Wednesday 22 June 2011

Where Have You Been All My Life?


One of Bagging Area's favourite records from last year was Pilooski's ten minute re-edit of Nora Deans' Angie La La (or Ay Ay Ay as it's sometimes called). Here's the original, written by Duke Reid, a spooky, trippy, psychedelic reggae song with a ghostly but sultry vocal and tropical birds squawking and flapping about. It's very odd, very brilliant and sticks in your brain for days. The internet turns up almost nothing about Nora Dean. She was born in 1952, she recorded several solo songs and as part of vocal reggae groups, and was born again in the late 70s. None of this matters- just listen to this bizarre and bewitching record.

9 comments:

  1. Wow. Stunning and utterly original and a bit of a revelation for me, this. I kinda suspect the Slits might have heard this one before recording Cut - I always thought their sound came out of nowhere, but something about this reminds me of them. Maybe Beth Gibbons checked the vocal on this once or twice too?

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  2. it's a great track and the Pilooski twelve is kept in my box which would be first out of the house in case of fire.

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  3. Are you two sharing the same photo photo box?

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  4. Oh for chuff's sake, I mean this.

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  5. Finding a good picture of Nora Dean was nigh on impossible and I knew I had this reggae truck from a post I'd done before. Realised as I posted that Drew used it just a few days ago. Ah well...

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  6. Thinking about it, I've never seen you two in the same place at the same time....

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  7. I've never seen me and Drew in the same place at the same time. Although he was in Manchester on Monday night.

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