Sublime Frequencies

SUBLIME FREQUENCIES is a collective of explorers dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers via film and video, field recordings, radio and short wave transmissions, international folk and pop music, sound anomalies, and other forms of human and natural expression not documented sufficiently through all channels of academic research, the modern recording industry, media, or corporate foundations. SUBLIME FREQUENCIES is focused on an aesthetic of extra-geography and soulful experience inspired by music and culture, world travel, research, and the pioneering recording labels of the past. https://sublime-frequencies.bandcamp.com/ https://www.sublimefrequencies.com/

[grrlmusic]

Tsapiky! Modern Music From Southwest Madagascar

[supersupersounds]

Various Artists - Thai Pop Spectacular 1960s-1980s

Does what it says on the box! Lots of surf-inspired Thai pop magic here, heaps of groove, great recordings and amazing voices.

[platenstof]

The Photographs of Charles Duvelle Disques OCORA and Collection PROPHET

Disques Ocora, a French label dedicated to capturing and publishing the sounds of folkloric culture from around the world, is held in the highest possible regard in the realms of professional and amateur ethnomusicology. Instigated in 1958 by Pierre Schaeffer, the founder of musique concrète, Disques Ocora's sterling reputation is largely built on composer and musicologist Charles Duvelle's pioneering field recordings, as well as his now-iconic photographs and graphic design.

Charles Duvelle's work is indisputably one of the most important contributions to the human understanding of the rich biodiversity of our planet's music and language. In 1977, his field recordings from Benin were selected by Carl Sagan for inclusion on the Voyager Golden Records, which were carried into outer space by the Voyager spacecraft to stand as an example of humanity's highest musical expressions for the universe's unknown listeners.

Sublime Frequencies' most ambitious project to date, this 296-page fine-art photography book comprises an exhaustive collection of Charles Duvelle's field photography from 1959 to 1978, demonstrating that this master musicologist had an equally unerring eye for photography. It also contains an exhaustive interview with Charles Duvelle by Hisham Mayet, detailing the history of the label and offering Duvelle's unique insights into the discipline of field recording. The package includes two full-length CDs of archival recordings (some of which have never been published) selected by Duvelle himself.

In a tribute to Disques Ocora's exquisite design sensibility, the book is printed on 170gsm Lumisilk matte artpaper and bound in grey buckram with gold foil stamping on the cover and spine. The front cover includes a tipped-on glossy photograph by Charles Duvelle.

Contents

188 black & white and 58 calor photographs selected by Charles Duvelle and Hisham Mayet from five regions surveyed during his time with Ocara: West Africa, Central Africa, Indian Ocean, Pacific Islands, and SouthEast Asia

Two CDs of music compiled exclusively for this volume by Charles Duvelle with fully annotated track listings and recording details

An interview with Charles Duvelle by Hisham Mayet (French and English facing text)

"Disques Ocora/Charles Duvelle Discography, 1959-1974, a complete overview illustrated with 94 full-color album thumbnails

"The Prophet Collection, 1999-2004," α discography of Duvelle's post-Ocora label, illustrated with 41 full-color album thumbnails

Ocora catalogues, 1964-1973

A photo index listing the details of each photograph in the book

"Eastern Music in Black Africa," a report prepared by Charles Duvelle at the request of UNESCO, February 1970

Produced and edited by Hisham Mayer

[platenstof]

[zef-zef]

Week 2 of my new morning ritual. Sit outside, enjoy the morning sun with a nice pot of tea and listen to some “non-European, non-North American” folk, tribal, ethnic or classical music record from far away places.

So Far, Week 2:

15 VA - Admiralty Islands - Papua New Guinea, Bipi, Manus (Prophet, 2003) 16 Group Doueh - Beatte Harab (sublime frequencies, 2010) 17 VA - To Catch a Ghost; Field Recordings from Madagascar (Sublime Frequencies, 2018) 18 VA - Harmika Yab-Yum; Folk Sounds From Nepal (sublime frequencies, 2005) 19 VA - Chants et danses du Népal (Gaïnés de Hyangja) (Buda, 1997) 20 VA - Songs and Dances of Nepal (Folkways, 1964) 21 VA - Valiha Madagascar (Ocora, 1964) 22 VA - Thailand - The Music Of Chieng Mai (Odeon, 1975) 23 ไวพจน์ เพชรสุพรรณ (Waiphot Phetsuphan) - บริษัท เสียงสยาม แผ่นเสียง เทป จำกัด ภูมิใจเสนอ ไวพจน์ เพชรสุพรรณ ในชุด บวชนาคภาคพิเศษ 24 VA - The Rough Guide to the Music of Thailand (Music Rough Guides, 2003) 25 VA - Burundi - Music From The Heart Of Africa (Albatros, 1971; Nonesuch, 1974) 26 Abdoulaye & Ahmoudou - Akaline (purplish, 2024)

[cityblocks-vs-countrymiles]

Not sure if it's the best album of 2025 yet, but it's definitely the most interesting

[dustedmagazine]

Various Artists — Born in the City of Tanta (Sublime Frequencies)

In the middle of the 20th century Cairo, Egypt represented the acme of progressive Arabic society. The music that soundtracked this culture was erudite, virtuosic and artfully expressive. Of course, a lot of Egypt was not in on the spoils, culturally or otherwise, and for people who couldn’t afford a TV on which to view Oum Kalthoum and her orchestra or tickets to catch her in concert, there were other options. One company that catered to the more impecunious portion of the population was Bourini Records, a label that started out in Benghazi, Libya in 1968.

The label specialized in 45 rpm records, which at the time were the cheapest option available to performers who were lacked access to Cairo’s pricy studios and Egypt’s radio stations, which catered to bourgeois sensibilities. Most of the 40 or 50 titles it released during its seven-year existence were made by Egyptian singers of shaabi and shabibi, popular forms that were rooted in rural, traditional forms of song and poetry. Born in the City of Tanta collects eight sides from the Bourini catalog that were compiled and sequenced by Gary Sullivan, a record collector and WFMU deejay, and Sublime Frequencies boss Hisham Mayet.

Smart sequencing amplifies this marvelous LP’s appeal. It hooks you at the outset with the collection’s most outré vocal performances, settles into more traditional but no less compelling fare, and then ends on a note of undeniable badassery. While lyrics are not provided, the song titles (which are) and the sounds of the singers’ voices work in concert to fire one’s imagination. Take the opening track, Basis Rahouma’s “Yana Alla Nafsa Masouda.” Upholstered with swaggering strings and a driven by exuberant hand drumming, it’s actually one of the set’s lusher productions. But Rahouma’s impetuous, insistent singing, which escalates until he’s ending each line with a shout or an imitation of a carnivorous animal, sounds like the work of a guy you’d like to have in your record collection, but not face to face with you in an alley. The title translates as “Blocked from What I Want,” and the performance leaves no doubt that you do not want to be in his way when the singing’s done. Then advance a couple tracks to Samah’s “Shawish Aldawriat” (“Patrol Sergeant”).  The vocal duet, which contrasts a fleet and ardent female singer with a buffoonish male one, will leave you guessing just what’s going on, but I’d lay long odds that the sergeant’s holding an empty bag when the song’s over.

By contrast, there’s nothing goofy about Abu Bakr Abdel Aziz’s “Al Bint al Libya” (The Girl from Libya),” just a breakneck oud line, hard-smacked drums, and a singer who sounds shattered. There’s no reason to think that Reem Kamal, who gets the last word while belting “Baed Al Yas Yjini (After Hopelessness, He Comes to Me)” over implacable handclaps, seething accordion, and churning reeds, is singing directly to Aziz. But if she were, she sure sounds like she could do some shattering.

As immediate as Bourini’s sounds were, the label didn’t last long. The liner notes don’t say why, but it’s worth noting that it released its last record in the same year that a cassette-only album by Ahmed Adaweya outsold Oum Kalthoum’s LPs. Across North Africa, vinyl made way for tape, and the day of the single was over.

Bill Meyer

[atelieroblique]

Visit Original Link

[zef-zef]

Durga Puja Slaughter/Huge Prayer Wheel/Kathmandu Street from: VA - Harmika Yab-Yum; Folk Sounds From Nepal (Sublime Frequencies, 2005)

Compiled By [Assembled By] - Robert Millis Recorded in Kathmandu, Pokhara, Gorkha, and other undisclosed locales in 1996.

full album bandcamp full album youtube

[dustedmagazine]

Various Artists — Indian Talking Machine Part Two: Instrumental Gems From the 78rpm Era (Sublime Frequencies)

Indian Talking Machine Part Two is a double LP that compiles 26 sides of music lifted from 78 rpm records procured and selected by Robert Millis. When Millis, who is also a member of Climax Golden Twins, produced the first volume of Indian Talking Machine for Sublime Frequencies a decade ago, it represented a peak accomplishment of a practice that’s been around ever since the middle of the 20th century. That’s when the advent of vinyl LPs first made it possible for music preserved on a bypassed format to be compiled and presented on a more current one. This practice has made it possible for a lone person with sufficient resources and a point of view to make a strong, discourse-shaping statement; for just two examples, consider Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music and Ian Nagoski’s To What Strange Place: The Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora, 1916-1929.

The original Indian Talking Machine might not have changed how we understand our world, but it did provide reliable transportation to a couple of them. First, it enabled a listener to steep in the sounds of musical traditions that had been around for centuries, but had not yet been transformed by capture and reproduction. Second, it introduced its audience to the surviving Indian 78 rpm culture. The album came as a 245-page hardcover book that presented both reproductions of sleeves, labels, gear, advertisements, and ephemera from back in the day, and color photos that Millis had taken of the places where you can still find them and the people who make that possible. It was possible to treat its two CDs tucked into pockets in the cover as accessories, which was a shame given the musical riches they contained.

That won’t happen with Indian Talking Machine Part Two. It contains the same number of sides as the first volume, this time on two LPs. The transfers subdue most of the 78s’ noise without compromising the sounds of the instruments. While it does include a booklet with a dozen pages of images of records, players, and the animal byproducts used to make shellac, the annotation is much more bare-bones, conveying only the names of the artists and the instruments featured on each track.

And what music! By narrowing the focus to instrumentals, Millis has foregrounded two elements of Indian music of the early 20th century. One is the concentrated power and beauty of the music that made it to disc. Reproducing hour-long ragas and other musical forms that had evolved ungoverned by the small amount of music that a 78 could contain was out of the question, so these tracks capture foundational themes and climactic moments; just the good stuff. The other is the spectacular virtuosity of the playing and the easy but focused rapport between the musicians (usually just a couple per performance); in a culture where music was made mainly by people playing every day, they got really good at playing it.

Indian Talking Machine Part Two is not a musicological enterprise, and anyone looking to be told anything about what they’re hearing will be disappointed. This volume presents the music as something you listen to, period.

Bill Meyer

[sublime---frequencies]

[dustedmagazine]

Alvarius B — Malarial Dreams (Abduction)

The first track on Alvarius B’s new LP Malarial Dreams is called “Rock N’ Roll,” and the song has a rollicking, hip-bumping, downhill momentum fit to its moniker. But check the instrumentation. In addition to Alan Bishop’s acoustic guitar and Morgan Mikkelsen’s stripped-down drumkit, you’ll hear Bishop’s frequent collaborator Sam Shelabi on an antic oud and composer Amélie Legrand gamely stroking a cello. The assembled band seems to be operating at some distance from Led Zep, or the Velvets, or Gary Glitter (thank goodness…) or any other rock outfit that has played a reflexive paean to the musical form. One is tempted to follow through on the implications of the accumulated semiotics and suggest that Alvarius B’s song is a sort of malarial dream of rock and roll.

That would be a mistake — or at least it would trap one in the kind of double-bind that Bishop’s long-running band Sun City Girls in part used to specialize in. To assume (or insist) that rock and the “exotic” fall into intrinsically separate musical categories is a Western chauvinism, of a piece with the music industry’s attempts to collapse all the tunes and sounds issuing from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific islands into a single “genre” called “world music” (or “global folk,” as Spotify suggests). Those cynical formulations are less malarial dream and more nauseating nightmare. Sun City Girls never tired of provoking such chauvinisms, and then flipping them the bird. The band offered the same response to the liberal hand-wringers who pronounced them “cultural appropriators” or agents of neocoloniality.

Sun City Girls expressed their idiosyncratic interest in the musical traditions of the Arab nations (as we seem to be calling them) from the jump — see “Helwa Shak” from their debut LP in 1984 or “Kal el Lazi Kad Ham” from the sublime Grotto of Miracles (1986). And the Bishop brothers’ relationship to the music goes farther back. They have spoken to early experiences at their Lebanese grandfather’s house, listening to him play the oud and jam with his pals, some of them outlaw Michigan Freemasons who rejected the Christianized version of the secret society and maintained their own meetings and esoteric metaphysics.

40 years later, it's true that Malarial Dreams is a less metaphysical, outré experience than Grotto of Miracles or, more recently, some of Bishop’s other releases as Alvarius B; interested parties might consult the excellent Baroque Primativa or the feral Fuck You and the Horse You Rode in on. Some of the new record’s finest songs are its gentlest. “One Month Non-sexual Vacation in Mongolia” features Shelabi and Cherif El-Masri exchanging moody, melodic passages on oud and electric guitar. It’s a fairly pent-up, tense affair, but it’s also lovely. “Later” is down-tempo and meditative, slowly adding layers of shimmer (Adham Zidan and Maurice Louca play dueling organs) and, in its second half, Asher Gamedze’s expressive drumming.

Among Malarial Dreams’ nine songs, “The Multiple Hallucinations of an Assassin — Part 2” might be most immediately engaged with the musical textures and tones Bishop hears in Cairo, where he has lived for some time. Huda Asfour plays a qanun, in anxious, evocative conversation with Bishop’s guitar. “Part 1” of the composition appeared on Sun City Girls’ Bright Surroundings Dark Beginnings (1993), one of the band’s records for Majora. That earlier song is an example of the Girls in grim and then resonant improv mode. “Part 2” expands and refines the melody, brightening the corners but not losing the sense of foreboding. It’s Alvarius B in a reflective mood, considering the places he’s been. This reviewer is grateful that he’s still willing to take us along, into the strange spaces he’s currently creating.

Jonathan Shaw

[dustedmagazine]

Various Artists — Indian Talking Machine Part Two: Instrumental Gems From the 78rpm Era (Sublime Frequencies)

Indian Talking Machine Part Two is a double LP that compiles 26 sides of music lifted from 78 rpm records procured and selected by Robert Millis. When Millis, who is also a member of Climax Golden Twins, produced the first volume of Indian Talking Machine for Sublime Frequencies a decade ago, it represented a peak accomplishment of a practice that’s been around ever since the middle of the 20th century. That’s when the advent of vinyl LPs first made it possible for music preserved on a bypassed format to be compiled and presented on a more current one. This practice has made it possible for a lone person with sufficient resources and a point of view to make a strong, discourse-shaping statement; for just two examples, consider Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music and Ian Nagoski’s To What Strange Place: The Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora, 1916-1929.

The original Indian Talking Machine might not have changed how we understand our world, but it did provide reliable transportation to a couple of them. First, it enabled a listener to steep in the sounds of musical traditions that had been around for centuries, but had not yet been transformed by capture and reproduction. Second, it introduced its audience to the surviving Indian 78 rpm culture. The album came as a 245-page hardcover book that presented both reproductions of sleeves, labels, gear, advertisements, and ephemera from back in the day, and color photos that Millis had taken of the places where you can still find them and the people who make that possible. It was possible to treat its two CDs tucked into pockets in the cover as accessories, which was a shame given the musical riches they contained.

That won’t happen with Indian Talking Machine Part Two. It contains the same number of sides as the first volume, this time on two LPs. The transfers subdue most of the 78s’ noise without compromising the sounds of the instruments. While it does include a booklet with a dozen pages of images of records, players, and the animal byproducts used to make shellac, the annotation is much more bare-bones, conveying only the names of the artists and the instruments featured on each track.

And what music! By narrowing the focus to instrumentals, Millis has foregrounded two elements of Indian music of the early 20th century. One is the concentrated power and beauty of the music that made it to disc. Reproducing hour-long ragas and other musical forms that had evolved ungoverned by the small amount of music that a 78 could contain was out of the question, so these tracks capture foundational themes and climactic moments; just the good stuff. The other is the spectacular virtuosity of the playing and the easy but focused rapport between the musicians (usually just a couple per performance); in a culture where music was made mainly by people playing every day, they got really good at playing it.

Indian Talking Machine Part Two is not a musicological enterprise, and anyone looking to be told anything about what they’re hearing will be disappointed. This volume presents the music as something you listen to, period.

Bill Meyer

[sublime---frequencies]

https://sublime-frequencies.bandcamp.com/

[sublime---frequencies]

https://sublime-frequencies.bandcamp.com/

[sublime---frequencies]

Listen/purchase: INDIAN TALKING MACHINE part two: INSTRUMENTAL GEMS FROM THE 78rpm ERA by Sublime Frequencies

[sublime---frequencies]

The Perusal #74: F. Ampism, Aus, Burning Books, Mauricio Fleury…

A world of sonic/musical discoveries reviewed by Dominic Valvona. All entries in alphabetical order. F. Ampism ‘The Vertical Luminous’(Hive Mind) 5th December 2025 A curious and, as the title sugge…

West Virginia Snake Handlers Revival ‘They Shall Take Up Serpents’ (Sublime Frequencies) Released 3rd October 2025

[sublime---frequencies]

SF126 - TSAPIKY! Modern Music from Southwest Madagascar

https://sublime-frequencies.bandcamp.com/ Tsapiky music features wild ecstatic guitars, rocket bass, and the amphetamine beat! Unlike anything else, this is THE high life music you've always wanted – funeral & ceremony music played with abandon and extreme intent, honoring the living and the dead alike. @_maximebobo #sublimefrequencies #madagascar #malagasy #tsapiky

[sublime---frequencies]

NEW RELEASE!!! SHARE THE NEWS!!! SF127 LP Born in the City of Tanta - Lower Egyptian Urban Folklore and Bedouin Shaabi from Libya's Bourini Records 1968-75 Links in bio "Libya's Bourini Records, a small independent label that released local diy 45's from 1968-1975, FINALLY gets reissued. The tracks compiled here comprise a full range of styles from the southern Mediterranean folk and the raw sounds of Egyptian chaabi covered by the label. Highlighting some of its most gob smacking moments, from Basis Rahouma’s beastly transformation into a growling and barking man-lion by the end of “Yana Alla Nafsa Masouda,” to Reem Kamal’s hopeful-if-bitter handclapping party pivot “Baed Al Yas Yjini,” which descends into an almost Velvet Underground outro-groove of nihilistic dissonance." Produced by @garysgotabanger Audio mastered by @oticsound Layout and design @psychic_sounds