Best Personal Musical Discovery of 2017
So this part will be about what I consider to be the best music from years past that I learned about this year. Aight?
Sublime Frequencies: Molam, Minority Ethnic Music, Mono, and Asian Music in General
Sublime Frequencies is the label run by Alan Bishop and Hisham Mayat. Some of you might already be familiar with their Omar Souleyman or Group Doueh releases. Others are OGs and already know how awesome the label is.
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Originally Posted by Mission Statement
Sublime Frequencies is a collective of explorers dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers via film and video, field recordings, radio and short wave transmissions, international folk and pop music, sound anomalies, and other forms of human and natural expression not documented sufficiently through all channels of academic research, the modern recording industry, media, or corporate foundations.
Sublime Frequencies is focused on an aesthetic of extra-geography and soulful experience inspired by music and culture, world travel, research.
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It all began when Mondo sent me a cut from
Ethnic Minority Music of North Vietnam, which is part of a series where they would go and record the tribes of various countries. That led me to the album
Ethnic Minority Music of Northeast Cambodia which I grew to love because of the vocals and gongs.
It wasn't until I spent a lot of time on those records that I progressed to learn about the psychedelic folk genre molam in Sublime's Frequencies'
Molam: Thai Country Groove From Isan Vol. 2. My first reaction was that it was the best music that I'd ever heard in my life. I just sat in awe of most of the record since it was so clearly derived from Western psychedelic music but rests in such an entirely different realm. That was a good night, my dudes. It was later my pick for the album club (RIP).
That later led to
Princess Nicotine, which is a Mono (Burmese pop/folk) compilation that also put me into a similar state of elation when I first heard it. I love the excitable sensibility in the rhythms and the vocals.
I'm still slowly chewing my way through their discography, but even if they only had what I've heard from them so far (there are a few that I'ven't mentioned), I can't help but thank chaos for Alan Bishop for offering us this on top of Sun City Girls, Alvarius B. and the rest of his works.