Juan Carlos Nuñez y José Ignacio Cabrujas - Same -1980- (LP, Private Pressing), Venezuela

This record here is a contemporary composed avant-garde album from Venezuela. It was created by one of Venezuela's most important modern composers Juan Carlos Nuñez and the famous playwright and one of Latin America's most important telenovela writers José Ignacio Cabrujas. Among Cabrujas' work are soap opera adaptations for the famous Venezuelan novels Doña Bárbara and Canaima written by Venezuelan writer (and once president) Rómulo Gallegos. It's interesting that men so famous created this pretty unconventional musical piece. During this album Nuñez leads the orchestra and plays the piano and synthesizer, whilst Cabrujas wrote the lyrics.

The album is a thematic homage to the city Caracas and showcases a combination of spoken word poetry, modern composed pieces, latin motives and invocative sound impressions. Some of the pieces contain Venezuelan instruments like the cuatro. It sheds light in an impressionistic and unconventional way on the daily life of Caracas but also shows its profound depth and the serenity that lives underneath the city's hectic character. Ofcourse this particular feeling lives on in today's Caracas as well.

The first side is a bit crackly, but this is quite impossible to find in any condition I'd say, mainly because of its limited copies.

Get it HERE

Unknown Artist - White Dove -1980's- (Cassingle, Ding Dong Disk), Netherlands

This here is a very obscure cassette single from the early eighties on the legendary Dutch minimal synth and home-taping label Ding Dong. Ding Dong was from the city of Arnhem and was created by Van Kaye & Ignit. It had acts like Bene Gesserit, Legendary Pink Dots, André de Saint-Obin o.a. on it and published some legendary compilations like Turkish Delight.

The band on this cassette is totally unkown to me, but it contains two versions of the track White Dove, one with vocals and an instrumental version (which I like even better).The song is a great fuzzy synth wave track with some nice non-electric percussion. The instrumental version ends with a humoristic sketch in Dutch which was apparently recorded at the beach of Zandvoort.

It might have been an unreleased demo of some sort. The cover art seems to be a cut-up of André de Saint-Obin's Sound on Sound tape. Maybe he is related to this release? Who knows?

Get it HERE

VA - Risonanze/2 - Evocazioni Musicali di Temi Biblici -1979- (Tape, Edizione Paoline), Italy

This cassette is a compilation of some of our favorite Italian composers (some of them were part of  Il Gruppo Nueva Consonanza): Egisto Macchi, Ennio Morricone, Giorgio Carnini, Alessandro Alessandroni, Sandro Brugnolini and Miriam Bordoni. Some of these composers are known for creating soundtrack and library music for great Italian (B-)movies from the sixties and seventies.This time a set of songs based on biblical themes was put together by papal record label Paoline which still exists today. So what exactly happened here?

Risonanze was a series of three based on biblical themes that came out both on cassette and vinyl. I think most of the songs existed before on other library records or albums by these composers. But somehow they got compiled together on this series to resemble biblical subjects and notions placed in a religious framework. Surely these recordings are older than 1979, but this cassette apparently came out late seventies (or at least the record according to Discogs).

It almost feels like this series was published as souvenirs from Vatican City or as some sort of religious paraphernalia just like a small statue or postcard. In any case, this series contains beautiful music and does create a sacral and sometimes serene atmosphere, although it also goes into freaky psychedelic music sometimes. Furthermore I know that during the early seventies lots of Italian records with a Christian concept leaning towards prog-rock, electronic music or folky stuff came out. If someone could point me out to some of the more interesting ones I'd be very happy.

Sadly we don't have the first volume of the series, but volume three will follow shortly! Stay tuned!

Get it HERE

Donated by Kim