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Old 12-12-2009, 10:20 AM   #25 (permalink)
Bulldog
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Lebanon

Marcel Khalife - Best Of Songs (compilation)

Many many thanks to a certain NumberNineDream for sending this album my way a few days ago as, evidently, I quite enjoyed it!

To give you a little bit of context before I get down to the nitty gritty here, Marcel Khalife is a poet, writer and one of the most respected singer-songwriters in the Middle East, not to mention one of the most prolific. He's something of the Bob Dylan of the area then, seeing as to how outspoken he seems to be about his worldview and how he gets his message across in his music. Of course, it goes without saying that I don't, so this is all judging from what I've read about him.

This best of compilation is certainly, for me, a gateway to a whole new world of music that I previously new virtually nothing of. I remember seeing a 3-disc compilation of Arabic music in Borders once or twice, and this fella might very well have had a song on it, but that's as far as my experience with Arabic musical culture goes (barring the odd song or album buried somewhere in my EHD, which I guess we'll get to later). Khalife here represents as good a starting point as any, as there's a very consistent and profound quality to whole set of songs, all conjuring (as the best non-Anglospheric music does) very strong and powerful images. This is mainly down to Khalife's primary weapon of choice - the oud (an Arabic member of the lute family). It's also down to the fact that there's a very significant variation in sounds here, ranging from eastern variations of Dylan-esque folk, waltzes and classical-leaning sounds. Well, that's what I got from it anyway. Either way, an absolutely fascinating album when all's said and done.
The best bits: Bel Akhdar Kaffannah, Enni Ekhtartoka Ya Watani, Tosbihouna Ala Watan


Switzerland

Guyer's Connection - Portrait (1983)

Coming at you from rocky old Switzerland is part of the mainland European new wave/synth-pop scene and a long-playing effort from a band I know absolutely about (this album aside of course). It's something I came across at random on one of my many expeditions to mutantsounds, and an album that's obscure enough not to have a picture of its sleeve art any bigger than 150x150 on google images, which is what's up the dodgy picture I've found there.

Guyer's Connection are a part of a very rich musical movement of post-punk that might as well have just passed right under the mainstream press of the day's noses, which is a bit of a shame as there are some very neat little products of it, one of which is of course this album. This Swiss new wave duo, armed only with an arsenal of dodgy synthesizers and a microphone, make a fairly sparse use of vocals here, as this album's a lot more about the cyber punk-reminiscent sonic pictures that they can at least try to conjure with all the dated electronic wizardry they can. It's hardly the best album in the world by a long shot, and it's true that it sounds so cheap that it may as well have been recorded under the lead vocalist's bed, but that's all part of the charm. In the video below is a 12" they had out at the time, and is as such nowhere to be found on this album, but it gives you a good idea of the grim, bleak pictures that the LP itself conjures, with the odd dose of melody giving it all that much more spice. It's at least worth checking out, certainly if you're curious about this very obscure area of music.
The best bits: Pogo Of Techno, Ein Glas Voll Gurken, La Transformation
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