Angel Rada - Solar Concert For Bhagavan -1985- (LP, Uraniun Records), Venezuela

Angel Rada is a mythical Venezuelan master of electronics. He is one of the only people from his country to create electronic music since the seventies. He even played in some of the best psychedelic groups from the sixties in Venezuela like (The) Gas Light (great name for a Venezuelan group). As a sonology student he went to study in Germany where he got acquainted with the Kosmische Krautrock legends from that time like Ash Ra and Klaus Schulze. Shortly after he produced the legendary first album Upadesa (please listen to that masterpiece).

This was Angel Rada's third album and as the title tells us it's a concert for Bhagavan. This is very much overlooked and put in the realms of New Age electronical music. The cover doesn't uncover the musical beauty that is hidden on this vinyl. Sure it could be viewed as an early example of New Age music but it totally exceeds that genre. What's present here is a tropical electronic masterpiece.

The music is based upon analog synthesizers and even energetic drum computers. It sounds like Sun Ra jamming along on one of the more cosmic songs of NDW legends Stratis/39 Eyes while the studio engineer was Innovative Communications' Clara Mondshine all set in the Caribbean. But ofcourse, Angel Rada is one of a kind and doesn't sound like any other artist. He has found a way to blend the Venezuelan feeling into beautiful pieces of electronic music in which a lot of emotions are invoked. The first two tracks are combined into a cosmic piece in which cosmic melodies suddenly start to interact with an analog drumbeat elevating the song into cosmic dance music. The song Pegasus (Night Flight Over Tokyo) is an example of pure emotion through cold analog machines.In the third song called I Ching the poem I King by Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges is recited in Spanish over cosmic synthesizer music accompanied by a vocoder. This is an overlooked South American masterpiece.

¡Señor Rada! ¡Usted es grande! ¡Muchisimas Gracias!

Highly Recommended

HERE

Various Artists - Magyar Elektronikus Zene - Hungarian Electronic Music -1979- (LP, Hungaroton), Hungary

This is one of Hungary's greatest compilations of electronic avant-garde music together with this one which I will post later if it's not around somewhere. There are five Hungarian composers of electronic music present here: Zoltán Pongracz, Péter Eötvös, Iván Patachich and a combined piece by Máté Victor and Péter Winkler. A great piece on here is "Mese", meaning fairy tale, in which the sentence Egyszer volt, hol nem volt, meaning Once upon a time - the classic opening line of a fairy tale - is being processed looped and cut-up.

As you can guess electronic music from behind the iron curtain is quite an obscure thing. Nevertheless, many composers from the countries of the ex-eastern bloc had the possibility to travel to the west so they could study with people like Karlheinz Stockhausen or others. Usually these things were considered legitimate in the name of science, academy or high art. Also almost every big city in Eastern Europe had an experimental radio or television station studio in which they experimented with sound. From Warsaw to Bratislava to Beograd they all had their own kind of Radiophonic Workshop. Loads of cool Hungarian modern composed avant-garde stuff here.

This record has been uploaded to youtube, but has less than a hundred views and my copy happened to be in slightly better condition. This blog may lose a bit of its orthodoxy just to be able to keep on going with new material. Sometimes it might be available somewhere, but as a worse rip or practically not to be found. I will post some of these recordings by doing my own rips and I will shed my own light on those releases.

Get it HERE

Misha Mengelberg - Pech Onderweg -1978- (LP, BVHaast 016), Netherlands

Misha Mengelberg is a Ukranian born renowned Dutch pianist, composer and Fluxus artist. He is one of the key figures in  Dutch improvisation music and free-jazz. He founded the ICP (Instant Composers Pool) Orchestra together with Dutch jazz musicians Willem Breuker and Han Bennink. Mengelberg has played with all of the important impro musicians of the world like Steve Lacy, Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton and many more. He has been featured on hundreds of recordings.

Pech Onderweg, Trouble on The Road (actually trouble on the way) is a solo album of Mengelberg which came out on Willem Breuker's BVHaast label. This label became one of the key labels for Dutch jazz and impro music during the seventies and eighties. This is a very nice solo endeavour showing his improvisational skills and absurd humor in the titles of the songs.The ICP and BVHaast legacy might uncover the very essense of the good side to being Dutch. You can watch the ICP video below to get an idea. And Misha Mengelberg is starring in it.

Get Pech Onderweg HERE

New Blog: Archaic Conventions

Hello everyone ! ! !

I started this blog thinking of putting together something focusing on the best forgotten underground experimental, avant-garde music etc. in existence inspired by all the other great blogs. Though I also liked to share different types of things. It's hard for me to constantly find new material for this blog, but I love to  share things. I really enjoy putting effort in all posts so I want to share much more. Now I have finally created the ultimate counterpart to this blog: Archaic Conventions.

This blog is dedicated to oddities and rarities I find through travelling (or staying at home). I'm always on the lookout for records of a special nature. Everything that for some reason doesn’t fit in Archaic Inventions will be presented there. Ofcourse as an obsessive record collector something is fundamentally wrong with you and you look for all types of special and weird releases. Through these mental difficiencies I started to collect medical records, animal sounds, advertisement music and more.

On Archaic Conventions I will post all kinds of records. Sometimes because of their high cultural value, sometimes deviancy or because of a what the fuck this cannot exist factor. Expect a collage of releases ranging from Latin American music made in Eastern Europe, advertisements, Exotica to Jazz, Folk, Nueva Canción, wacked out Easy Listening, political oddities, medical records and beyond. Some things will  actually be very good musically, other recordings will be utterly weird or cheesy. Some things can’t even be considered music. The new blog is a combination between great music I need to rescue from the past not suitable for this blog and a historical perspective on vinyl as a medium for sound. There will be no consistency of styles. I aim for one big unusual mosaic of releases from all over the world and just like this blog: none of the material is to be found on the internet and it's out of print for a long time.

The most remarkable songs or recordings of the new blog will also be posted on the Archaic Inventions Youtube Channel so that channel will change its consistency of material, becoming a channel for all kinds of things which shouldn't bother you too much. It might work better anyway by enhancing its versatility.

As for this blog: everything will continue as you're used to. New posts will be up shortly and I just have to hope I won't run out of things. Though I don't mind the slow pace.

Check out the new blog HERE!

Bence - Archaic Inventions 

Harry Sparnaay - Ladder of Escape -1986- (LP, Attacca), Netherlands

Next stop is another modern composed record by Dutch bass clarinetist Harry Sparnaay. Ladder of Escape consists of six compositions for bass clarinet by composers from all over the world. There is a Korean, Dutch, two Australian, American and a Spanish composer present on this record. An earlier Sparnaay album on this blog can be found here.

Ladder of Escape is a kind of metaphor for the way in which Sparnaay helped to promote and free the bass clarinet of its conservative and dull image. Ladder of Escape is also a piece on here dedicated to the memory of Spanish Catalan painter and artist Joan Miró. Most of the compositions are solo pieces on the bass clarinet. The composition I uploaded below is a long piece called For Bass Clarinet and Tape composed by Australian composer Martin Wesley-Smith. It has a hectic almost RIO or Zappa-esque touch to it and merges the bass clarinet with electronics.Very nice.

Though perhaps a curiosity of the past, the bass clarinet has now thrown off its chains. Through its limitations it has fought its way to freedom. Indeed, if the bass clarinet was formerly regarded as a chained instrument, it needed a Houdini like Harry Sparnaay to free this "low-keyed lady" under the instruments from her isolation.

Get it HERE

Donated by Kim

Vágtázó Halottkémek (Galloping Coroners) - Live and Practice -1986- (Tape), Hungary

Vágtázó Halottkémek (VHK), in English Galloping Coroners, in German Rasende Leichenbeschauer is a Hungarian shamanistic noise-rock band. They are artistically rooted in Hungarian mythological stories, ancient Hungarian imagery and cosmic theories. They started out in the end of the seventies, but only released their first proper albums by the end of the eighties when those possibilities came to existence for these kind of bands from behind the iron curtain. During the early eighties they did manage to put a song on the legendary international sampler "Fix Planet" (1981) compiled by NDW legends Der Plan. They were featured alongside bands as Esplendor Geometrico from Spain and Fra Lippo Lippi from Norway. Der Plan describes the song on the back of Fix Planet as:

"The name of the band means "whizzing dead spys" and we don't dare telling who they are. Two of us met two of them once, we were all drunk and it was in Budapest, Hungary's strange capital."

As for the Music: It's the recording of two concerts in 1985 and 1986 in Budapest and two rehearsal songs. The songs are recognizable from their official albums which I suggest you should check out (not sure where) before you listen to these live versions drenched in white noise. I consider these albums to be at least among the top ten best albums from Eastern Europe from the eighties. The music can be defined as instinctive primeval music eliberating the elementary powers of nature creating ourselves and revolting to its high completion in a free spontaneity and overwhelming energy.

To me this is really one of Hungary's finest bands. I've seen them play live last summer in Budapest which was one of the best concerts I had seen in a while. They had reformed and had recorded their latest album called Veled Haraptat Csillagot! / Bite The Stars! It's still in print so get that while you can!

Get this historical tape HERE

Tokyo Kid Brothers - Songs Of The Story Of Eight Dogs -1971- (LP, Dutch Private Pressing), Japan

This vinyl is a private pressing of the recording of the play “The Story of Eight Dogs” by Japanese musical theatre group Tokyo Kid Brothers. In 1971 they played the "The Story of Eight Dogs" for five weeks at the Shaffy Theatre in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. This record came out in very limited quantities in Holland during their period of performing in Amsterdam.

These NWW-listers stand in a similar tradition as other counter-cultural musical theatre outfits like the American Living Theatre or Théâtre Du Chêne Noir from France. Tokyo Kid Brothers was founded by Yutaka Higashi in 1968 and made some very weird recordings during the early seventies like the albums “Throw away the books let’s go into the streets” and "Golden Bat" from 1971. Those are being regarded as two of the most important cornerstones of Japanese freak-out psychedelia from the seventies. They should reissue that stuff on vinyl. Tokyo Kid Brothers' early sound was reminiscent of other Japanese acid fuelled underground groups like J.A. Seazer and Food Brain, but also brings to mind some of the more free-form krautrock bands like Amon Düül and Faust. During that era The Tokyo Kid Brothers performed quite often outside of Japan, like New York and Amsterdam.

This recording has some great seventies underground jams combined with intense Japanese vocals. Also the difference between audience and actors at times becomes blurry when they involve the audience and try to teach them about Japanese language characters and so on in a subversive and playful manner. All with a great Japanese English accent.

My copy is not in the best shape as you can see and is quite crackly. It might have had an insert, but I don’t have it. The record doesn’t list titles of the songs, which doesn’t really matter, because it was meant as a play. Anyway this is crazily rare if you’d ask me and absolutely essential to all Japanese psych-heads and NWW-list fans.

“The history of eight dogs is the story of the Japanese young generation in reality and illusion. We came to Holland: Exodus from Japan!”

Get it HERE! Or check it out here: