RIP MIX BURN: AWAKENING

"A flourishing of Calypso creativity, a dramatic period in Trinidad's history and an audio engineer inspired these exciting tracks, originally released on Cook Records between 1956 and 1962. Emory Cook used innovative recording techniques to capture the active interplay between calypsonians and their audiences. We hear classic song-duels between calypso legends like The Mighty Sparrow and Lord Melody, lively steel band processions, and a wide range of provocative calypso songs about life, love and politics. Live and studio recordings from Trinidad."
Calypso Awakening from the Emory Cook Collection, MP3 Album Music Download at eMusic




"With the new CD 'The Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru,' the man who compiled the music, Olivier Conan, might just be giving American popular culture a chance to hear some music that has slid under the radar for decades.

Chicha is the sound of one style of Peruvian pop music that is derived from Cumbia, a form of Colombian music, and popular in the poor, urban neighborhoods, where Conan was introduced to it.

In the 1960s, Chicha bands were borrowing sounds and ideas from English and American music and melding these with Cumbia — electric guitars and bass, Moog synthesizers and Farfisa organs all crept in. The first group of these bands came out of the Amazon — bands like Juaneco y Su Combo, and Los Tigres de Tarapoto."
The Roots of Chicha, MP3 Album Music Download at eMusic

shuffleboil | The Roots of Chicha: Interview with Olivier Conan

The capacity to blunder

"The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music."
- Lewis Thomas, *Lives of a Cell*

RIP MIX BURN: El Guincho

El Guincho - Band To Watch - Stereogum:
"This past week we found ourself unable to stop listening to 'Antillas,' a five-minute bundle of clattering loops and sunny harmonies, from Barcelona-via-Canary Islands one-man band El Guincho, aka Pablo Díaz-Reixa, and his entirely addictive self-released Alegranza..."

MySpace.com - el Guincho - Barcelona, UM - Pop / Tropical / Club - www.myspace.com/elguincho

Pitchfork Forkcast: On Repeat: El Guincho: "Fata Morgana" [MP3/Stream]:
"He lives in a country on the peninsula that lies south of the Pyrenees. He makes music by taking small bits of sound and spinning the fragments around and around, expanding and contracting and changing them bit by bit but also hinting that they could go for quite a while if the conditions were right. Over these loops he sings, sometimes in simple, sing-songy ways, other times harmonizing with himself in a sun-speckled tone just right to soundtrack dreaming. Are we talking about the dude who sang our third favorite song of 2007? No, it's Pablo Díaz-Reixa, currently based in Barcelona, who makes music as El Guincho. And, to be fair, geography and some shared structural interests aside, the shorthand comparison with Panda Bear only goes so far. Díaz-Reixa brings several elements to the table on 'Fata Morgana'-- one of the highlights of his self-released 2007 album Alegranza, which is damn solid all the way through-- and combines them in a fresh way: a bright tropical glow to the production; the buoyant percussion and chanted vocals of Os Mutantes; a fondness for oddball samples that give the endlessly churning sound a little extra flavor. It's just over three minutes long and you wish like hell it was six..."

Tough Guy competition