Happy Birthday Lyman Woodard

Remembering Detroit jazz keyboardist/bandleader Lyman Woodard with "Saturday Night Special" 

Karl Hector & The Malcouns take Krautrock turn on Non Ex Orbis

Non Ex Orbis, the band’s third studio album, digs deeper into the Krautrock history embedded deep in the soil of their native Munch – three of the most influential bands of the 1970s experimental German rock scene spurng from there: Amon Düül, Popol Vuh and Embryo.

Influenced by these musical heroes, Whitefield shapes a sound that takes the experimental approach of the classic Krautrock era and slides between beat-heavy drone and spacey, prog-rock suites. Marja Burchard, daughter of Embryo mastermind Christian Burchard, fronts the group on keyboard, vibraphone and other-worldly vocals. Al Markovic joins longstanding Malcoun Zdenko Curilija to round out the ensemble.

Non Ex Orbis, read by Whitefield and the band as Out Of This World, symbolizes an innocent way of composing and improvising music, free from the influences of our contemporary environment, preserving a childlike way of hearing sounds in their unfiltered purity. “Some will classify this as a retro, but for the band it simply is a form of creating, Whitefield states. “We’re drawing from an established musical vocabulary which was popular at a time in Germany, when underground musical culture had its creative peak.”

It’s been over ten years since Karl Hector and the Malcouns’ Sahara Swing was issued by Now-Again. The album swung with influences from across the African diaspora and set the stage for a cult, but influential following. Hermes designer Christophe Lemaire picked tracks from Karl Hector and The Malcouns as amongst his favorites in the Now-Again catalog, and included them on his Where Are You From anthology. Festival promoters intrigued by the possibility of resurrecting the careers of once forgotten African mavericks – from Ghana’s Ebo Taylor to the progenitors of Zambia’s Zamrock scene – brought Hector and crew across Europe playing festivals for ecstatic fans. Producer JJ Whitefield even founded an Afro-Rock band, Johnny!, with Taylor’s son Henry.

Unstraight Ahead, their sophomore release from 2014, found the band exploring territories even outside of the expansive scope of Sahara Swing: West African sounds of Ghana and Mali met the East African sounds of Mulatu Astatke’s Ethiopian jazz, tied together with the groove heavy experimentalism of The Malcouns’ 70s Krautrock godfathers: Can, of course, but also more obscure and equally adventurous groups like Agitation Free, Ibliss and Tomorrow’s Gift.

“We look to Middle Eastern funk and psychedelic fusions, and to various ethnic records for sound and phrasing,” Whitefield stated at the time of Unstraight Ahead’s release. “We’re trying to combine the global experimentalism of Krautrock with the backbeat of funk.” Listen to "Mother Seletta" (single edit) after the track list below.

Non Ex Orbis track list
Side A
1 Non Ex Orbis (5:45) (Whitefield)
2 Crawling Through Your Mind (3.28) (Whitefield/Curulija/Burchard/Markovic)
3 Hymnin5 (Extended) (5:12) (Whitefield)
4 Stossgebet (6:46) (Whitefield/Curulija/Burchard/Markovic)

Side B
1 Asteroid (6:15) (Whitefield/Curulija/Burchard/Markovic)
2 Inhale/Exhale (4:55) (Curulija)
3 Mother Seletta (8:08) (Whitefield/Burchard)
4 Dekagon (3:23) (Whitefield/Curulija)

Happy Birthday Lou Reed

Remembering Lou on his day with a WLIR-FM broadcast from 1972. 

Titans of Toronto Reggae @ The Opera House, Saturday

Studio One ace Leroy Sibbles, Jay Douglas and Stranger Cole top the bill at tonight's Titans Of Toronto Reggae summit. Check the clips below.

Robert Forster releases Inferno – his best solo album yet

Robert Forster has returned to the studio after a four year hiatus which resulted in his poignant account of his Go-Betweens' years, Grant & I.

Inferno is acclaimed Australian singer-songwriter and author Robert Forster’s first solo album in four years – only his second over the last eleven years. Forster only makes records when he feels he has the songs - on Inferno, he has nine he totally believes in. He apparently recorded 10 (see clip below).

They range from the exhilarating title track "Inferno (Brisbane In Summer)," the beach shack groove of ‘Life Has Turned A Page’, via ‘Remain’s 1977 New York strut, to finish in a way that this concise, brilliant, drama and wit filled album only can - on the big build epic ‘One Bird In The Sky’.

Inferno was made in Berlin in 2018, during the hottest German summer in decades. Noted producer/engineer Victor Van Vugt (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Moodists, The Walkabouts), recorded the album; the first time he and Forster had worked together since Van Vugt engineered Forster’s debut solo album classic ‘Danger In The Past’ in Berlin way back in 1990.

Inferno in its making is a perfect mix of the familiar and the new. Also working with Forster again, are Brisbane based multi-instrumentalists Scott Bromley and Karin Bãumler from ‘Songs To Play’ (2015), while new recruits are drummer Earl Havin (Tindersticks) and Fender Rhodes keyboardist Michael Muhlhaus (Blumfeld, Kante). Four musicians from the corners of the world, who, with Van Vugt’s bold and beautiful production, sound like a band of the ages. In front of them, Forster delivers some of the best vocal performances of his career.

Over the last four years Forster has been busy. He curated the acclaimed Go-Betweens retrospective Anthology Volume 1 1978-1984 for Domino Records. His engrossing memoir Grant & I was, appropriately enough, Mojo and Uncut’s Book Of The Year. He continues to publish music journalism, play concerts, and he never stops writing beautiful songs. Watch the video for "Inferno (Brisbane In Summer)" after the entertaining promo clip.

Robert Forster's Inferno album is out now on Tapete Records and you can get it right here.

Whaddya mean you don't know Tom Nehls

Check out Tom Nehls' I Always Catch The Third Second Of A Yellow Light recorded in Minneapolis back in 1973 

Mississippi mechanic Willie Farmer releases rippin' blues album

Willie Farmer's latest album The Man From The Hill is out today on Big Legal Mess. Listen to "I Am The Lightning" below.

Duck Hill mechanic Willie Farmer is living proof that Mississippi continues to produce soul-shaking deep blues. The 62-year-old guitarist is neither a soul modernist nor revivalist, but simply a small-town auto mechanic who’s never shaken his love for old school legends like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

A lifelong resident of tiny Duck Hill, located in the hills east of the Delta, Farmer grew up on the family farm. He first took up the acoustic guitar in his early teens, and through picking cotton soon saved up enough money to buy an electric instrument. He played for audiences at home and at school events and learned about blues and R&B mostly through listening to a powerful station out of Nashville.

“John R of WLAC, that’s how I listened to Lightnin’ Hopkins, Howlin’ Wolf. That’s how I got my first album by Lightnin’ [The Fire Records LP Mojo Hand]. I got the address off the radio and they sent it. I learned Lightin’ pretty good, and then I went to B.B. I can play all the up-to-date stuff now—B.B., Little Milton—but I like the old stuff, that’s the real blues. The blues they’re singing today, that ain’t blues to me, it just doesn’t have the feel.”

Although Farmer is from a musical family, he didn’t learn much directly from his elders. His maternal grandfather had played the fiddle as a young man, but he rebuffed Willie’s offer to buy him a new instrument when he discovered the high cost. Willie’s father Alex, a harmonica player who helped young Willie tune his guitar, had played as a young man with his brothers including Walter, who was recognized as one of the best guitarists to come out of the area. In the early ‘50s Walter played together with Leo “Bud” Welch, who grew up in the region. Sadly, Walter was killed in Chicago in 1964—“a woman liked Walter, and a man got jealous and killed him”—and Willie never heard him play.

In his early ‘20s Farmer joined a loose knit band that played at juke joints across the area—in Duck Hill, Grenada, Kilmichael, and down in the Delta in Greenwood and Charleston. He eventually tired, though, of the rough-and-tumble clubs where “people liked to fight like crazy. For about fifteen years Farmer worked regularly with local semi-professional gospel groups, including the Rising Sun Singers, who appeared on TV and over the radio in Greenwood, the Angelettes, and, for nine years, the Grenada-based Silvertone Gospel Singers.

Farmer eventually decided he wanted to get back into blues actively. He initially didn’t want to deal with the trouble of keeping together a band and began playing solo gigs. In 2003 he helped found the annual Grassroots Blues Festival, staged in a meadow outside Duck Hill. Through the event and he befriended downhome blues players from across the state including Willie King and Leo Welch.

The Man From the Hill marks the first time that he’s spent serious time in the studio. Recorded over multiple sessions at Producer Bruce Watson’s Memphis based Delta-Sonic Sound Studio. Farmer enjoyed working in a North Mississippi Hill Country vein with Jimbo Mathus and session drummer George Sluppick. He even dipped back into gospel, singing harmony together with Memphis’ Barnes Brothers on [the Sensational Nightingales’] At the Meeting. For the past thirty years Farmer has run his own auto repair shop and hopes that the release of this record and associated touring will allow him to retire.

“I’m trying to get out of that shop," he says. “I’m tried of messing with those cars. It’s been a long time.” Listen to "I Am The Lightning" below.