

Admittedly, the art of scratching or Turntablism can be quite impressive,and in the hands of the correct person, a creative tool. Otomo Yoshihidi could be said to be one of them? Mostly DJ's wanted to thought of as musicians(they aren't!),but here's one very accomplished musician who seemed to want to be a DJ!? 

No-one's ever happy at doing what they're good at are they? 

Although very guilty of the 80 minute long album track when 40 minutes is the limit of an average human attention span, Otomo was the world champ at eclecticism. Everything including several Kitchen sinks were thrown into his digital collages, and all done, with, obviously, thee most impeccable, "taste?";.......like an avant-garde Kenny Everett as the Cupid Stunt of post club art gallery aural aestheticism .

But, alas, as I'm now now also an aging Stunt, i kinda like this stuff in a nostalgic kinda way.....there are, however,some splendid moments of Free improvisation on this rather entertaining album.....and it is, ALL, done in the best possible taste.....YUK!

Those definitely weren't the days, but no-ones doing it nowadays,so it don't give one an 'eadache no more.

The sad thing is I ripped and sold all my vinyl in 2001/2 (see cupid stunt again?) to finance a house purchase.The funniest bit is that now i'm buying it all back with my new trendy turntables....yep plural.

So,I'd better buy my AKAI sampler back too i suppose?

 

Tracklist:

1.El Derecho De Vivir En Paz + Shinoshin 3/4
2.Ultra Q
3.Those Were The Days
4.Folhas Secas
5.Washington Post March + Japan Dissolution
6.Akashai No Ame Ga Yamu Toki
7.Bones
8.Where Is The Police? + The Bath Of Surprise
9.Miagetegoran, Yoru No Hoshi Wo
10.Yume No Hansyu
11.Die Pappel Vom Karlplatz
12.A Better Tomorrow + I Say A Little Prayer (Roland Kirk Version)

DOWNLOAD in the standard way HERE!

Otomo Yoshihide (大友良英) – "Early Works I '81~'85" (Maboroshi No Sekai – P…0010) 1994

Back in the early eighties,guitarist and musicology student,Otomo Yoshihide, decided to dump his conventional music career after discovering free jazz and free improvisation musicians like Derek Bailey, saxophonist Kaoru Abe and guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi (from whom he had lessons).

As great as his influences were,Otomo had rather more strings to his bow than his heroes,using virtually anything he could lay his hands on,notably an early exponent of 'Turntablism",and sampling. In his hands the Turntable and,later, the sampler, would not be as cliched and unimaginative as most of his contemporaries would make them sound.He would go on to make dozens of albums which sounded largely completely different to each other...unlike Abe Kaoru and Takayanagi,his mentor in chief.

Here's a collection of Otomo's early experiments with tapes,electrified springs,turntables,radio's mixed with some obligatory free sax and guitar improvisation.

Tracklist:

A1 Religion-4
B1 Guitar Solo Improvisation
B2 Religion-3
B3 Sax Of A Kind + PB Radio '84
B4 Religion-1
B5 Religion-2
B6 NS-500

DOWNLOAD  what religion's 4 HERE!

Dennis Duck ‎– "Dennis Duck Goes Disco" (Los Angeles Free Music Society ‎– LAFMS#2425) 1977

Dennis Duck, drummer with the Doo-Dooettes (fuck me, he was also in the incredibly normal Dream Syndicate?!) invents turntable-ism, plunderphonics, and sampling in 1977.Probably pushing it a little bit,but there are elements to this cassette release that were unique to Dennis Duck(Dennis Mehaffey) before ,and including ,that great watershed year. TheResidents did similar things pre '77,not strictly sampling ,but this is twenty years before Plunderphonia had a name.Not to mention, Holgar Czukay and Rolf Dammers experiments in found sound from the late sixties.The extensive use of a turntable pre dates Hip-Hop's abuse of said tool,by a good four or five years however.

Incredibly inventive, this tape doesn't lack a sense of humour. The Disco in the title, obviously refers to the abuse of vinyl discs rather than anything to do with the biggest selling musical craze of 1977. All the tricks are used, 78,45,33,and 16 rpm, using the cueing lever to create repetitive lock grooves; random stylus placing;mixing two decks together; all this utilising a stack load of unwanted thrift store records,which would have been mega cheap in 1977, but are now worth a small fortune; like this cassette?

Tracklist:

A1	Intro
A2	Do The Fence
A3	4xie
A4	Nice Shave
A5	French Numbers
A6	Chatter-Walk
A7	Miracle-Zone
A8	One O'Clock Jump
A9	Outro
B1	The Pants! Story
B2	All Skate
B3	Fan Club
B4	Bediboop

DOWNLOAD some disco music to sit down to HERE!