Florecer are a Californian duo who make dreamy, blissed out music that treads the beaches of Balearica. Their latest track is Breathy Drops, a tribute to the bioluminescence of the Pacific Ocean and about giving into the unknown- something they achieve with a few drums pads, some synths, a drip- drop melody and a whispery vocal, and an acoustic guitar. Label boss Chris Coco said it was a track he could imagine Alfredo playing if he was still on the decks at the Cafe del Mar and it does sound exactly like that. Lovely stuff- buy it here.
Like Florecer's track there's a West coast USA connection but this feels like the dark side of the Pacific as opposed to Florecer's pastel/ dayglo haze. Andy did his remix while getting over some West Coast jetlag and the track sounds a bit woozy and jetlagged, slow mo drums and bass, slowly dripping guitar lines and the voice asking the question in the title over and over... You can buy the EP digitally and on green 10" vinyl here.
Luke Schneider, the pedal steel guitarist from Nashville who makes ambient- Americana, has a new album out later this month and this nearly ten minute long meditation came out last week ahead of it- For Dancing In Quiet Light. The pedal steel rings out over the top of a gorgeous ambient wash, layers of gentle drones pulsing and radiating. Find it at Bandcamp.
Coincidentally I had this lined up to post, a much shorter one off track from September 2024 that I missed called midafternoon classic that leans more towards the Americana, the pedal steel joined by a nylon string guitar and some harmonica with the ambient that sounds exactly like its title suggests it should.
Today's post keeps my post- holiday Italian theme rolling with a forty seven minute mix courtesy of Heroin In Tahiti, created, mixed and posted back in summer 2012 and sent to me for my listening pleasure while I was in Italy by my friend Spencer. It is an esoteric and experimental but totally accessible way to spend three quarters of an hour, some splendid vintage Italian soundtrack music, oddities, space age/ sci fi sounds, analogue ambient, jazz- tinged sounds- there are Moogs and other synths, pianos, cellos, all kinds of percussion, double bass and a pervading sense of strangeness. You can listen to Musica Per Sonorizzazioni at Soundcloud and I can't think of a better way to enjoy your Sunday morning continental breakfast. Here's the tracklist...
Amedeo Tommasi: Radiazioni
Bruno Nicolai: Diffidenza
Daniele Patucchi: La Dimostrazione
Giuliano Sorgini: Fabbrica Spaziale
Piero Umiliani: Danza Magica
Silvano Chimenti: Colori
Mario Nascimbene: Rito Pagano
Gerardo Iacoucci: Alchemie & Alambics
Amedeo Tommasi: Mondo Industriale
Amedeo Tommasi: Bollicine
Alessandro Alessandroni & Romolo Grano: Per Un Eroe Caduto
Ennio Morricone: Alternance
Armando Sciascia: Calm Sea
Floriana Bozzalla: Vento Cosmico
Giorgio Carnini: Diorama e Recitativo
Piero Umiliani: Arabian Synthesizer
Nico Fidenco: Industrial Feeling
Bruno Nicolai: Giano
Fabio Fabor: Caronte
Amedeo Tommasi & Stefano Torossi: Superpotenza
Romano Rizzati: Azimut
Piero Umiliani:Pellegrinaggio al Totem
Alessandro Alessandroni: SOS Spaziale
Egisto Macchi: Chanson de la Nuit
Guglielmo Papararo & Vittorio Montis: Jonosfera
Heroin In Tahiti are/ were an Italian occult psychedelic duo from Rome, active between 2010 and 2017 whose music crossed the borders between psyche, soundtracks, Morricone, prog, Beat poetry and Italian folklore- a style they called Spaghetti Wasteland. I haven't gone very far into their back catalogue yet but there are sounds worth further investigating here (their 2015 album Sun And Violence) and three other albums scattered round the internet too. This is Black Market from Sun And Violence, the sound of underground, psychedelic Roma.
Italian band Goblin have been releasing soundtracks since 1975 and still tour. Their music is a fusion of prog, metal and jazz- rock but don't let that put you off. They make the perfect musical accompaniment to the horror/ slasher/ suspense films that Italian director Dario Argento specialised in. Their debut was the score to Profondo Rosso in 1975, released as a half hour soundtrack album (and re- released in 2005 in an expanded format). The title track was released as a single and went to the top of the Italian charts, its vampy organ chords, rumbling, nimble bass, synth notes and crashing drums finding an audience in mid- 70s Italia and beyond.
In 1977 Goblin provided the score to Suspiria- Mellotron, bazouki, tabla, Fender Rhodes, Moog synths, all finding space in the mix. DJ Shadow was surely listening two decades later. Suspiria is a supernatural thriller telling the story of a young American ballet dancer who takes up a place at a prestigious European dance academy but following a series of murders comes to the awful realisation that it is a front for a coven of witches. Don't you just hate it when that happens?
Dario Argento's Zombi- Dawn Of The Dead came out in 1978, a re- edited version of George A. Romero's original zombie classic. Argento got Goblin in to re- score the film. There followed a slew of zombie films that claimed to be the sequel to Romero's original, an Italian movie sub- genre in itself- not a field I'm an expert in admittedly but Goblin's soundtracks and scores are fantastic. In 2018 this Zillas On Acid edit of Safari came out, Goblin re- tooled for the modern dancefloor, a delicious reworking that fills the dark corners.
There's nothing like coming back to a grey northern English August to bring a holiday abruptly to an end but as people say, 'don't be sad it's over, be happy it happened'. Italy was a delight in every way from the busy streets of Napoli to the epic nature and scale of Pompeii, the Bay of Naples and everything around overshadowed by Mount Vesuvius, to the beauty of the Amalfi Coast and its seaside towns. The picture at the top of the post was our view for five days, across the valley from or accommodation on the hillside in Pukara, Tramonti, the road to Maori way below us.
Naples is a busy city with an energy very much its own. It's also filled with reminders that their football club, SSC Napoli, won Serie A in June, only the fourth time they've done so. Two of the previous championships were in the 1980s and due to the feet and brains of Diego Maradona, a man who has attained the status of deity in Napoli.
In 2014 Julian Cope wrote some music to go with the fictional bands in his novel One Three One, 'a time shifting, Gnostic hooligan, road novel', set partly at the Italia '90 World Cup. It's a brilliant and wild read. The fullest realisation of the music came with the track named after the book's main character, Rock Section, which came with an Andrew Weatherall remix as a result of Weatherall's status as artist in residence at Faber and Faber, a post created for him by Lee Brackstone. Weatherall and Cope- what's not to like?
Rock Section was credited to Dayglo Maradona (a cover of a 1979 song by the also fictional Skin Patrol). For that name alone, Cope is a genius. The remix is one of those ones from his purple patch in the 2010s with Tim Fairplay as assistant knob twiddler and engineer. Faber and Faber released 250 copies on white vinyl. It's very rare but there's a copy on Discogs currently priced at £164.95 (plus shipping). Synth arpeggios, motorik drum machine beats, endless forward progression.
I could write about Pompeii and Herculaneum at length- maybe at some point soon I will. Both are awe inspiring places and to stand in their streets, at the shop counters, in the entrance halls and rooms of the villas and houses, to walk up the steps of the theatre and stand in the Forum, is to feel a direct link with the people of two thousand years ago who were surely just like us in many ways. They worked, they went to the shops to buy bread, spent their money on entertainment and wine, and if they could afford it bought paintings and pictures for their walls. The sheer scale of Pompeii is on its own mind blowing. We spent four hours there, wandering round the streets of the city and found something to discover on every corner.
After a couple of days on the outskirts of Napoli we rented a car and after a stop off at the two Roman sites drove south to the Amalfi coast. Driving in Italy is not for the faint hearted and the roads over the mountains to Amalfi are an experience in themselves. Maiori and Minori are seaside towns, popular with the Italians as holiday destinations and we loved both (Maiori was closest to us and our main base for five days). I could have stayed longer- much longer. Italy is a beautiful country.
More to follow. In the meantime this record celebrated thirty five years since its release this week in 1990. Thirty five years is ridiculous isn't it? It sounds too modern, too recent, to be three and a half decades old. And if you want to really fry your head thirty five years before that, it was 1955- the dawn of rock 'n' roll.
Raise was the debut release by Bocca Juniors (and there's another Napoli/ Maradona link- Bocca Juniors are the Argentinian club Diego played for before his move to Europe in 1982, first to Barcelona and then to Napoli). The musical Bocca Juniors were Andrew Weatherall, Terry Farley, Pete Heller and Hugo Nicholson with vocals by Anna Haigh and a rap by Protege.
Raise is summer of 1990 writ large, a huge dance tune with massive piano riff (cribbed from Jesus On The Payroll by Thrashing Doves but I think that that riff was re- purposed and beefed up from elsewhere, a house record whose name I've temporarily forgotten). Weatherall wrote the lyrics, partly borrowing from Aleister Crowley- 'do what they wilt shall be the whole of the law'- and partly a stand up and be counted throw down, 'Raise your hands if you think you understand/ Raise your standards if you don't'. It's a fantastic, huge sounding, grin inducing record. Bocca Juniors would go on to make another single, Substance, in 1991 and then Andrew split, deciding to go it alone and 'not make records by committee', choosing a different, less well trod and less well lit path. Not the last time he did that.
