Best Italo Video EVER

It’s that time of year again when you send in entries for the Best Italo Video EVER to sam {at} manmakemusic.com

Here was last year’s winner…

Also may I urge people to download Joy Orbison’s disco mix that has been floating around the web for a while now. Joy Orbison’s yet again demonstrating why he really is the one to watch, this is simply an immaculate selection:

Joy Orbison – BSRkR01.mp3

Thriller – Genie
Floating Points – Love Me Like This
C.O.M.B.I. – It A Late
Eddie C – Make It Better
The Revenge – Night Flight
B.W.H. – Stop
James Pants – We’re Through
Alicia Meyers – I Want To Thank You
Fudge Fingas – DinsDins4Dada
Bumblebee Unlimited – Lovebug (DK Edit)
Arthur Russell – Hop On Down
Nite Jewel – Weak For Me
The Samps – Traincummings…..
C.B. Funk – Subway To Cologne
Kate Bush – Cloudbusting

Lightning

It’s always nice to have a bit of Philip Glass in one’s record collection just to offset that naughty Kate Nash album that also somehow slipped in there.

Lightning – Janis Pendarvis, Michael Riesman & The Philip Glass Ensemble

Einstein On The Beach: Knee 1 – Michael Riesman & The Philip Glass Ensemble

R Kelly – “Real Talk”

Third instalment in the R Kelly series. From the idea to execution this is a work of madness (and could we perhaps even say comic genius?) Who knows…

“They don’t eat with us, They don’t sleep with us, And what they don’t make us shit”

“Bitch I wish you would burn my muther fucking clooooothes”

Thai pop

When I was 17 I went on a Thomas Cook Club 18-30 holiday to a small Greek island on which, only a few years before, real humans had actually lived. There we drunk pints of an unsettlingly bright liquid dubbed “Liquid Cocaine” and the trip climaxed with a friend of mine shitting in the middle of the floor during the night because he was so pissed. I thought that was as crazy as it got, until two years later many of the same people went a bit farther afield to the sunny shores of South East Asia. There the liquid wasn’t red but neon blue, and guess what? It didn’t come in pint glasses but in buckets, apparently it was mental.

I mean Thailand must be an amazing place to go on holiday at the moment. Not only can you go to huge raves on beaches and take face meltingly good drugs, but you can also chill out and watch Friends on repeat in a bar whilst digesting an inspired mix of fried eggs, Valium and Viagra. If that wasn’t enough all the normal food stuffs actually have real amphetamine in them! Sure the cops are a bit strict and wield life time custodial sentences like prison was cool, but it’s worth it to stay up for days on end with nothing but a relentless stiffy and some sun burnt, lobotomized pedophile for company.

Wicked.

The tracks are from a mysterious compilation called “Thai Pop Spectacular 1960-1980s” that I accidentally downloaded off my girlfriend’s computer when trying to get all her Bon Iver albums. The compilation appears on the super Sublime Frequencies imprint, which is also home to Syrian pop don Omar Souleyman. On some of the tracks you can hear quite clearly the echoes of US funk, surf and disco. Happily something entirely fresh is created in the process of interpretation.

Kwuan Tai Duew Luk Puen (You Should Die By Bullets) – Chailai Chalyata & Sawanee Patana

Lung Dee Kee Mao (Uncle Dee Is Drunk) – P. Promdan

Mai Na Lork Gun (Don’t Deceive Me) – Kampee Sangthong

Mae Kha Som Tum (Papaya Salad Merchant) – Onuma Singsiri

Ellen Allien & The Anchor Song in Room 2 Fabric @ 4am

The Anchor Song – Bjork

A large room, a few hundred people there. The floor trembles. I wish my friends hadn’t left. Still holding out hope that this nausea might turn in to elation though. It’s possible, but I remember that guy on the stairs. Don’t trust him.

She stands in the booth. She’s thin, and moves her limbs like a marionette. I knew she was from Germany. Is that what all German girls look like? Two Spaniards beside me start up again. They say she’s usually wasted when she plays. Tonight though she looks majestically composed, almost vindictive. Some of the boys are waiting for her to mess up.

Then she does something that surprises me. She fades out the repetitive stuff and plays The Anchor Song by Bjork. Some guys in suits who’ve been drinking Red Bull and vodka since 6:00pm, whose sweat patches threaten to engulf them, look alarmed. They’ve been swaying half-conscious for almost as long as they’ve been drinking. The temporary let up of a kick drum has caught them off guard.

A confused hum rises from the throng, they fell cheated and slightly lost. They wanted a holiday in Ibiza and now someone has dropped them off the coast. Better complain to the travel agent, where is he? A palpable sense of disquiet evolves. She smirks.

art by Adam

Love&Mercy Presents The Digital Coconut

The warrior spirit of Love&Mercy was forged somwhere between Brigadoon, Ostkreuz and Essex. They exemplify the craft of musical wizadry as practiced by certain 13th Century Whirling Dervishes. Though the dates of such encounters remain sketchy they are said to have met the Creators of Music. They have written two books on Love and have often cited Mercy, particularly that found in the cultures of the ancient tribes of the Mesopotamian desert planes. as a strong influence on their work. Currently residing in Berlin they are the only humans to ever have played at Bar 23, 24 and 25. On one particularly raucous night they are rumored to have sent their audience in to transgressive fits of infinite giving. Supported primarily by provincial English radio disk jockey Derek Bones and one dead Austrian 80s pop star, their latest mix has been hyped as the closest thing to the word of God since the Authorized King James Version of the Bible.

On one of the early dirges on the The Digital Coconut it is possible to hear one of the members of seminal New York disco group Man Friday repeatedly lament “Didn’t I show you Love?” Scholars disagree on the precise meaning of these words, but most concur it probably has something to do with a chance encounter Love&Mercy had with the Carib islanders of Dominica. The islanders were apparently so impressed by Love&Mercy’s control of Rhythm and Music that they gave them a single digital coconut as a tribute to their skill. Echoes of their delight can be heard in a later track (also on the mix) by Bappi Lahiri that suggests, “Dance, Dance, Dance.”

So there is the story and here is the music, this is The Digital Coconut…

DOWNLOAD HERE

1. Love Honey, Love Heartache (Larry Levan Mix) – Man Friday
2. Orange Ground (Toot and Ks Ready Made Mash Up) – Metro Area vs Blaqstarr
3. Can’t Get Away From Your Love – Carol Williams
4. Rainforest – Paul Hardcastle
5. Infatuation – Up Front
6. Surprise Hotel (Micachu and The Shapes Remix) – Fool’s Gold
7. Body Language (Senor Coconut Remix) – MANDY vs Booka Shade
8. Alberto Pacheco – Cumbia Cianaguera
9. Genius Of Love – Tom Tom Club
10. Time Warp – Eddy Grant
11. Din Daa Daa – George Kranz
12. Lady Bug – Bumblebee Unlimited
13. Can U Dance? – Kenny “Jammin” Jason
14. I Wanna Be Your Lover (Exploration Edit) – La Bionda
15. Underground Limbo – Ronald Cristoph
16. Bucogeasca Dub feat Mahala Rai Band – Shantel
17. Dance Dance – Bappi Lahiri
18. This Beat Is Mine – Vicky D
19. Messages From The Stars – The Rah Band
20. Stand On The Word (Larry Levan Mix) – Celestial Choir

No More Four To The Floor

Wow it’s been a while, and the first thing I’m gonna post is a bit lazy, but I got to get it off my chest. So I’ll just pass off these magical little gems with the zeal of a man who created them himself.

Eye In The Sky – The Alan Parsons Project

Scary – this strange studio-bound man can apparently read your mind.

Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out – Mayer Hawthorne

Send this to a jilted lover and they may stab you. Patronizing, but still kind of lovely.

To The East – Electrelane

O no, the longing…

Strange Overtones – Brian Eno & David Byrne

“Yes Mr Byrne, the beat on this track is more than twenty years old. But no Mr Byrne, it is still cool. Sorry.”

Stuck On The Thud Mix

New mix – the usual mixed bag.

Sure fire dance music.

Stuck On The Thud mixed by Noel Mas

right click to download

Tracklist

1. Sunset In The East (Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts Remix) – Catz N Dogz
2. Mambo Jumbo (Guy Gerber’s Hemlock Remix)  – Dop
3. Congaloid – Solo
4. 81 (Renaissance Man Remix) – Harvard Bass
5. Bingo Bongo Strut – Dj Sneak
6. Midgets In Bricklane – Solo
7. Ic 19 (James Talk Mix) – Buraka Som Sistema
8. Do My Dance (Sidney Samson Remix) – Afrojack
9. Dis – Dj T.
10. Sweep The Floor – Joris Voorn
11. La Moustique – Sebastien Leger
12. Can’t Forget (Dj Sneak’s Redub) – Jay Haze
13. My Angelic Demons – Justin Martin
14. Let The Sun Shine Out (Jerome Sydenham’s Vocal Dub) – Flora Cruze

Nozey business

At a disco somewhere last weekend a dull Italian girl asked me why people were all jumping around doing some strange cross between a gyspy waltz and the fandango. We are in Berlin after all, aren’t people meant to be dancing nonchalantly on the same spot for thirty-six hours looking very concentrated and perhaps a bit unhappy?

As it happens the DJ was playing a record by Noze called “You Have To Dance” that got some pretty heavy rotation last year. Noze and their compatriots Dop both represents the best in a strain of house music that has been on the ascent in recent months. Call it what you will gyspy-house, booty-folk, bumbatron, bass-cake-magic-rave I don’t care it’s lovely and hopefully here to stay. It gives us dance addicts some relief from the sea of over-processed, over-compressed, all too perfect sounds of the machine that will probably one day turn my heart in to a shimmering piece of metal…

http://www.myspace.com/dopdopdop
http://www.myspace.com/nozecircus

Remember Love – Noze
L’innconnu Du Placard – Noze
You Have To Dance – Noze
Little Bug – Noze
Mambo Jumbo – Dop
Romeo feat Noze – Dop

And if you like that stuff you’ll like this too…

Swing Bop – Der Dritte Raum

So lang man lebt, sei man lebendig

_

Two mixes / collections of tracks. One from me which is a mix of some mellower stuff that I’ve been enjoying lately, the second is a label mix from Simon Allez-Allez and was first aired last year.

Simon’s mix takes us on a journey of This Is Not An Exit releases moving through a variety of long low-slung spaced out instrumental grooves until we end up in a place somewhat more frenetic and funky. This mix is a real treat and definitely worth a download.

PAJAMA MUSIC

click above to download or stream

I Couldn’t Say It To Your Face – Arthur Russell
Purple Haze – Dion
It Ain’t Easy – Supermax
Lonely Hearts – Joakim
Precious Little Diamond – Fox The Fox
Beasley Street – John Cooper Clark
Big Julie – Jarvis
This Room – Fat Freddy’s Drop
Baltimore – The Tamlins
Desire (Moodyman Remix) – Jose James
He Does It Better – Marva Josie
Love Doesn’t Live Here Anymore – Rose Royce

THIS IS NOT AN EXIT MIX

right click above to download

professor genius – a jean giraud 1
professor genius – a jean giraud 1 (brennan green remix)
hatchback – white diamond (prins thomas miks del 1 & 2)
they came from the stars – the HOT inc. (moscoW dub remix)
club sliencio – felix
hatchback – jetlag (faze action remix)
they came from the stars – signals (emperor machine dub remix)
detachments – fear no fear (naum gabo remix)
they came from the stars – it’s time (an optimo espacio dub remix)
the dark esquire – lexicons
sculpture – SCRAM
professor genius – a jean giraud 5