Saturday 20 June 2015

áPolók - Kondásdiszkó -1998- (Cassette, Bahia), Hungary


After this very early material of áPolók (The Nurses) I posted about a year ago, here is a later release by these Hungarian musical cultfreaks from the city of Miskolc. The title of the cassette refers with the word 'Kondás' to an old Hungarian swineherd. So the title basically means "Pigmansdisco", which is very very Hungarian.

áPolók are not to be caught in some type of musical genre, they exceed the borders of music types so much that sometimes you have no clue how to pinpoint them. The music ranges, depending on the release, from punk to RIO to Techno. Kondásdiszkó is basically áPolók's satirical take on the new digital era when the first computer programs to make music became available for the masses. It's a totally absurd collage of video game music moving into proggy soundtrack quirkiness through bad equipment genius reminiscent of Japanese nineties dada 8-bit fuckery acts of Boredoms-minded weirdness.

One of the songs is called Török Ádám who is the frontman and flutist of one of Hungary's well known jazz and fusion bands Mini from the seventies. They named the song after him because their track happened to get into similar sounding realms. There is always a lot of intricate mockery within the Hungarian (music) culture present in the music of áPolók.

This is a very psychotic, yet amazing recording that ultimately makes your head explode. Moreover it's excellent music to accompany you during this summer. Get this next piece of the áPolók puzzle and great cassette from Hungary's underground now! Oh yeah, and the cassette inlay tells us not to put this tape into a CD-player or computer.

HERE



Update on Archaic Conventions (my other blog!):

Unfortunately I don't find the time to upload nice rarities or other weird releases and also write about them next to this blog. Therefore I will just start to upload that stuff to my Youtube Channel. This way I can uncover a lot more weird stuff while maybe write a line or two about it in the description box. If you need the file, just write me a message.

So if you haven't subscribed yet you can do it here.

Thanks - Bence

Tuesday 9 June 2015

Various Artists - Fragment 1 -1984- (Cassette, Eksakt 011), Netherlands


So my friend Kim and I were looking for records here in Amsterdam on Queen's Day (actually called King's Day now), which is a Dutch festivity taking place at the end of april to celebrate the monarchy in a very commercial format which is quite absurd in itself. The only positive thing is that the whole city turns into a huge flea market and everyone is aloud to sell their second hand stuff in front of their house door. By accident we stumbled upon a shoebox full of old home-taping cassette releases from the end of the seventies and early eighties (we could not believe its content!). Some of those tapes are available on the net, whilst others are quite obscure and will be posted on the blog (it actually started with last post already).

Eksakt Records hailed from the Dutch city of Tilburg and was part of the Dutch home-taping scene but also incorporated more jazz and ethnic types of music into a new wave paradigm. Some of their best releases consisted o.a. of Dutch group Nieuw Hip Stilen and French act Ptôse. Actually Eksakt was one of the more interesting labels from the Dutch eighties because of the blurring of musical borders, combining DIY attitude with musicians with a conservatory background and an interest in less attention targeted foreign countries.

They also published a couple cassette compilations to showcase their releases together with music of their own taste. This first fragment compilation was their first endeavour doing this. It comes with a screen-printed artwork with cartoon-dogs on it. Featured on this compilation are ethnographic recordings from Samoa as well as Tilburg based Post-Punk group Exploiting The Prophets, Amsterdam based Moluccan percussionist Zeth Mustamu and Dutch impro-jazz saxophonist Paul van Kemenade. Also on here is Ptôse and half Half Japanese musician Jad Fair. The whole is held together by excerpts by Peer Raben, who created numerous soundtracks for New German Cinema enfant terrible director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Actually most songs are taken from real releases by all these artists but as a compilation it makes it worth it anyway.

The second Fragment cassette will follow soon. On the artwork it says that you have to use noise reduction to listen to this. Unfortunately (or luckily) I don't have that on my cassette deck, so quite some white noise is apparent. Make sure you find your way into the whole Eksakt Records catalogue, because there is lots of interesting stuff!

Get it HERE