Light In The Attic: can they do no wrong?

Spring Cleaning 20202 Sale happening. Lots of interesting looking stuff here. Anyone have any favorites from this list they'd recommend? I have a few things in my cart already but I'm gonna spend at least $75 to get the free shipping. Not a huge fan of horror soundtracks (though I can be convinced if there's one that's especially good or unique) but everything else is fair game:

https://lightintheattic.net/shelves/Vinyl%20Distancing%20and%20Spring%20Cleaning%202020

Oh, and I did love that link above, maffew12! Thank you. If the whole comp is of that caliber I'm going to have to pick it up.

Thanks for the spring cleaning tip. I picked up the 8LP Giant Sand box for $54!

Yeah, the Giant Sand box is an incredible deal. I snagged a couple of the Bevis Frond records from them recently too.

Spring Cleaning pages are staggering, but---The ones I'm most familiar with here are the Blaze soundtrack, if you're into outsidery Texas singer-songwriters (not too outsidery: Blaze was cherished and covered by ornery inside-outside stars like the latter-day Merle Haggard etc). This one made my Nashville Scene Top Ten. Also, even more in thee same vein, because vintage and various artists who are smokey pillars of East Nashville etc, the Heartworn Highways soundtrack, from the classick 70s documentary, with Townes Van Zandt, David Allan Coe, Guy and Susanna Clark and so on. Country Funk Vol. 2 has some keepers, though also some "OMG we're white stoned country *and* funky!" self-amazed goobers.
A friend of mine used to play Bernard Hermann's Taxi Driver quite a bit, and though I never heard it when my friend wasn't talking, the music came over and around him pretty well.
Only heard The Exorcist in the theater, but music and sound design by far the best elements of that otherwise lurid-to-ludicrous/70s-as-hell-flick (not nec. a bad thing, but sonics best of all).
Haven't heard those particular Goblin soundtracks, or other titles, but how bad could they be? Ditto those Lizzy Mercier Descloux titles, judging by the ZE reisses I do have.
Early 70s live Funkadelic, Bert Jansch, maybe This Heat, The Camberwell Now.

alas the shipping to canada is unspeakable

worth checking out imo:

bobby brown - prayers of a one man band
sam waymon - ganja & hess
charles wain - the last wave
albert washington - sad & lonely
caeser frasier - 75
aleke kanonu - aleke
aktion - groove the funk
the apostles s/t

thanks!

If you're at all interested this edition of the Taxi Driver Soundtrack is the one to own. It's the only release that contains the complete score. The original release is sort of a train wreck; the first side is some chirpy shit that wasn't even in the movie IIRC.

I am so excited about this reissue of Yoshimura's Green. This new / restored version without the dumb sound effects is a revelation. Usually that stuff doesn't bother me ("Humming The Sea" by Yutaka Hirose is one of my favorite ambient tracks ever and there's the sound of surf all over it), but losing the stock birds-and-water sounds of the previous issue of this album really puts a different perspective on it. Now it sounds like an all-time classic. Love love love this record.

Any word about a reissue of Soundscape 1?

Please, please let there be a Soundscape 1 reissue.

green has been my lockdown s/t

Yeah, it's ideal for lockdown for sure (especially right before bedtime)

Two months later I am still listening to Green on an almost nightly basis. It's so beautiful, but it's also become my pandemic anti-anxiety medication. Like many of you I have heard my share of chill ambient and new age but I swear the middle of this record - the run from "Sleep" through "Feet" - feels like it actually slows down my heart rate a little.

It's still on order at my record store. Have been streaming it for months now but I don't think I've ever reached the end of the album as I mostly put it on when I go to bed lol

Yes, this and Kankyo Ongaku, which I only just got into this year, have been *immensely* helpful over the past few months

Very hard agree. Green operates in its own space & overall the Japanese ambient scene has been a godsend these last few months.

do you all prefer the SFX version or the clean version? i used to be a 100% clean advocate, but the SFX enhance the napping experience even more, sometimes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38q7p2c3eSE

I think it’s time for a critical re-evaluation of CAKE. Deeply weird songwriting, an absolute shredder playing guitar, and a surprising pop sensibility. They also take an intermission when they play a show and I like that

— Light In The Attic (@lightintheattic) September 11, 2020

CAKE were my favorite band in high school but the last time I listened to Fashion Nugget my impression was "the critics might've been right about these guys"

Haven't played in in forever, but looking at the tracklist now I feel like just removing "I Will Survive" and "The Distance" would instantly make it a much better record. I think I'd still like most of the debut, but WXRT absolutely killed this band for me by (still, I'd imagine) playing "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" every hour.

This is weird to say but the Weird Al parody almost ruined them for me, it was so on the nose that I couldn't hear them the same way

i'm listening to green and trying not to doom scroll atm. wait why the hell are you guys talking about cake

LITA tweeted about reevaluating the legacy of Cake

well i guess the answer to this thread title is that they can do wrong

Recently heard Cake set as finale to a quarantine-unearthed broadcast concert, feat. various artists---long-running public radio series Mountain Stage, prob in online archives----and deadpan singer just kept droning, band just kept unfolding, grew horns etc, all very effective. Good songlist too. I'd go see 'em.

Don't know the records.

they are hit and miss live. they benefit a lot from being one of those bands where the fans know the records very well so their shows have sort of a party atmosphere. but the band itself came off kinda unrehearsed one of the times I saw them, plus John McCrea was a dick to the audience, I very much got a "we're only doing this because you buy tickets" vibe to it. the other time they were pretty fun and seemed to enjoy themselves.

The set I heard was maybe 20 minutes, at most, which prob helped, and he did *seem* begrudging---but dour, pithy comments effectively introduced the songs: good contrast with the colorful, energetic band.

Best use of said dickishness, for a few minutes anyway.

probably discussed on another thread, but I am getting a lot of targeted ads for this

https://lightintheattic.net/releases/7377-somewhere-between-mutant-pop-electronic-minimalism-shadow-sounds-of-japan-1980-1988

I actually don't know any of this stuff...dip in the pool is the only artist I've heard more than a couple songs by...anyone wanna give a thumbs up or thumbs down

yeah, that got discussed briefly here: Please recommend me some Japanese new wave...

thanks for the reminder though!

can't hate on any comp featuring Wha Ha Ha / Ogawa / RNA Organism. it's just shocking as you wouldn't expect the result to sound like a study music playlist. you wonder if it's trying to open doors to the weirder chaos or airbrush out all the variety so that all we remember is the maximally streamable lounge

weird getting old, right?

recommend the recent vanity records reissues as counterpoint

yes

I like what this label does, but I sure wish they would offer the same compilation tracklistings across all formats.
Somewhere Between is 14 tracks on LP and cassette, 13 on CD, and only 8 for download.
Kankyo Ongaku is 25 tracks on LP, 23 on CD, and only 10 for download.

Is this a rights thing for different formats or are they just trying to steer people to the most expensive version?

I would totally understand if they don't want to put the complete comps on streaming. But let people pay to download the whole comp!

Perhaps I should be writing to them instead of complaining here. Perhaps I will.

Let us know if you do. I bought the Somewhere Between comp on CD and wasn't aware that it was, like Kanyo Ongaku (which I also bought on CD), shorter than the LP version. But yeah I'm guessing it's a rights issue, especially since CDs still sell in Japan from what I understand, and I'm assuming the license holders for a lot of that music are in Japan

PP otm. The digital version of Pacific Breeze 2 is like 4 songs.

How's Somewhere Between?

There are at least two absolute bangers in the form of "Arrows and Eyes" and "Tira-Rin" but I have yet to give the whole comp the attention it deserves. Will post here when I've had a chance to dig a little deeper. But I always find these LITA comps a safe bet, as there are usually at least a handful of great tracks on all of them. But I'm also a sucker for comps in general.

Is this a rights thing for different formats or are they just trying to steer people to the most expensive version?

They're not alone in this; the BBE label's J Jazz compilation series has varied track listings too. Vol. 1 has two more tracks on vinyl than on CD, Vol. 2 had 14 tracks - same on vinyl as on CD - but if you bought the digital version you only got five tracks, and the forthcoming Vol. 3 has three more tracks on the CD vs. the vinyl version. It seems to be a rights issue. (Similarly, the Real Gone label in the US only licenses their reissues for LP and/or CD, but never gets the digital rights, so stuff they put out like Ornette Coleman's long OOP Crisis and Ornette At 12 albums, if you didn't buy the CD, you were out of luck.)

the recent Joey Negro compilations have had this too - the digital, CD and vinyl tracklists all being different

i'd love to learn more about their research & discovery methods, especially for the compilations and *especially* the compilations like 'native north america' and 'i am the center' that contain a lot of incredibly obscure finds and strike me as superbly well-researched

can anyone recommend any resources?

For I am the Centre, the record collector (and coiner of the term PINA) Anthony Pearson was involved via Douglas McGowan.

its mentioned in the Numero records Periodical:New Age Issue, which is pretty much essential for anyone who liked IATC.

I guess, its getting a genre head to do some research and look into what rights can be obtained.

its tracking down the artists that needs old fashioned research and networking.

Douglas says that he first asked JD Emmanuel for the compilation, and I guess it might be a gathering of momentum as artists agree and that helps other agree to be on it.

Quite a few have had reissues since that compilation (Joanna Brouk, Michael Stearns, David Sylvian etc.) So its getting an impetus for them to find the original tapes, and once they are found its easier for subsequent labels to reissue retrospectives/album reissues.

that comp might be the best packaged and pressed vinyl I have, its a thing of wonder.

finally picked up a copy of Somewhere Between, made it nearly all the way through Side A before realizing it was a 45 RPM

sounds damn good at 33 though

Haha, I did the exact same thing a few weeks back.

I know Douglas a little bit and that description of his working methods seems accurate.

xp For info about Native North America, I'd recommend checking out this podcast interview with compiler Kevin Howes and featured artist Duke Redbird: http://vishkhanna.com/2014/12/04/ep-152-kevin-sipreano-howes-duke-redbird/

just now catching up to the kankyo ongaku — whoa, this rules!

^^^ yeah, I dig it all, in particular the Joe Hisaishi track "Islander" is incredible. I wish it was twice as long. Quite an obscure find too - it's actually by the one-off project Wonder City Orchestra, before any of Hisaishi's well-known work. These folks really know their stuff. It's inspired me to get some Hiroshi Yoshimura & Inoyama Land LPs, but I think this compilation is way beyond any individual release.

still been regularly playing Pacific Breeze & Somewhere Between as well. I wonder if the popularity of Pacific Breeze/City Pop in general is somehow linked to vaporwave? So much of it sounds like sample fodder. I'm surprised Somewhere Between hasn't been picked up on like the other two. Maybe it just goes a little too far in the weeds and doesn't have the same appeal. But I've been researching some of the acts on it quite a bit. There's so much out there to discover. My favorite might actually be the last track, as short and insubstantial as it is.