#subliminal sounds

[cutiepiesugarsparkle]

When did we collectively stop listening to subliminals

[dustedmagazine]

Paul Page & His Paradise Music – Pacific Paradise (Subliminal Sounds)

In jazz lore, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and Albert Ayler are collectively regarded under the quasi-religious honorific of The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost. Though musically apart, Exotica also has its own holy trinity of Martin Denny, Arthur Lyman and Les Baxter, each bandleader corresponding loosely to the stature of his avatar in the development of the genre. Pacific Paradise playfully and convincingly posits a fourth contender to the previously trifold distinction, Paul Page: poet, pagan and playboy of Polynesian Pop. That last alliterative string is lifted straight from Urban Archaeologist Sven Kirsten’s paean to Page that serves as context-cementing essay and strikes at both the roots and appeal of his music to consumers in the comparatively straight-laced suburban enclaves of McCarthy-era America. The beefcake portrait pulled from one of his self-produced and distributed LPs featuring Page’s fit, shirt-less, sailor’s capped visage suggests another probable clue.

Thirty songs and a five-part medley are crammed onto a single disc as colorful and often kitschy emissaries of Page’s personal esthetic. The inaugural title track sets a mood of lapping waves, dulcet chimes and a crooning chorus before the singer’s libation-lubricated baritone paints a soothing firsthand invitation to the eponymous island Eden. “China Nights” brings on the woodblock, balafon and gong percussion in the service of shaping aural facsimiles of Asian sonorities alongside a modest lap steel coda. Spinet organ, piano, acoustic guitar and bongos are also regular elements of the instrumental palette, each employed in an effort to enhance the transportive aspects of the songs. Camp is king much of the time with light-hearted comedy, both intentional and otherwise, peppering Page’s poetic musings on a lonely life lived beyond the moorings of conformist Western decorum. “Castaway (x4) like broken driftwood drifting on the sea, far away (x4) from all the happiness that used to be…”

Yukon-born and a later to transplant to the Midwest, Southern California and eventually Hawaii, Page passed through numerous iterations of self throughout his life from radio personality to movie actor to band leader, bouncing around until finally settling on the amalgam of sea-faring vagabond and adventurer that formed the basis of his Exotica personality. Story songs like “When Sam Goes Back to Samoa” and “The Big Luau in the Sky” find Page switching to an avuncular spoken-word style to vary his delivery with differing degrees of success. The latter almost sounds cribbed from a late-career lounge act with Page reflecting on the retinue of dearly-departed Hawaiian notables that greeted him on a dream-borne trip to heaven, but the song soon gets bogged down in spate of verbose name-dropping. “Mele of Yesterdays Men (A Chanted Story)” attempts a similar flight-of-fancy conceit to better effect by dialing back centuries to the Hawaiian archipelago’s ancient history.

It’s the purely instrumental numbers like the lovely “Beyond the Reef” that whirlpools vibes, steel and a strolling bass line into a potently calming lullaby that best transcend the treacly and affected aspects of his music. The solecism of cultural appropriation is just as visible in his output as it is in those of his far better known peers, but to Page’s credit he held genuine and nearly lifelong affinity for the cultures he mined and espoused. An early proponent of environmentalism specific to the Hawaiian Islands he also made a custom of hiring indigenous musicians for his later-career efforts. Whether those attitudes and actions were adequate enough to allay or repay what was borrowed is arguable, but there’s no mistaking whirring skating rink-worthy canticles like “Nani Waimea” or “Ala Wai Blues” as actual Polynesian folk music. Page’s belated ascendancy to the earlier mentioned triumvirate remains unlikely, but odds have increased appreciably with the appearance of this edifying and entertaining collection.

Derek Taylor

[theroundtrip]

From the "All the best bands are affiliated with Satan" thread, meet Ball and their devilish Hard Rock force. With their debut self-titled work, you'll get what you possibly don't expect: psychedelic madness, disturbed fuzzed out guitars, contagious depraved vocals and a musical hallucination of supplicating sounds. It couldn't get any better right? Subliminal Sounds have the goods to deliver and they really look sweet. Get a taste of this Ball via Spotify above.

[dustedmagazine]

Bo Anders Persson – Love Is Here to Stay (Subliminal Sounds)

These recordings from 1967-69 combine the vocal-meets-studio-tricks of Berio during the previous decade — particularly Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) and Visage — with the single-voiced, overpowering minimal Scelsi symphonic works and the patience of Cage. Ghostly acoustic performances and tape works couple with drones and feedback here; all are wrapped in subtle manipulation and a pulsing, growing, organic treatment.

“Invention I” begins with a trombone note held until some higher pitched instrument pops in. These two start swirling — as invention, a two-part counterpoint, would suggest — and the material plane gets fuzzy. Is that a trombone, or something built in Persson’s lab? Is the upper frequency sound the other one shifted up? If you’re a nerd, you count repetitions of the phrase and are, at first, put-off, and then pleased by the random punctuations of distortion that inhabit the latter part of the work (it makes the academic nature a little less stuffy). To sum up, it’s mentally engaging. The haunting “Piece II” spends nearly eight minutes mixing in and out of intones and a loop of witches trapped in a container (it’s the ambience inside that blue box from Mulholland Drive, I reckon) before resolving in a major key; the work unwinds in reverse with the vocalists’ lines gently descending over the twisted, warped backdrop and settling the last few minutes in scalar lilt (closer to Monteverdi or Tavener than Ligeti).

The title track incorporates a chamber ensemble (flute, vox, contrabass, percussion), though spatially spread out in several chambers. It is the most physically active, formally cohesive and reality-based piece on the record, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a great deal of genre-crossing (free jazz, Japanese Noh theater dramatic fits, all leading to a ‘60s lounge aesthetic) and mirage with natural room reverberance. On “Små toner mer eller mindre,” prepared harp strings “with rings of metal wire hanging in sewing-thread which created a rattling sound” roar like augmented sitar plucks; also drenched in echoes, the rest of the quintet (alto flute, trombone, viola, contrabass) wails and gnashes back and forth in the shadows.

Terry Riley, an artist Persson cites as a prime influence on his solo works, said that music can take “us to a real understanding of something in our nature which we can very rarely get at.” Love Is Here to Stay reflects the feelings of the composer’s psyche: Persson cites the fear of the Cold War, losing his way (mind) while studying at The Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, throwing his hands in the air, saying “screw it” and going balls out to perpetuate his language, something he believed could unify and edify Sweden. Indeed, his music drives the listener to a transcendent state, one riddled with enigma, sublimity, darkness, anxiety, beauty.

Dave Madden

[spinningandscratching-blog]

Subliminal Sounds fortsätter att göra storverk med sina återutgivningar av svenska progressiva rariteter. Under sommaren ges två skivor från det kultförklarade bolaget Gump ut (en underlabel till Metronome); Joakim Skogsbergs skäggiga urskogsdrone och Kvartetten som Sprängdes progressiva instrumentalrock. Till alla samlares glädje, då båda originalutgåvorna kostar över tusenlappen. Spinning And Scratching  håller tummarna för att framtida nyutgåvor kommer bli "Sogmusobil" av Telefon Paisa, Träd, Gräs & Stenars två Tall-plattor, Atlantic Oceans "Tranquility Bay" och "Marathon" av Mecki Mark Men.

http://www.subliminalsounds.se

[radiobubblemusic]

ΑΚΡΟΑΣΗ ΔΙΣΚΟΥ: Baby Grandmothers (Τρίτη 5 Μαρτίου 1200μμ)

Η ανακάλυψη χαμένων μουσικών θησαυρών τα τελευταία χρόνια έχει γίνει της μόδας (κυρίως απο τις πλούσιες δεκαετίες του 60-70) με δισκογραφικές εταιρίες να επιβιώνουν κυρίως από αυτήν την ιδέα.Παράδειγμα τέτοιο ειναι η Subliminal Sounds που στην συγκεκριμένη περίπτωση ανεσυρε τους σουηδούς Baby Grandmothers των οποίων το μοναδικό single Being Is More Than Life που κυκλοφόρησαν στην Φιλανδία το 1968, έχει γίνει κάτι σαν το ιερο δισκοπότηρο των σκανδιναβών φανατικών της κιθαριστικής ψυχεδέλειας.H μπάντα επίσης συνόδεψε τον J. Hendrix στην σουηδική του περιοδεία το 1968.Ο δίσκος που θα ακούσουμε περιέχει το  περίφημο single και άλλες live ηχογραφήσεις που θα σας θυμίσουν πολλές revival μπάντες του σήμερα...

idealkrush

[subliminalsounds-blog]

Skogen Brinner and Subliminal Sounds signs contract in blood!

www.subliminalsounds.se www.subliminalsounds.se/DOK/skogenbrinner.html

The Swedish hard rock band Skogen Brinner committed to a blood oath today with the record company/management Subliminal Sounds.  

When the band and company choose to contract each other they decided that the only real way to do it was to sign the contract in their own blood. Subliminal Sounds now releases the bands first single; the shockingly brutal drug epos ”Pundarvarning”, digitally worldwide. For the late autumn 2012 Subliminal Sounds releases Skogen Brinners much anticipated debut album worldwide.

Skogen Brinner will be appearing at Sweden’s foremost hard rock festival  Muskelrock in June 1st and also at Days In Doomtown, Copenhagen, May 4th..

Pictures from the blood oath ritual: 

In the pictures from left to right: Jesper Aronsson, Joel Carnstam, David Forsberg, Jonatan Eriksson. Outside of the picture: Stefan Kéry (Subliminal Sounds).

[subliminalsounds-blog]

www.subliminalsounds.se  ST Mikael jams with Reine Fiske (The Amazing, Dungen etc) and Fredrik Björling (The Amazing, Dungen etc) during the recording session for his "Mind of Fire" and "In Harmony" albums. More info here:http://www.subliminalsounds.se/DOK/stmikael.html