North Korean Music Box (Pyongyang 1977, 10 Inch)

So here is something quite rare I suppose. The music is reminiscent of revolutionary Chinese opera, but more militaristic and probably about the promised land ruled by the supreme commander. Some songs are reflecting North-Korea's idyllic landscapes in which everyone is happy and satisfied.

Most North-Korean records were only distributed as presents to other composers from communist countries like Cuba or Eastern Europe. I'm absolutely unsure whether these records were sold within North Korea to the people. I'm not even sure whether people had record players in North Korea. Since the communist takeover North Korea has been completely closed to outsiders making it nearly impossible to find music from the People's Republic.

If you want to know everything about the history of Korean Grammaphone Records and records from Korea in general you should go here to this excellent blog.

I did not seperate the songs as I couldn't read the Korean language. Moreover I just uploaded the whole albums to Youtube. Anyone interested in the labels of the vinyl can contact me.

Get it HERE

  

Various Artists - Cumbias Cumbias Cumbias (Fuentes), Colombia

Discos Fuentes was and still is Colombia's most important record label. Specially if we are talking about Cumbia. Fuentes is based in Medellín and was founded by Antonio Fuentes Estrada. You can blindly buy anything this label has put out in Cumbia realms. This one here is a killer record with fourteen amazing Cumbia's sure to blow up the dancefloor. Although some songs are quite classically played most of the tracks are played pretty fast and energetic. My personal favourite is the song "Esperma y Ron" (can it get any more Colombian!?) which has also been played by famous Colombian Cumbia group Afrosound among others. You can find many Fuentes releases over at this great blog here. I'd recommend it to you!

UPDATE: The word "Esperma" in Colombia refers to the liquid that drops off of candles. Hence the great album cover!

Get this great record HERE ¡Cumbia! ¡Cumbia!

Kabouter Chismus - Same -1970- (LP, Pluf, Dutch Private Pressing), Holland

Kabouter Chismus was a short-lived project of Dutch singer-songwriter Nico Denhoorn (who died last year), who also made a private pressing solo album during that time, and singer Minneke Walstra. Nico Denhoorn later also became a writer of Dutch marginal literature.

This record represents a certain Dutch hippie movement that started out in the early sixties called Provo. Provo in Holland was one of the first worldwide movements of youth culture created in 1964 and in a way precedes many of the later proper hippie movements of America. It was very much influenced by Beat Generation writers, Marquis de Sade, Dada and anarchism. The Provo generation were one of the first generations to question environmental problems, challenge conservatism and advocate for women emancipation and progressive acadamic innovations in post-war Europe.

When the provo movement somewhat vanished in the same way Dada had decades earlier it gradually transformed into a movement in which people called themselves Kabouters, meaning Gnomes. basically the Kabouters took the provo mentality further into the years to come. They called The Netherlands Oranje Vrijstaat, which means Orange Free State, opposing the monarchy and wars western countries were engaging in during cold war. During that time Amsterdam was globally regarded as a liberal hippie capital. Its reputation of freedom to smoke weed and absolute freedom for gays is also rooted in this era.

Kabouter Chismus is a band that incorporates all these countercultural elements from Holland. The songs are sung in Dutch and English and deal with emancipatory subjects of the sixties. It's a combination of typical pop songs and acid folk songs. A real counter-cultural pearl from The Netherlands with an emphasis on Amsterdam as Kabouter City.

Get it HERE

Medical Records Vol. 01: Mama's Muziek - Uterus Sounds -1975- (LP, EMI), Netherlands

This is the first instalment of a series of medical records. Some of them will be quite disturbing whilst others are just kind of insane. It's a vinyl genre that's really weird in general I suppose. I don't know how I got into this.

Mama's Muziek means, Moms' Music and it was the idea of a Japanese doctor called Dr. Murooka. Supposedly he helped hundreds of mothers with giving birth and created the perfect pedagogical remedy for babies that cry too much and disturb their parents' peace. What you hear on this record are amplified sounds of human hearbeats within the uterus to calm the baby down. I haven't ripped the B-Side of the record because it consists of only classical music, which also apparently works soothing. The last two songs of the A-Side however are a combination of amplified uterus blood-pumping and classical music. Most pieces sound like Industrial music made by Whitehouse or Throbbing Gristle. The song "Combined Uterus Sounds" sounds like it came straight from the first Tangerine Dream album Electronic Meditation. This record gets close to the concept of the Soothing sounds for Baby series created by Raymond Scott, but isn't as innocent. I've kept the tracklist in Dutch, but it says "Uterus Sounds with something" every piece.

To get the best results the liner notes tell us this:

1. Put your stereo-installation on the lowest bass position.
2. Turn up the volume slightly higher than normally for optimal results.
3. Put your baby close to the speakers as if he has hearing problems.
4. Whilst playing this record try and make your baby fall asleep for the first two weeks.
5. Try and play the record as much as you can the first two weeks to make your baby get used to it.
6. If your baby is older than a month, preferably play the pieces that have uterus sounds combined with classical music.
 7.If your baby is younger than 2 weeks and doesn't respond to the record, inform your doctor.

This is insane! Get it HERE

50 Jaar HEMA (Flexi Disc)

HEMA is a Dutch store where you can buy all kinds of primary necessities for your living. It has almost become cultural heritage in The Netherlands. This is an advertisement flexi disc made for the 50th anniversary of the store. It starts with an old fashioned song about the HEMA and concludes with an easy listening groove you would expect on a compilation like Pop-Shopping.

Vimazoluleka, Levy Rossell -1966- (LP, Escenario Juvenil), Venezuela

So when I first picked this up in Venezuela I thought, here it is, the most lysergic acid drenched psychedelic rock from Venezuela you will ever hear. It turned out slightly different, but not for the worse. Vimazoluleka was a theatre play written by Venezuelan director Levy Rossell. They were performing it in 1966 in Caracas in a tunnel near to the Galería de Arte Nacional and at the time it was finished Rosell was only sixteen (!) years old.

Vimazoluleka will only appeal to you if you can understand Spanish, if not there is not much to find for you here. Still the theatre play is interesting and depicts a so called anthropology of Caracas in the sixties. It looks at the different layers of society and how these different groups get a long with each other. The whole is placed in a totally absurd framework with characters that are absolutely insane. There are recordings of acting and quite a few songs on the record.

This is a very rare example of an highly unconventional hippie-esque Latin American play, again preceding Hair by years, depicting a certain moment of social struggle in Caracas. It's a play that displays a lot of social critique from a time in which psychedelia, freedom-thinking and equality was starting to manifest itself in societies of the world. Funny thing is that the whole critical dimension of the play couldn't be much more relevant now. That's why some years ago they also recreated this play in a somewhat urban format for the contemporary time which to my opinion kind of sucked.

How much of these records survived? No idea.

Más sobre la historía de Vimazoluleka aquí y aquí.

Caracas para locos.

Warsaw Quartet - Latające Piosenki (Flying Songs By Warsaw Quartet) -1960's- (7 Inch EP, Pronit), Poland

This first post we start off with a pretty weird little record made for Polish Airlines by the Warsaw Quartet.
The four songs present all have a different theme according to the destination of that particular flight. Especially the one to Beirut is amazing when they pray to Allah in Polish while mixing the exotic melodies with donkey sounds. Let the voyage of this blog begin!

HERE

Beginnings

This blog is dedicated to oddities and rarities I find through travelling always on the lookout for records of a special nature. I created this blog as a counterpart for my other blog Archaic Inventions. Everything that for some reason doesn’t fit in that blog will be presented here. Sometimes I will post very local stuff you can only appreciate if you understand that certain language, for instance a play. Nevertheless those records have great importance. Sometimes because of their high cultural value, sometimes deviancy or because of a what the fuck this cannot exist factor. Expect collage of releases ranging from Latin American music made in Eastern Europe, advertisements, Exotica, Jazz, Folk, Nueva Canción, wacked out easy listening, political oddities, animal sounds and my collection of medical records. Some things will be actually very good musically, other recordings will be utterly weird or cheesy. Some things can’t even be considered music. This blog is a combination between great music I need to rescue from the past not fitting in my other blog and a historical perspective on the vinyl as a medium for sound. 

Probably it will be hard to follow this blog because there will be absolutely no consistency of styles. However, that is exactly what I intend with this blog. Just see what comes next and hopefully it causes a smile relating to the greatness or idiocy we humans were able to create on this planet. Have fun on this transnational express through obscurities of the past!