KEITH WEEK 36

MIMS is very excited to announce the launch of a brand new sister-label at Olindo Records, Música Infinita, with its inaugural release, ‘The Message’ by Gerry Weil - an overlooked cornerstone of Venezuelan jazz, greatly influenced by ‘Bitches Brew’ era Miles, Hendrix, Tower of Power and fusion of jazz and rock. Listen to the anthemic title track in full here first. Safe to say it’s pretty heavy!

‘The Message’ is packed with raw funk grooves, big band horns, and Gerry’s gravelly Waitsian vocals. Remastered with love by Frank Merritt at The Carvery, this limited edition features brand new artwork and an extensive interview with Gerry. 

In 1969 Miles Davis put the world on notice with “Bitches Brew”; a bold statement that broke every pre-conceived notion people had about jazz and music in general up to that point. Taking this as inspiration, Gerry Weil decided to emulate Miles in 1971, but on Caribbean soil, gathering a dream team of 15 Venezuelan musicians, most of which went on to become renowned bandleaders in their own right, to record an avant-garde album that would later turn into a coveted item amongst record collectors. 

Title track “The Message”, is a sort of funky anthem or mantra that describes Gerry Weil’s attitude towards life. Its lyrics describe the way “squares” reacted against hippies in the 70s when “all we want to give you is a little bit of love”.

Arriving in Venezuela from Austria as a 17 year old in 1957, Gerry has become one of the most influential musicians his adopted country has ever seen. His compositions are now part of the repertoire of Venezuelan jazz standards, but perhaps more importantly, Gerry’s career in music education has seen him impart his music theory and piano teachings to at least three generations of musicians. Still active at the age of 81, Gerry is a living legend and a true testament to perseverance through music. 

‘The Message’ by Gerry Weil will be released on January 15 2021 on Música Infinita, sister-label to Olindo Records, home to Waaju and Raúl Monsalve y los Forajidos, focused on lost gems from Venezuela and beyond. It’s Bandcamp Friday this week, so if you’re feeling this, it’s the best time to support!

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Exclusive Premiere: Gerry Weil "The Message" (Forthcoming on Música Infinita)

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Oz Echoes: DIY Cassettes and Archives 1980​-​1989 out March 26  http://bit.ly/OzEchoes

Oz Echoes peels away another layer of Australia’s ‘80s DIY hive mind. The Oz Waves successor exposes a deeper circuit of micro-run cassettes, community radio archives and irrationally abandoned studio sessions, as Steele Bonus sequences a 10-track compendium of drone pop, psyche-electronics and agitated tape cut-ups.

From the Sydney cassette network, The Horse He's Sick returns with an industrial car crash, alongside Wrong Kind of Stone Age’s pagan cacophony and primal riddims. M Squared dynamo Patrick Gibson appears in both Height/Dismay and Mr Knott, his respective studio-as-an-instrument collaborations with Dru Jones (Scattered Order) and ex-Slugfucker Gordon Renouf - the former’s worn out apparition hails from an instantly deleted 1981 7”, while Mr Knott entrust one of the compilation’s five previously unreleased tracks.

Matt Mawson represents Brisbane music media-printed matter collective ZIP, as Adelaide’s Three D Radio grants access to their vaults of live-to-air recordings and aspiring demo submissions, rescuing the slap-happy punk-funk of The Frenzied Bricks and Jandy Rainbow’s prodigious beginnings in Les Trois Etrangers and Aeroplane Footsteps. Synchronously in Melbourne, Ash Wednesday (Karen Marks, The Metronomes) leads Modern Jazz’ improvised proto-techno and EBM pioneers Shanghai Au Go-Go home record their sardonic synth-wave.

A cherry-picked cast of unusual suspects, Oz Echoes’ unfamed artist and non-band narratives are detailed by track-by-track liner notes with rarely published archival visions and artwork from Video Synth, prompting further rabbit hole ventures into this golden era of creative risk-taking and instant action.

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