here are a few of the highlights from the music tony picked up in january...

bulgarian voices- fly, fly my sadness
old but new to me- a collaboration between the bulgarian angelite womens choir and the huun-huur-tu throat singers, a nice monument to the range and depth of the human voice.

va- gold leaf branches
exhaustive 3cd compilation of modern psychedelic folk, everything from straight forward singer/songwriter stuff to noisy stuff to whatever else. for fans of finnish folk, Jewelled Antler Collective or good old traditional folk.

boduf songs- st [mp3]
doom and gloom folky singer/songwriter stuff, very pretty but very dark (cartoonishly dark lyrics like "i want to puke a pitch black rainbow into the sun, to put it out, to put it out..") minimal, subtle and nicely arranged acoustic guitar and strings occasionally adorned with harsher noises. kinda like current 93's 'all the pretty little horses', or a darker 'six organs of admittance' or even that Bonnie Prince Billy's "i see a darkness" album.

richard youngs- naive shaman [mp3]
more crazy folk stuff, somehow his most straight forward but most odd work yet. straight, crisp vocals that could have easily been from a normal song layered over a bubbling sea of electronic gurgles, static and bass tones, makes me think of a scottish Arthur Russell or a folk version of Vladislav Delay's meandering berlin dub without sounding much like either--awesome stuff.

pelt- (untitled) [mp3]
4 long very beautiful acoustic drone pieces. lots of shifting cello and guitar, occasional bells. for fans of american minimalism, noise, or basically anyone who actually thinks 70 minutes of kinda shrill string drones sounds appealing, you know who you are.

jackie o motherfucker / vibracathedral orchestra- split 12"
whoa, you would expect a side of nice psychedelic string drone from vco, and that's kinda what you get on the first track, but they go balls out on their second track, imagine the rythym section from Can or Neu on speed with 2 or possibly 3 drunk and crazy henry flynts letting loose all over the place, absolutely ridiculous (also available on the 'tuning to the rooster' cd if you dont have a turntable). jackie-o has one long cut on their side, meandering noises over nice spastic but driving and almost avant-jazzy drums.

vajra- sravaka
nothing new, not even their latest but these damn psf imports cost like $20+ each and no one ever has them on soulseek, so i'm just now getting it. a supergroup of japanese avant folk- Kan Mikami does his outsider folky vocals and very pretty guitar, Keiji Haino does his 'i am the evil genius guitar god, bow before me' god-awfully insane disjointed tortured sounds with guitar, voice and whatever else he can find while Toshi Ishizuka plays drums like a confused marching band major and a jazz drummer wandering in and out of the room. for sure one of the most enjoyably disorienting things you'll ever hear.

boris- pink [m3u]
great record, perfect actually, nice mix of heavy psych, metal and drony stuff along with anything and everything that was ever great about rock and roll thrown through a japanese blender. everybody just pack up your guitars and go home cause i can't imagine another record this ecstatic and rocking this hard for the rest of the year, unless the Boredoms put out another record, (fingers crossed).

acid mothers temple and the cosmic inferno- iao chant
more ass-kicking ridiculously over the top psychedelic guitar freak out madness from everyone's favorite japanese hippy commune.

muslimgauze- speaker of turkish
more unearthed muslimgauze!!!! he's already well ahead of tupac and biggie combined for posthumous productivity. he released over 100 records between the mid 80's and his death in 1999 and there have been another 80 or so reissues and unearthed recordings since. this is late 90's stuff- less overtly aggresive and nosiy, no crazy volume changes, just longer tracks using traditional arabic insturmentation and various percussive and vocal samples. there's still nothing that sounds like this- a british man imagining the music angry militant arab punk youth would make.

delta 5- complete recordings [mp3]
another awesome re-release if you're not tired of postpunk yet, i hope not cause the this heat box is coming soon!

king tubby and glen brown- termination dub
i love glen brown and i love tubby, i have no idea how i've lived so long without owning this record. melodica international (extended mix) is one of the best dub tracks ever, hands down.

also i hear rhythm & sound is releasing a remix project featuring Tikiman(!), Vladislav Delay (!!) and Ricardo Villalobos (!!!!!!!!!!!!), and that burial mix is releasing a box of 7" re-edits of the amazing 'fisherman' from Lee Perry and the Congos, which is quite possibly the most perfect reggae track ever. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, im seriously about to wet myself here, i need these records)

row fisherman row keep on rowing your boat...[mp3]

- antonio ramos, jan 2006