when Ginger Baker, drummer of Cream, arrived in Nigeria in 1970 and hooked up with Fela Kuti, two amazing musical ambassadors' worlds collided. Baker brought Western acid rock with him and it melded seamlessly with Kuti's Afro-funk sounds and traditional African rhythms. the young people of Nigeria went wild for this concoction, and countless bands sprung up playing a brand new style of psychedelic, fuzzed out afro-rock. there are several great compilations to wade in to that document this rich musical era, and Nigeria Rock Special: Psychedelic Afro-Rock & Fuzz Funk in 1970's Nigeria will give you plenty of material to sift through. buy it HERE.
here are a few of my favorites:
The X-Ray Audio Project
_________________________________________
In
the Soviet Union during the Cold War, music and records that were not
controlled by the state were highly sought after but hard to come by.
an underground market formed, and bootleggers needed to use their
ingenuity to create the product. armed with a record press but
suffering from a lack of supplies, these bootleggers used repurposed
x-ray plates to fill the demand.
these albums were forbidden treasures, and their ghostly story is only now starting to emerge.
click HERE for more information on The X-ray Audio Project
a scuzzy, down n' dirty track from James Lavelle's long-running UNKLE project, off of their 2010 release Where Did the Night Fall. vocals by Elle J, with a darkly seductive video by Warren Du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones. very, very cool stuff.
Space Riders: Volumen Uno collects the entire introductory 4 issue mini-series, and, from one look at the cover, you know exactly what you are going to get.there are no subtleties here. this is a 1970s black light poster hallucination exploding to life. Rangel Jr's story is properly unhinged, flowing like a stream of consciousness Fletcher Hanks creation, and Ziritt's art looks like a mix of Jack Kirby and Paul Pope on a steady diet of LSD. it's a perfect blend. buy the book HERE
it's only in the past few months that i've realized
illustrator/animator Robert Valley is one of my favorite artists out
there. i've seen his work, unconsciously, for years and never knew it
was him. he cut his teeth animating for Peter Chung on the Aeon Flux tv
series, did work on some of those amazing Gorillaz videos, and was the
character designer on the criminally underappreciated Tron: Uprising
animated series, among other things. once i connected all of the dots, i
was able to put a name to the work i've been diggin' for so long.
turns out Valley has produced a graphic novel called Pear Cider and Cigarettes,
and the work i've seen from it is fucking jaw-dropping. AND he has
secretly been animating the book for the last five years into a
32-minute movie. in photoshop (!!!). it makes my eyeballs soooo happy
to look at. those colors... the impeccable design and cinematography...
the Eagon Scheille/Aeon Flux elongated figures taken to the extreme...
and that swank ass style that drips from every inch of the screen. it's
so fuckin' tasty it hurts.
Valley has already finished the
movie, nothing can change that, but he has a Kickstarter at the moment
to pay for the music licensing. and if everything wasn't sweet enough
as is, Valley has some killer tunes in waiting: Queens of the Stone
Age. Morphine. Black Sabbath. Leftfield. Nightmares on Wax. etc etc
etc.... great stuff indeed.
there will
be a larger Valley feature in the coming weeks here on Head Medicine
that will take a longer look at his past career, what's cooking now, and
hopefully what's ahead. but until then, get on this Kickstarter. i'm
all about the $100 pledge - the hardcover Pear Cider and Cigarettes graphic
novel, the movie dvd, and the behind the scenes making of dvd (surely a
must have for any aspiring animator or lover of the art process).
the earliest pinball machines date back to the late 1700s, but they
really took off during the Depression-era 1930s, satisfying the public's
need for cheap fun. there wasn't any competition until video games
like Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Asteroids took over the arcades all
across the country in the late 70s/early 80s. the pinball makers,
unable to compete with video game graphics, needed to up their game and
fought back with brilliant artwork to catch the eyes and imagination of
teenagers with pockets full of change. this was the golden age of
pinball art.
here are a few classic examples, check out more HERE
this week Black Mountain released "Mothers of the Sun," the first single and video from their new album, IV, out April 1st from Jagjaguwar. the band has been dormant with new material since 2010, but it sounds like they are ready to make the leap to another level. the songwriting and performances are tighter, the scope is larger, and the production is immaculate. Black Mountain have channeled deeply into their inner Zeppelin, creating an epic modern day "No Quarter." ominous organ drones, glorious slabs of stoner riffs (that tone!), and ghostly vocals... even the video is their Song Remains the Same fantasy sequence.
Who is William Onyeabor? no one really knows for sure. what we do know is that Onyeabor was a pioneering oddity in the 1970s and 80s Nigerian funk music scene, performing his own brand of African electronic dance music. he never performed live, and few people ever actually met the man, but his records were hugely successful on the Nigerian club scene. he performed and produced the music himself, released his albums on his own label Wilfilms, and even manufactured his records at his own vinyl pressing plant. his sound sprouted from the psychedelic afro-funk around him in mid 70s Nigeria, but sharply diverged from there, and eventually stumbled upon an endless repetition of synthesizer dance floor loops. there was no one else around even vaguely sounding like Onyeabor at that time. his ideas seemed to be closer to German Krautrock than anything else, and his later work prophesied 1980s house music. in 1985, Onyeabor became a born-again Christian and completely disappeared from public view, hiding away in his Nigerian palace.
few people know any other details about him. legend has Onyeabor learning music production in Stockholm, Sweden before moving on to study cinematography in Moscow, until he returned to Nigeria to make films and produce their soundtracks. no one can recall ever actually seeing an Onyeabor film, though. his studio was packed with state of the art recording equipment and an army of synthesizers, but there is no record of how or where Onyeabor would have been able to purchase this expensive equipment. there are no other musician credits, so it it unknown if he had a backing band or if he was performing everything himself. all that remains are his records and the music embedded in the grooves.
Onyeabor's music once again emerged on the classic Nigeria 70 funk compilation, and in 2013 Luaka Bop issued World Psychedelic Classics 5: Who is William Onyeabor?, a collection spanning his entire career. after an exhausting battle to track Onyeabor down and secure licensing rights, Luaka Bop finally released a deluxe box set collecting all eight of Onyeabor's albums in 2014. to celebrate the occasion, the man himself came from the shadows and granted the BBC his first ever radio interview (check it out HERE) where he revealed he will be releasing a new album of gospel music in the near future.
here are a few of my favorites from the Who is William Onyeabor? compilation:
and here is Noisey's Onyeabor documentary Fantastic Man.
Al Lover has been a Head Medicine favorite for a while now. his deep, psyched out trip hop is the very finest out there, and his entire catalog is well worth a look. but i find myself gravitating to Brown Acid Redux, a live set from SXSW 2014. over the course of an hour, Al Lover shows off his impeccable taste and one of the deepest crates of any dj out there. he sets the scene with a filthy, unending sex groove and weaves in a tapestry of some of the greatest sounds from around the world... Portishead, Turkish psych master Baris Manco, Butthole Surfers, Tricky, Bollywood legends Kalyanji and Anamdji, Morgan Delt... the list goes on and on... and it is a flawless mix. perfect for a night alone in the womb of your headphones or in a room full of people grinding with their eyes rolled back in their skull. take yer pick.
In 1953, Erich Pabel Verlag first published his science fiction magazine UtopiaZukunftsromane (Utopia Science Fiction) in West Germany. The series ran for fifteen years and produced nearly 600 volumes, and inspired the equally influential West German sci-fi mag Terra. I have not been able to find any information on the anonymous artists who created the many amazing covers, but their work easily stands up next to the best of the American pulp magazine sci-fi artists from that time. here is a small sample of their work, with a nearly complete collection of the Utopia covers on Micky The Pixel's Flickr HERE.
Here's a cool video of the legendary Frank Kozik taking us on a tour of his studio and giving a glimpse into his methodology. Kozik is one of thee most successful artistic iconoclasts out there, so if that's where you wanna be too, you would be wise to take a look and heed his advice.
A collection of interesting reads for your pleasure
Transcending the Blues: An Interview with Legendary Producer Daniel Lanois
Daniel Lanois is a classic musician and producer, helping create and capture sounds with legends like Bob Dylan, U2, Brian Eno and many, many more. Even now, he is a creatively restless spirit, constantly pushing his personal artistic boundaries. Autre recently published a fascinating interview with Lanois, discussing his past, present, and future. read it HERE
The Trumpler 14 Star Cluster
Photographed by the Hubble Telescope
"This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the star cluster
Trumpler 14. One of the largest gatherings of hot, massive and bright
stars in the Milky Way, this cluster houses some of the most luminous
stars in our entire galaxy." read the entire piece at Spacetelescope.org HERE
An Insanely Comprehensive List of 260 Pop Culture Oral Histories
thanks to Thrillist for putting this truly insane list together. movies like Airplane!, Boogie Nights, Dazed and Confused... music with Elliot Smith, Blondie, the Beastie Boys, Soundgarden's Superunknown... tons of tv shows... plenty of reading material for you to dig through HERE.
a new installment of Head Medicine Weekly every Friday.
