Chee Shimizu - Obscure Sound (a music book)

This is exactly why I prefer digital downloads to streaming. Should also mention the FondSound and Listen To This! blogs for their own efforts in this area.

I've been considering starting a Listen To This! thread but I wouldn't have much to say except Read This! so it would be a bit pointless.

return to forever is a great weekend morning listen, ftr

Pepe Maina ‎– Il Canto Dell'Arpa E Del Flauto

thanks for flagging this one up brims, i loved it

Yes, the tracks I've listened to from it are hitting the spot. Added bonus, looking it up online (it was recently reissued, btw) it pointed me to the prog band Jade Warrior, who I hadn't been aware of and which he identifies as "a strong influence". I randomly came across an album of theirs at a record store the other day which I grabbed and is quite nice (the second half of the album, esp) in a noodly early-mid 70s Eno way.

https://www.discogs.com/Jade-Warrior-Floating-World/release/9826609

http://www.soundohm.com/product/il-canto-dell-arpa-e-del-flauto/pid/17067/

Yeah, this Pepe Maina album is beautiful. Reminds me a bit of Michel Moulinié's Chrysalide. It's refreshing to rediscover these "ambient prog" albums that I too harshly judged when I was younger (see also Budi Siebert's Hmmm, which I once bought and resold too hastily.) Guess I should have another listen to Jade Warrior.

While looking up info on other music guides, I recently came across A Crack in the Cosmic Egg, a krautrock/German experimental rock guide. Not sure if anyone else is familiar with it - I believe it may have been mentioned in a krautrock thread or two - but figured it would also be welcome here.

A list on discogs of the authors' top 100 - see link below - seems to check out. It's at my library, so I'm planning on taking it out and giving it a closer look.

https://www.amazon.ca/Crack-Cosmic-Egg-Encyclopedia-Experimental/dp/095295060X
https://www.discogs.com/lists/The-Krautrock-Top-100/795

i am enjoying this song from Pedro Aznar's Contemplacion album. The rest of the disc doesn't do much for me but this song is a nice kind of 80s progressive latin jazz pop thing with great vocals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4SVmFhg8YM

I went back to see if the price went down for the book on Amazon and it's now $400+ :(

I'm listening to Schatseite by Adelhard Roidinger after seeing a reference to it elsewhere and recognizing it from the book. Early 80s, released on ECM. Only a bit of the way through, but enjoying so far and thought I'd share.

https://www.discogs.com/Adelhard-Roidinger-Schattseite/release/1048269

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1555&v=F9wPmpLNIy4

holy shit, deliverance at last - this discogs user has uploaded all the chapters as individual lists:

https://www.discogs.com/user/low-bay/lists?header=1

not uploaded of course but you know what i mean

Excellent.

ahhhhhhhhh

Thanks again NickB, this is good news for me/bad news for the wallet...

ha yes, i know that feeling :)

quite a few records on the list that pop up fairly regularly if i let youtube or spotify play me ramdon things. don't think that's a coincidence?

this is one of those random things:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQZESJ2Pga8

also, nearly half a million views?

i guess someone needs to put that song out as a single

oh wait i read a p good and v thread-relevant article about that phenomenon:

https://thevinylfactory.com/features/youtube-algorithm-vinyl-reissues/

that rare silk track is spectacular

it definitely has a very strange atmosphere to it

this thread is making my morning much, much better than it would otherwise have been

I've been listening to this stuff but my YouTube recommendations are still shit. This music seems completely different to anything popular on youtube or are there any other interesting trends?

The book appears to be available used for about $70 (not including s&h, which for all I know could be about as much) at kupiku.com, a site I've read good things about which apparently specializes in making Japanese stuff available overseas.

mostly the youtube phenomenon tells me how common, and totally random, it is to manipulate play counts. i don't feel the phenomenon is a million miles removed from the phenomenon observed a couple months ago of massive quantities of children's fetish porn youtube videos.

i'm not sure how well that rare silk song would sell if it were released as a single, in other words. there are all sorts of marginal cults but only on youtube does it get amplified to half a million page views, mainly through algorithmic chicanery. if the right algorithm felt like it the lewis sisters could have half a million pageviews (and i'd like if they would, if only because their "voices, strings, and percussion" record of tchaikovsky adaptations looks super interesting and should have a reish).

thank you for the discogs link, NickB! great find. no idea where to start, just going by appealing chapter headings and artwork for now...

and also for the interesting vinylfactory article - i have indeed been recommended (and clicked on) most of those Japanese ambient records by the mysteries of youtube's algorithms

there's a newish FACT article on Japanese ambient including Green and Through the Looking Glass too:
http://www.factmag.com/2018/01/14/japanese-ambient-hiroshi-yoshimora-midori-takada/

Came across this mix series run by the Red Light Radio/Records guys in Amsterdam, which I feel will appeal to my fellow posters on this thread.

I've listened to the Lovefingers and Young Marco mixes and recommend them. Each tracklist is also nicely annotated with nice track-by-track notes (which I find a nice touch), often from the person responsible for the mix itself.

http://redlightradio.net/liner-notes

excellent - thank you both! :)

Also, someone heroically created a Spotify playlist of the albums that are available.

https://open.spotify.com/user/1169389625/playlist/3AcBhC6K0hfXUhV2696v7X?si=Cvl6hPiPT_CiOOZyFIy90Q

oooh nice find!

now we're talking! thanks for that.

I discovered Harald Grosskopf's album 'Oceanheart' last night on Spotify from that playlist (it was recently reissued, it appears - I will prob grab a copy) while walking home in the rain. Lovely mood music - beautiful, lush synth work (Berlin-school) by a drummer, so it has some of the groove that I'd wish was in some Klaus Schulze et al's work.

I only knew of his other album, Synthesist, which is also worth checking out if you're into this stuff.

This Spotify playlist is great - had it on shuffle all day and really enjoyed it.

342 tracks though - presumably indicating that the bulk of the LPs in the book aren't up there?

The Grosskopf tracks are gorgeous.

yeah, I'm loving this. the Per Tjernberg record is amazing.

have had this shuffle for a few hours and have constantly been going omfg what the heck is this? luis paniagua has popped up a few times and sounded p sweet, will have to look in to that one

xxxp Synthesist is indeed great. I would recommend in a similar vein Michael Shrieve's "Transfer Station Blue".

Ooh, will check out that Shrieve album. I like that record he did with Steve Roach in the 80s.

the Per Tjernberg record is amazing.

a track off that popped up on my ipod earlier, really good odd electronic fusion stuff. also been enjoying rainer bruninghaus, orquesta de las nubes and glen velez

Second the recommendation for Transfer Station Blue as well! I'll check the Tjernberg today. At least from the Spotify list there seems to be q

Second the recommendation for Transfer Station Blue as well! I'll check the Tjernberg today.

At least from the Spotify list there seems to be quite a bit of Spanish stuff on the list, which seems like an interesting niche to dig further in (I know v little about Spain's music scene, apart from a couple of Balearic artists and some of the early 80s post punk scene from Madrid).

Oops ignore the earlier post, looks like I was a bit trigger happy with the 'submit' button :(

"grape iris" is so good

Heh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dy-fdpqJwk

Hey, if anyone sees the reissue of Yasuaki Shimizu's 'Subliminal' on sale in Europe at a good price, please let me know!

it's this thing btw:

https://www.discogs.com/Yasuaki-Shimizu-ReSubliminal/release/11738359

I've just spent the last few hours compiling everything in the book (at least according to those Discogs lists) into a bunch of Apple Music playlists. There's 1771 songs on here, compared to the 350-ish on the Spotify one - I don't know if Apple's got rarer stuff, or if the compiler of the Spotify one just got bored (I wouldn't blame them).

I was really surprised how many albums were up there. Loads weren't, but I reckon about 50% are?

Here's the master playlist, which has everything on it:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/playlist/obscure-sound-complete/pl.u-AkAmEgGc77pal2

I've also broken it out as twelve separate playlists for the categorised chapters, which might be a bit more useful/manageable. Rather than paste twelve URLs here, you can add each of the playlists from my Apple Music profile page here:

https://itunes.apple.com/profile/mattnida

Let me know if you spot any mistakes or anything I've missed.

whoa! very impressive, can't do Apple Music unfortch but perhaps some kind soul can cross-reference

Thanks for your work in putting these playlists together. really enjoying listening to them.

My pleasure. Yes, it's quite fun to have these on shuffle I find, a lot of interesting chance discoveries.

wow - i'm not on apple music atm but that's solid work!

thank you! listening to Cosmic at work.