Endangered Records Index

I digitise and share out-of-print rarities from all over the world that I happened to come across, because I feel like some records are more vulnerable to extinction than others.

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Audu Makarfi - Self-Titled

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Little is known about the artist, or the record itself. Place of origin: Most probably Nigeria. Instrumentation: Vocals accompanied by what seems to be a plucked one-string instrument of unknown origin. Contents: Quite likely to be some form of Islamic preaching, perhaps some kind of a varient of Wéré music, presented in a very minimalistic and talkative style, and developed on a somewhat ambivalent scale. Is it an oral tradition passed down throughout generations within this particular linguosocial community, or something they entirely improvised? I don’t know, nor is it my biggest concern.

Although it’s apparently not a private press, clearly a very limited number of copies have been distributed to start with, and the copy I have with me here must have been kept in such a horrendous condition that the grooves are almost completely worn out on the vinyl, and the cover is nearly disintegrated. After recording what I uploaded here, I intensively cleaned the vinyl again with a little bit of sodium sesquicarbonate this time, just to see if I could reduce the noise level and prevent skipping, but unfortunately it made absolutely no difference. It’s just too bad I’m neither skilled nor equipped enough to remaster it to a certain extent.

Either way, the last thing I want to see happening is this material irreversibly vanishing from the surface of the earth and being forgotten forever.

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AFRIKA PSEUDOBRUITISMUS - OUTER SPACE CULTURES

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One day I went for a long evening walk in the city with my friend Betty, carrying loads of booze and a mini boombox. I played my childhood cassette collection along the way, to which Betty remained skeptical. She said she despised how most tape collectors embrace the medium simply because of its peculiarity and never actually give a shit about the core aesthetics, such as how the magnetic memories are destined to irreversibly disintegrate through the course of time. She insisted this process is an integral part of tape music one must carefully observe as an owner, or otherwise there is no point in releasing any material on tapes nowadays. As it occured to me that she might be referring to the general superficiality of the vaporwave scene (which is actually the whole point of vaporwave but that’s another story), I played this tape I had bought just recently to get right to the point. Contrary to my expectation, we ended up enjoying it a lot, and agreed it added some good insights on our topic.

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Dear readers, I'm sorry for the inconvinience caused by the disappearence of the old files from 2016. They were taken down by the old server I was using, and because I also lost the original data I stored on my previous computer, I'm now re-ripping and transfering what I can, while trying to get new copies for the ones that got stolen.

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The Living Tradition: Songs and Dances from BULGARIA

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Another gem from the golden age of Balkan field recordings. Check out those microtonal singings and the call-and-response in such unique and irregular rhythmic patterns (at times almost like the Rite of Spring), not to mention the mighty good old nasal diatonic sing-alongs of the women.

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DJ MUCUS - MIXTAPE VOL. 30

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Before I forget about it and the weather gets too cold, here’s my autumn mixtape.

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Ensemble InterContemporain - Höller: Arcus / Ferneyhough: Funérailles, versions I et II

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I am in a period of re-appreciating the wonderful tribute Ensemble InterContemporain has paid to the contemporary avant-garde music scene in its 40 years of history, and at the same time trying to brush up my listening skill, as I am aware that I will never reach the point of understanding where I can analyse these works theoretically. Now in this opportunity, let me deliver you this magnificent record which to this day remains un-reissued.

The two compositions (and a re-work of the latter) were both completed around the same time in the midst of so-called the decline of the avant-garde’s, and commissioned by the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) and the French Ministry of Culture, respectively. Arcus for 17 instrumentalists and tape is a fruit of Höller’s fellowship with IRCAM, during which he contributed in building the software and explored the possibility of sound alteration. The result is an austere yet igniting crash of the organic and computer-generated sounds, often amplifying the effects of each other through the liaison of the low frequencies with extremely broad wave intervals. Höller and the conductor Eötvös, by the way, both studied under Bernt Alois Zimmermann and Stockhausen, and came in touch with IRCAM and InterContemporain through Boulez.

Meanwhile, Funérailles was originally conceived in the ‘60s as a rather expressionistic material, fairly different in its nature from the later works of Feryneyhough. “I was aiming at channelling the entire associative complex (prompted by the title and the actual emotional world of the composition) into an imaginary - a mythic - dimension. (…) With this aim in mind I chose an instrumentation and repertoire of articulative techniques which serve to underline this particular quality. All instruments are treated in a reserved way, albeit with almost neurotic emphasis of detail in respect of individual articulation. The microscopically fastidious textures resulting from this treatment prevent the material from breaking out of its essentially claustrophobic conceptual frame”, Ferneyhough elaborates. Even though the composer categorically demanded the two versions must be separated by at least one unrelated work in order to be performed, here on this record they are combined seamlessly. Version II unsurprisingly appears to be even more dense in texture, with all the events unfolding in an even more compartmentalised, multi-layered manner. As Ferneyhough puts it, the overall form has been intentionally obscured by “cutting potential developments off short or else undermining them by the obstinate emphasising of the microscopic point of view”. I am yet to apprehend Ferneyhough’s intensely complex musical language, and I probably never will, but I can tell this composition is a good gateway to it.

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Kashgar Tape 2

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Last week I came back from a 2-week trip across Central Asia, and long story short, I brought back 8 wonky tapes I purchased from an old man in Kashgar, Xinjiang with their cases missing, and they survived through the rough, unpaved desert road trip. Some of the contents are recognisable, while others I find fairly enigmatic, such as this acid folksy codex. I don’t know if certain erratic sections are supposed to be so by design or just pure errors.

I welcome any information regarding this tape or any of the upcoming materials, since I don't have any.

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Sylvio Gualda - PERCUSSION Vol. 2

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Quite exemplary of good ’60-70s analog recordings by Erato, not to mention the superb cutting / pressing quality, and the remarkably good state it was kept in. Percussion music was probably at the hight of its popularity, both among all the sub-streams of total serialism and spectralism, and Sylvio Gualda was one of the very first virtuosos in the scene, to whom Xenakis dedicated the first track Psappha. I only found it out here that said work, while coming off as pretty simple and approachable for Xenakis, actually stands out to be fairly multitasking and complex, as some parts apparently involve nine staves in which ten voices proceed simultaneously (as they do), while not leaving any chance to improvise whatsoever. Elliot Carter’s Pieces for Timpani fascinate me in the sense that they are really not just about the sonorous contrasts and metric modulations but also cast these eye-opening moments of modal interchanges, coming on and off between the four timpani. Now if you are wondering what the silly amount of instruments on the cover are for, check out Máy by Nguyễn Thiên Đạo on Side B. Many more to come, including the piano used as a pure percussion.

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DJ MUCUS - MIXTAPE VOL. 31

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A bit off the topic, but now that summer is approaching, I would like to share my newest summer mixtape with everyone out there who is up for some fun with friends and family, and embraces the true art of doing nothing (you are amazing).

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THE FULANI OF THE NORTH

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The Fulani of the North was the never-ending go-go soundtrack to my summer last year. The sloppy yet mighty motif repeated by the horn ensemble through Raba Kaya always reminded me of "Ye Warriors of God and his Law", a 15th century Hussite war song, as adopted in Karel Husa’s Music for Prague 1968 and first presented by the timpani before repeated in unison towards the climax of the finale. Although I was pretty convinced that the former was also a war anthem, it is actually ceremonial court music dedicated to the northern King of Maroua.

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BRASIL

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Very miscellaneous sort of swag we all need every once in a while.

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The Pastels - Safari Companion (Bonus 7”)

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This may be the first and the last time I upload a rarity from a famous (well, less obscure) group. In 1995, the Pastels released their much underrated third album Mobile Safari; perhaps less iconic compared to the highly acclaimed first album, but certainly the cornerstone of the band’s subtle art of gullibility, friendlessness and sincerity in its complete form. This bonus disc which contains four jungly sketches only came along with the limited vinyl edition to complement the twelve awkwardly monastic yet beautiful tracks on the main disc, and has never been reissued since (nor can you find it anywhere on the internet for that matter).

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Musik der Pontos-Greichen

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This is so far my favourite volume from the Museum Collection Berlin series. The description of the first track in the liner notes pretty much sums up what roughly you should be expecting from these delicious Pontian festivities in their essence [It is based on a melodic pattern, the formal characteristic of which is a bipartite strophic form]. This, when augmented by the hysterically increasing tempo, often results in an ancient analog equivalent of neurotic minimal glitch music, and other times a coke-filled Dionysian rampage. I could be wrong here but when I first listed to these recordings, I thought they bore a striking similarity to the music of some of the most landlocked places of West and Central Asia, whose cultures were at some point vastly dominated by Hellenism (than so to say, to the mainland Greek music of any era).

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instrumentalia Lagu-Lagu POP SUNDA VOL. 3: Cinta Kita

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46 minutes of sheer MIDI-esque elevator music hell.

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TOUBA 63

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YET ANOTHER WONDER.

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Magyar Gregoriánum 6

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As misled as it sounds, I can’t help thinking what I’m hearing here might be just like what Brian Eno heard when he played the LP of mediaeval harp music his girlfriend brought at a nearly inaudible level while recovering from a motorbike accident in 1975, which allowed him to develop a new acoustic perspective, eventually leading him to the concept of ambient music.

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Pllake Me Kenge Dhe Muzike Shqiptare

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There have been a couple of separate periods when I intensively dug into the socialist-era Albanian music, with Youtube videos being almost the exclusive sources available. As a vinyl collector, I quickly learned that any Albanian pressing was indeed a rarity, as there are so few of them and the copies which made their way into the 21st century hardly ever circulate in the market; many are presumably hidden deep behind the obscurity of Albanian grandparents’ closets, if not all. This year in January, I had a short trip to Kosovo, hoping that there would at least be a flea market or whatnot, at which I will enjoy a major Kosovar cassette bonanza, or even better, a whole new discovery of records from socialist Albania at the hight of its isolation. It turned out that this hope too needed to be turned down, as there were simply little to no artefacts from the past decades preserved in general (Instead I bought dozens of contemporary Kosovar compilation CD-Rs of various kinds but that’s another story).

As of now, this series which seems to have been produced for the sole purpose of exporting to France may well be the only material purchasable online by conventional means. All the four songs are presented in distinctive styles, ranging from the iso-polyphonic chorus of "Ligjëro shoku Enver" praising Marxism and the then-leader Enver Hoxha, to the theatrically sweetened, almost Borodin-like patriotic anthem of "Nënave shqipëtare". I used to think I had pretty much covered all the major streams of Albanian oldies, yet these small discoveries always remind me to stay humble, as there are so many different shades yet to be discovered. Rejoice!

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Noujoum Saf - Self-Titled

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Almost infernal, right from the intro.