I love this one so much ... tear inducing in its beauty ... awesome

You’ll probably know Yoshimi P-We as a core member of that great Japanese institution Boredoms and as the subject of Flaming Lips’ ode in her honour, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. You may also know that in 1997 she formed a fake band called OOIOO to open for Sonic Youth, complete with stickers on frets to remind them where to play. From those theatrical beginnings, Yoshimi has honed OOIOO into a pristine rhythmic machine of thunderous beats, infectious chants, call and response vocals and what can genuinely be described as transcendent music.
Like all her work with Boredoms, OOIOO record and perform in a way that is always a spectacle, both visually and musically, and is driven by the power of the rhythms the collective so powerfully summon, “with songs that sometimes evoke fusion-era Miles Davis, Konono No.1, and the European prog-rock band Gong within the same five minutes” (Pitchfork)

Gamel

OOIOO - Gamel Uma Umo

Hard Normal Daddy

Beep Street

The Walkmen - Heaven

Wild Nothing - Shadow

Rimar - Tonight:Mornings Into Forever

Chas

Soundway present a slice of raw Trinidad carnival roots with a progressive twist, courtesy of one of the islands most original and forward thinking musical minds of the post war period. On the flip highlife-techno pioneer DrumTalk morphs it into a dark and twisted electro-tropical groove dripping with rolling distorted synth-lines and filtered vocals.

Lancelot Layne was born and raised in Gonzales, Trinidad - a village near Port of Spain. He was one of the most respected of Trinidad’s late 20th century musicians - playing shows and giving lectures at music institutions and universities across the globe. Layne’s travels took him to Africa many times and he incorporated many aspects of highlife and other African rhythms into his music. Layne’s impact on the Trinidadian sound was huge and most credit him as being the originator of rapso - a uniquely Trinidadian sound often described as a fusion of Trinidadian soca and American hip-hop that grew out of the unrest of the1970s. Not unlike a Caribbean version of Gil Scott Heron, Layne’s early recordings  were way ahead of their time mixing social commentary with calypso, Africanism and an upfront lyrical style.

DrumTalk is a producer and DJ from Clapton, East London, fast becoming a leading light in the tropical remix scene. Equal parts techno, house, highlife and soukous, his music sits on the fault-line between the nightlife of East London and the sounds and rhythms of South and West Africa.

A1: Carnival Drum Song – Lancelot Layne 
B1: Carnival Drum Song – Lancelot Layne (DrumTalk remix) 



Carnival Drum Song - Lancelot Layne (DrumTalk remix)

Bogota’s Meridian Brothers release their delightfully surreal and playful album ‘Deseperanza’ on 24th September on Soundway Records. Traditional instruments, electronics and distorted vocals are dragged through an array of influences to create a world that is as original as it is unclassifiable. 

Straddling the line between new and old, Meridian Brothers’ mischievous blend of Latin rhythms and psychedelic grooves is the creation of Eblis Álvarez, one of the key figures of the experimental music scene in Bogota. As with all of the Meridian Brother’s releases, every instrument on ‘Deseperanza’ was played and recorded by Eblis himself.

A true avant-garde guitar player and composer he also plays in Mario Galeano’s band Frente Cumbiero and was one of the 42 musicians involved in the recording of Ondatrópica, released this summer through Soundway Records.

Meridian Brothers started back in 1998 with Eblis experimenting with alternative ways of playing instruments and electronic media. Heavily influenced by Latin rock (Argentinian in particular) these early recordings were distributed by cassette on the underground music market in Bogota. It was in 1999, after joining Mario Galeano’s Ensamble Polifónico Vallenato that Eblis first became interested in the tropical music of Colombia and began working these new influences it in to the Meridian Brothers. 

Another key period is his development was his time spent in Denmark at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and the DIEM (Danish Institute of Electronic Music). It was during this stage Eblis started using more sophisticated and intricate techniques in both electronics and signal processing. 

Eblis returned to Bogota in 2008, joining a burgeoning music scene with cumbia, salsa and currulao all being explored by a new generation of Colombian musicians. 2009’s "Meridian Brothers VI” goes deep into tropical sounds of the 60s and 70s in Colombia and integrates other influences such as highlife, Ethiopian music, surf and Peruvian and Colombian cumbia.

It was around this stage that Meridian Brothers made their first appearances as a live band with Damien Ponce (Percussion), Maria Valencia (clarinet, saxophone and synthesizers), Alejandro Forero (Keyboards), Cesar Quevedo (bass) and Eblis Alvarez (vocals, guitar and electronics). 

In 2011 "Meridian Brothers VII" was released. The sound of this album returns to Latin American rock influences as well as champeta experiments, jazz, cumbia and tropical. Distorted sounds, electronic changes in voice, obscure surf guitar and randomly changed sampled percussion all collide head on. Two tracks from this record were released on 7” by New York label Names You Can Trust in 2012. 

Which bring us to ‘Desesperanza’ (meaning hopelessness in English) Recorded in 2012 the album is dedicated exclusively to salsa and tropical music, twisting it through a dark and theatrical soundscape but never abandoning the traditional aesthetics. 

A real musical maverick, labelled a genius by his contemporaries in Colombia, Eblis Álvarez’s latest Meridian Brothers album finally gets a full, worldwide release. 


Chas

Noah Hampson

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