WFMU : Freedom is Freeform!

It's winter.... well not really.  Technically the calendar says winter, but for the past few months there has been no sign of it.  Except for today.  Yes, today when Fujiya & Miyagi are scheduled to show up to do their session with me.  It decides to snow and enough to make the band's drive from their show in Philly the night before not a wonderful one.  So I prepare the coffee, buy the bagels, fruit and juice while I await their arrival.

It's so refreshing when the band you have come in is actually a fan of the station.  They become in awe of you and your place while you are in awe back at them for actually wanting to do a set for your show!  They all pile in and are as nice as can be.  As the band sets up, I chatted with David, the guitarist and singer, about the station and promised them a tour afterwards.  It was such a relaxed vibe they gave off that it made everything run so smooth and comfortable.  They get in to play and are pure professionals.  It's my own private show, just for myself, though they can't hear me cheering behind the double plated glass.  The entire time I can't stop moving.  The music takes over and your are in their control, which isn't a bad thing.  

Afterwards, the promised tour makes them giddy and the record library is a world of wonder.  One of them even pulled out an album of his from a previous band.  Ahhh, yes, the wonders of the record library....  

Hopefully the next time they come around, the sun will be shining, the weather a little warmer and the stay a little longer.  I could have listened to them all day and night.

The Golden Festival is a massive Balkan and East European music and dance bacchanal. On January 14th, WFMU's Transpacific Sound Paradise presented its fourth live broadcast from the event's main stage in Brooklyn's kitschy and fabulous Grand Prospect Hall. The Grand Ballroom was one of four stages, and the two-night event featured over sixty groups. This year, the Free Music Archive will host archives from all four stages.

We're starting the Golden Festival 2012 Collection with the Atrium Room.

Black Sea Hotel (pictured) is the Brooklyn-based vocal quartet of Corinna, Joy, Sarah and Willa. Their set included traditional songs learned under a plum tree in Bulgaria, but with their own distinct twists and arrangements, since many of the songs were originally sung by larger choirs.

Brazda (pictured) is a New York-based Balkan band that plays fresh arrangements of traditional repertoire from Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, and beyond. Like many of the groups, they have provided information about each song in their set including translations. I was surprised to learn that "Yiati Foumaro Kokaini" has lyrics that translate to "That crazy rascal, cocaine smoker For my troubles, now I smoke cocaine."

Black Pus is the many-armed beast of a solo project from Brian Chippendale, one of the most distinct musicians and visual artists of our time. If you're not already familiar with the sounds of Black Pus, you may recognize Chippendale's many-armed drumming style and masked mic-in-mouth vox from his duos Mindflayer and Lightning Bolt. A co-founder of the storied Fort Thunder artist collective, Chippendale still lives in the Olneyville neighborhood of Providence, in a former mill building where lately he seems to be writing a new Black Pus song almost every night. So while we're wrapping our heads around 2011's Primordial Pus (Load Records) -- not to mention the limited edition CD-R series of Black Pus 1, 2, 3, 4 and 0 -- there's already a seventh Black Pus album ready to pop.

The live set on Marty McSorely's WFMU program is a special treat because, though he is a prolific musician, Black Pus doesn't tour nearly enough to quench our thirst for Pus. The set was expertly engineered by Ernie Indradat, and the interview covers recent collaborations with Björk and the Flaming Lips. Chippendale also talks about how he assembled such a unique setup, including an oscillator pedal that was originally a gift from Shinji Masuko of DMBQ. When Marty McSorely asks "What is Brian Chippendale's Black Pus?" Chippendale responds that it's reggaeton. He goes on to elaborate on a range of influences from the free jazz assault of Peter Brötzmann's Machine Gun to the unpredictable rhythms of Sightings and Black Dice (who started out as a hardcore band in Providence around the same time as Lightning Bolt).

In some circles, Brian Chippendale is known as much for his fine art, comics and graphic novels as for his music. His visual style can be experienced as part of every Black Pus and Lightning Bolt release. And, as those of you who are on the WFMU swag mailing list may have heard, Brian Chippendale designed an awesome biker t-shirt for WFMU's marathon which begins later this month!

Previously on the FMA: doncbruital (Angels in America) on Anarchic Self Reliance: Black Pus

For more, check out the Black Pus blog, which just debuted this trippy surrealist video for "I'll Come When I Can," off Primordial Pus.

Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino is Salento, Italy's foremost traditional music group.  They will perform as part of this Sunday's Global Fest at Webster Hall, NYC along with Debo Band, Yemen Blues, and many other incredible artists.  CGS made their U.S. debut last year, including the following performance on WFMU's Transpacific Sound Paradise engineered by Davey Jewell and Juan Aboites. At the time, host Rob Weisberg wrote:

Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino specializes in the driving rhythms of the pizzica dance and other ancient rhythms on traditional instruments. The pizzica is the local variant of the legendary mystical spider-trance-dance, the tarantella. 

Among the other Globel Fest performers are the afro-columbian group M.A.K.U. Sound System, the jaw harp master Wang Li, the Bedouin-inspired Yemen Blues, Malian rap group SMOD, and the Debo Band (FMA) -- an Ethiopiques-style ensemble who recently signed to Sub Pop and were recently featured on the FMA by LizB. For more Global Fest sounds, check out NPR Music's Global Fest Stream, curated by our own Rob Weisberg!

re-posting this mix from the #bestof2011 collection generated by FMA curators and community members: "Favorite Live at WFMU Tracks 2011" by entropica

Here are my picks of top 2011 FMA tracks, some of which I curated. Like my WFMU podcast, I spotlight odd and avant-garde yet accessible music. This mix features a lot of gems that seem to have slipped through the cracks somehow, judging by their ridiculously low play counts.

U.S. Girls on KRAAK is what it says it is: the new album from U.S. Girls, released by the KRAAK label / festival / grassroots org out of Belgium. The occasion of her 3rd LP release is a great moment to reflect on U.S. Girls' radio debut over three years ago on Scott Williams' WFMU program. Megan Remy continues to refine her warped top ten pop vision on on Kraak, including a sinister take on Brandy and Monica's "The Boy Is Mine."

To coincide with the release, KRAAK has unleashed "The Island Song" along with a slew of remixes by the likes of Peaking Lights, él-g, and Bear Bones, Lay Low. There's also a sweet music video (below), and a limited edition 7" from U.S. Girls' new Calico Corp imprint.

What better way to inaugurate Sargent Singles, the free split virtual 7" series from Los Angeles music collective Vosotros (FMA | vosotros.com), than with the silky-voiced jazz of Inara George's "Q." Co-written and produced by Gus Seyffert, the song floats by on tropical nylon guitar chords teetering against menacing lyrics: "I asked you a question...you piece of shit." Inara George has had a string of solo releases in recent years, including a collaboration with Van Dyke Parks, and in 2010, she released a tribute to Hall and Oates on Blue Note with her group The Bird and the Bee.

The Sargent Singles series accounts for six excellent songs to date, and all three volumes are available here or after the jump.

SPIT is the latest work from Argentinian sound artist Sol Rezza, manipulating sounds sourced from lawn mowers and lakes, crickets and dogs, into strange sonic narratives. Take "Revolution as a Loop" (below), and experience the full 47-minutes here on FMA or at Sol Rezza's Radio-Arte. Be sure to use headphones, because SPIT was designed for not only designed for stereophonic listening, but selected for the first series of concerts in the Turbulence Sound Matrix, Steve Heimbecker's 64-channel surround sound system.

Sol Rezza is also half of Panz4 Troupé, a duo with Mexican multimedia artist Daniel Iván. Here's a video of Matar al Gato 2.2: Ekpyrotica as performed live at Mexico City contemporary art venue Laboratorio Arte Alameda:

The Ekpyrotica series deals with the idea of Ekpyrosis, proposed by the Stoic philosophers. They believed the universe is repeated after every "great year", and that this repetition is preceeded by the universe's destruction via a "conflagration" (read more)

Terre T hosted on her Cherry Blossom Clinic, 2 live bands: Wild Flag (all female quartet containing members of Sleater-Kinney, Minders and Helium) and UK DIY anarcho punk rockers Zounds! Yowza, now that's a show! I was asked to engineer both, and responded with a HELL YES, and so our work was cut out for us! Check out the archive of the program. Shock and Awetober, indeed!

Wild Flag is still out on tour; they played a scorching set on WFMU, here are some more of their dates that end near their home base of Portland:  

Nov 1st - San Diego, CA @ Casbah
Nov 2nd - Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour 
Nov 3rd - Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour
Nov 4th - San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music  Hall   
Nov 5th - San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
Nov 7th - Arcata, CA @ Humboldt State University
Nov 9th - Portland, OR @ Doug Fir
Nov 10th - Portland, OR @ Doug Fir
Nov 11th - Seattle, WA @ Neumo's
Nov 12th - Vancouver, BC @ The Bitmore Cabaret

Zounds just finished a stretch in the US and Steve Lake has gone back to the UK; they have a new record out -The Redemption of Zounds -and a box set of represses of their 7"s. Check their website to purchase. Here's a review of one of their west coast shows: recent Fun Machine/Peer Pressure Guest, Dave Edwardson of Neurosis/Kicker played bass with Steve in the Bay Area.