ant banana cat

With sincere apologies to The Art Of Noise [and their A-Z of Music feature] and to our good friend The Singing Detective. If an idea is good, it's worth borrowing from. And if an idea is worth borrowing from, you might as well copy it outright... Anyway, I'm going to be trawling through my music collection in an alphabetical stylee and featuring tracks that I really love, from artists that I mostly know very little about.

Animal Collective - Who Could Win A Rabbit


I bought Animal Collective's Sung Tongs after reading a review, something that we all do when we're feeling flush, out of touch or both. I know nothing about them and I don't really want to, either. To know that this music was made by rational humans would ruin it for me - in my mind these are field recordings of campfire folk-songs from a tribe of demented glove puppets. With a delay pedal.

Great stuff - I've always thought that if you wanted to upset a neighbour, a high-volume blast of this in the early hours would do the trick, more so than Metallica or whatever. Plus they'd probably think twice about complaining.

Visit - Animal Collective (MySpace)
Buy - Sung Tongs

The Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Choir - Kalimankou Denkou



In this alphabetical journey through my collection there will be a LOT of music released by the 4AD label. When I was at college I was a major 4AD geek. As such I bought a lot of beautifully packaged half-baked rubbish. I also got some really great stuff. Like Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares, a collection of field recordings of traditional Bulgarian vocal music which is still quite unlike anything I'd heard before or since.

Amazing hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck stuff. No idea what they're singing about (although according to the CD this title translates to The Evening Gathering) but it's just beautiful. Considering that these singers are mostly untrained, the vocal harmonies they use and the blend of registers are simply amazing. There are all kinds of complex chord inversions and voicings - which become even more mind-boggling when you think that this is a recording of an oral folk-art tradition, passed down from generation to generation.

Visit - Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares at 4AD
Buy - Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares Vol 1

Chickasaw Mudd Puppies - Nighttime (Ain't Got No Eyes)



Now this is a real unknown. I got this on the great Rough Trade Shops - Country Vol.1 album. Like They Might Be Giants, they were a duo - were there lots of these in the 80s? What were the sales figures like for drum machines? Where were the drummers at?

This is weird mutant swamp rock with a demented edge - me likee.

Visit - Chickasaw Mudd Puppies
Buy - Rough Trade Shops - Country Vol.1