Recommendations - February 2013

Uptown Horns

A quiet passion of mine has always been dub. This is rare Canadian pressed Jamaican dub album featuring Bernard “Touter” Harvey. I bought a killer Fatman album about ten years ago and the strange man I bought it from told me I should really look for the Uptown Horns one. It doesn’t come to market very often and I got considerably out-bid on one a while ago. This one then appeared and the bloke who was selling it said it had a pressing fault so it went for bugger all money. But I can find bugger all pressing faults on it so I reckon he must have graded it with a big ball o’ fluff on his needle. All record buyers deserve a little luck every now and again. It makes up for all the shit records we find.

Harold McNair’s First Solo Album

For as long as I can remember this has been a right sod to find and buy. It’s expensive, illusive and annoying for those two reasons. Then, much to my surprise managed to bag one about two months ago for diddly squat and it has rarely been off the turntable since. Lots of people call this a one track album, but they can fuck right off as far as I’m concerned. However I must take issue with the sleeve on two counts – the first is that I’ve never really enjoyed looking at those creepy rubber gloves on the front, and two, it all looks like it’s sitting on a bed of blue crystal meths from Breaking Bad.

Duke Pearson’s Prairie Dog

Records like this should go for so much more that the £15 they currently fetch.

Earth / Vangelis

I seem to be spending a lot of time trawling the past again. This is an album I first heard in Jam Records (just Off Seven Dials) in the days when Janet Street Porter was shagging Normski. At the time £20 was a bit much for me. Fast forward a decade or two and I find one for sale in Kristina Records just up the road from here for £20 and this time I had the money, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. Bloody marvelous, especially that track with the word “happen “ in the title.

Hopeton Lewis LP

This is the Jamaican debut LP by the master of Rock Steady. At least I think it is. There is fuck all chance of me ever finding or wanting an original of this, so when the Japanese decided to make one of their mega perfect facsimile copies of the original I thought I’d buy it. Glorious, catchy, happy and the kids have a kind of construction toy frenzy when it plays.

An Arrabal Sountrack

This is a much harder to find record than the classic dimpa dampa dompa dimp 7”, and thanks to a search on ebay I managed to catch one after a mere five year wait. Maybe I should change some of my search parameters. Anyway, this OST includes original pygmy recordings and other such bizarre fayre, but the real star of the show is that cutey boy again singing another kooky French hybrid ditty all about something insane. I’ve played it on the OST show a few times and always get emails asking what the fuck it is and where the fuck it can be found. Just realized there seems to be a bit of a fuck fest on this set of recommendations. Sorry about that, too late to fucking change it now.

Flaming Tunes

This is an album that has been loitering around the Trunk turntable area for about three months now. I’m very pleased I bought it. In short it’s a 1980s tape now transferred onto vinyl. Apparently something to do with the Pop Group or something, this is excellent flowing odd stuff that includes strange unexpected things and some field type recordings that I also wasn’t ready for. And possibly half a song too. Mrs Trunk likes this soooo much she has promised me sex sometime this year. Although I think that’s a bit unlikely a she was a bit tipsy when she said it.

An album by Ronaldo Lark

Who the hell would NOT want an album by Ronaldo Lark.

A Morricone Record with a really bad sleeve

This came from the hell that is Record And Tape Exchange in Notting Hill. Normally I do try and avoid the shop as i) I’ve never really had any luck there and ii) I get the impression that anything half decent or better than ”just bit shit” is nabbed by the staff. However the staff missed this probably because of the terrible sleeve, and I have to say this is one of the most awesome Morricone non-soundtrack albums I have ever heard. I love it so much I have bored the crap out of a) my family b) anyone who comes around and c) many OST Show listeners because I keep banging on about it so much.

Into The Light

Awesome new LP of 70s and 80s Greek electronic madness. I mean this great, really great. Yes, there will be another Greek record along in a minute. Bit like buses they are round here at the moment.

Arrows

The team behind the infamous Dressing For Pleasure film and Tattoo (John Samson and Mike Wallington) went on to make a film about the Crafty Cockney. This was quite an underground documentary and may well have got an screening on BBC2 once in 1977. It’s therefore incredible to think they issued a 7” of the theme at the time.

Symposium

Excellent Greek OST that sounds all French and Legrand like, in fact in one of those “Do you know who this is” kind of music tests you get in Wire magazine you’d say this was a Legrand thing, and then you’d go “oh no it’s Warren Ellis and Nick Cave” and it turns out to be Greek from the late 1960s. I’ve gone quite Greek in recent months (I have no idea why), another big fave is the OST to Electre, which is not only an excellent odd percussive dark thing but you can now get in Ye Olde Trunk shoppe for buttons. Bloody marvellous.

This Munster Cover Versions Album

Milton Delugg is a god. Like a really groovy god. He takes classic tunes and buggers about with them in a very hip fashion. Here he even invents his own things that don’t exist yet. And of course the album has no picture of Milton on the front but does have a really great one of the Munster Family, which is not unlike a photo I have of my family when I was six years old, the only difference being we have a cat in our picture and they don’t.

Relics

Just spending some time rewinding to the late 80s early 90s and groundbreaking Detroit techno. This is a legendary album, and stands up some of the time quite well to twenty plus years of aging.

Ode To Billy Joel

(great typo Jonny - Ed.) Legrand soundtrack from the bargain bins. I realised in all the years I have voraciously consumed film music I have never listened to this. Once I’d got myself a copy I noticed that the cover photograph that is so stupidly familiar to me is actually a really good painting. One final point, this is only a half good album, because I don’t like Side Two at all.