Watch The Jay-Jays' video for "Come Back If You Dare"

Who knew Nederbeat roughnecks The Jay-Jays made a video to go with their "Come Back If You Dare" single back in 1966.

One For The Weekend: Chris Houston

Listen to Chris Houston's pandemic classic "Doing Nothing" off his Steel City homage, One Mania To The Next.  

Talib Kweli & Madlib talk Black Star II, DOOM and Dilla

R.I.P. Bob Koester of Delmark Records

Sadly, Bob Koester of Chicago's legendary Jazz Record Mart & Delmark Records has passed away at the age of 88. He'll be missed.

LINKS 

Chicago Tribune Bob Koester dies at 88

Rock 'n' Roll Globe Bob Koester: The Purest Of Purests

Sparks documentary The Sparks Brothers out June 18th

Edgar Wright's film about Ron & Russell Mael's band Sparks is set for release June 18. Check the trailer and interview below.

Rocio and Matt Verta-Ray are Disturbios

Guitarist Matt Verta-Ray and keyboardist partner Rocio are releasing their Disturbios debut May 21 via Atlanta's Midnight Cruiser.

Here's the scoop...

The self-titled debut album from Disturbios is an electroshock fever dream — a marriage of blissed out, raunchy, and angular vintage rock & roll aesthetics with the pitiless tyranny of robotics gone wrong. Forged in the crucible of NY HED’s array of vintage analogue gear, the duo take a specialized approach to songwriting by experimenting on a vast array of sounds until the seed of an idea is planted. Rocio explains, “the writing process is enmeshed with the sound making, which is to say that recording, writing and performing are all on a continuum, all elements of the same whole. This extremely organic approach lets the important stuff kind of bubble up to the surface and announce to us what its shape should be.” Disturbios are hands-on to the last detail and conceive, perform, record and produce their music with Rocio creating their graphics and video. From this method emerges a record filled with songs about longing, sorrow, love and revenge, that are also, somehow, joyful and exhilarating as a backflip into an icy lake. 

Rocio, who comes from the worlds of film and philosophy, cut her teeth playing Farfisa organ in Spanish surf bands, completing the buzzing short circuit between primordial ibero-arab melodies and twanging, sizzling Jimmy Smith riffs by-way-of the Ventures and Erik Satie. Matt has been slinging six string hash and riding the underground zeitgeist like an electrobilly monorail since the New York ‘80s - haunting, jagged riffs channeling directly from a deep vein of Sun Records and Link Wray. Disturbios takes the listener on a wild ride into the greasy depths of the human psyche that will leave her breathless, revved up and dying to blast the record out into the air again and again.  

Listen to a few tracks off Disturbios' debut album which you can get right here. 

Midweek Mixdown: Japanese Jazz – Soul Bamboo

Check out a 2 hour NTS Radio mix of 70s and 80s jazz recordings which involve traditional Japanese instruments. Link below. 

Here's the scoop...

Soul Bamboo looks at a particular subset of the jazz fusion movement of the 70s and 80s, where traditional Japanese instruments were introduced into jazz sounds.

Players utilized traditional instruments such as the shakuhachi, a traditional bamboo flute, and the Koto, a plucked zither instrument. This two hour special features records by the likes of Kiyoshi Yamaya, Minoru Muraoka, and Hozan Yamamoto.

今回の「日本のジャズ」では、『Soul Bamboo』から垣間見る70年代と80年代に起きた日本のジャズフュージョン界におけるムーヴメントに注目していきます。この年代では、日本に古来から伝わる、尺八や琴といった楽器がジャズシーンに頻繁に用いられていました。今回は、こうした伝統的な日本の楽器を用いたジャズミュージシャン・山屋清、村岡実、山本邦山らの楽曲を中心にお届けします。

Listen right here.