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.