TRACK OF THE DAY - Tom Waits

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Pig Fat Pigs (1997) -Jabberwocky

Artist: Pig Fat Pigs

Albums: Jabber Wocky

Release date:  1997

Quality: m4a ~270  

Size:  88 MB

“I found this beauty in the treasure trove of weird and rare records that is Forever Records. Besides the great band name what caught my eye about this record was a blurb that said something about "punkish lounge music" and a reference to the Lounge Lizards. I inquired further with Taro the owner of Forever Records and Osaka's No.1 source on obscure music and he described it as "junk jazz" and name dropped Tom Waits which was enough to make me drop some cash on this mysterious find.

 Turns out my intuition payed dividends. Unfortunatley despite scowering the net I've managed to turn up almost no information on the band so all I've got to go on are the scraps of info contained in the liner notes. The band were (are...?) a Kyoto 5 piece (guit, bass, drums, organ, sax) who as was promised play some excellent Tom Waits-esque Junk Jazz. It seems most of the songs were composed by bassist Shimizu Kosuke (Who now plays in accordion/contrabass duo Milk!Mama who are also well worth checking out.) while the lyrics and vocals are handled by Shiraishi Takahide. The vocals are mostly sung in a gravely, jibberish approximation of what I asume is supposed to sound like English with occasional sentences and phrases emerging from the cacophony of harsh, slightly off-tune and out of time guitars, sax and clinking-clanking junkyard percussion. "Life's too short to fuck your mom" is one that springs out from the opening track "Bore Bore" a twisted, elephant man like bastardisation of the Pink Panther theme. It's the exact sort of thing I can imagine Tom Waits sitting around tapping his crusty, yellow tabacco stained toes to while sipping on a bottle of illuminous green moonshine. You would be advised to do likewise.” © Begone Dull Care!

GREAT THANX to Capuchin, who found and shared this awesome record!

Ceramic Dog (2013) -Your Turn

Artist:  Ceramic Dog
Album: Your Turn
Release date: April 30, 2013
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 118MB

”Second records are a bitch (or, if “bitch” is too offensive, “notoriously hard to nail down,” No? We thought about this one for 2 years - and even tried to make it a few times. Finally we got it right - meaning, we got it to sound wrong exactly like us.If you listen closely, you can hear the rage, hope, disappointment, ritual excess, love and anarchy that were in our personal and collective airspace during those years. There were (and - we hope - will continue to be) several kinds of riots going on (“Lies My Body Told Me,” “Bread and Roses”). And yes, the CD is “political,” (see “Avanti Popolo,” “Ain't Gonna Let Them Turn Me ‘Round”). But what fun is raging against the machine if you can't also rage against the bar line and the tonal system (“Take Five,” “Ritual Slaughter” “Your Turn”)? The astute listener will note our wry comment on the contradictions of producing a recording during the collapse of the industry which once paid for recordings to be produced ("We Are the Professionals,” “Masters of the Internet” and the attached manifesto). The very astute listener with really expensive headphones may hear the water pipes in the basement on Rivington and Allen where we recorded about half the tracks (the guitar amp isolation booth looked a lot like a bathroom). Those searching for rigorously applied formal constraints may have to wait. Ceramic Dogs just wanna have fun.” ~ ~ Marc Ribot

TRACK OF THE DAY - Foxygen

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TRACK OF THE DAY - Н.О.М.

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TRACK OF THE DAY - Коммунизм

Коммунизм on ICE-10

Tom Waits (2011) -Bad As Me

Artist: Tom Waits
Album: Bad As Me
Date of release: October 24, 2011
Quality: mp3 CBR 192
Size: 63 MB

A new Tom Waits album is an event and his seventeenth outing released after a few years is no let down. It starts with the gravel voiced troubadour yelling ‘all aboard’ and instantly you are transported into his fantastically surreal world of strange characters, pounding rhythms and clanking sounds as Waits hollers about a magically seedy underbelly of a long lost America of tattooed tear brawlers, snake oil charmers, broken hearted losers and faded grandeur, a world of seedy dance halls and long lost smoky bars.

The songs are, as ever, of the highest standard- squeezing melody from the stoniest of terrains, finding heart breaking tunes in the most clanking of soundscapes, there is dark humour and hollering blues, heart breaking ballads and zig zag wandering blues madness. Waits is king of all he surveys, every song is 3D, a movie on it’s own, close your eyes and you’re on a trip. FULL REVIEW

TRACK OF THE DAY - Kammerfilmmer Kollektief

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Weyes Blood And The Dark Juices (2011) -The Outside Room

Artist: Weyes Blood And The Dark Juices
Albums: The Outside Room
Release date: 2011
Quality: mp3 VBR ~224
Size: 71 MB

The record has shadows of The Shadow Ring in the oddly creaking ambient sounds and stark, nuanced production, which lend the eerily beautiful neo-Nico death-folk laments a more modern, art-skewed sheen. There’s still echoes of her old drone/tape-ghost-clouds moods on tracks like “In The Isle Of Agnitio” and the long, bells-laden outro to “Romneydale,” but the bulk of the LP is swooning and sweeping, with Natalie’s gorgeous, quasi-Teutonic vox leading the way. A subtly mesmerizing long-player, very “out of time,” and strangely untouched by contempo influences. MORE INFO

Man Man (2011) -Life Fantastic

Artist: Man Man
Albums: Life Fantastic
Release date: 2011
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 100 MB

Man Man are full of contradictions: They make great studio records that can't compare to the intensity of their physically demanding live show. Oh, but you really gotta pay attention to the lyrics. And their best songs are the slow ones. Their facepaint, percussion, and piano-pounding portray them as wild men, but Honus Honus' junkyard-dog howl is the projection of an old soul. This duality is more pronounced than ever on their fourth LP, Life Fantastic. On one end, it's by far their most tasteful and well-produced record to date. But it contains the darkest, most frightening lyrics Honus has written-- which is really saying something.
It makes sense that the band brought in Saddle Creek house producer Mike Mogis, not just for his mastery of reining in orchestral bric-a-brac but also for his experience with the most caustic emotional bloodletting. But not even early Bright Eyes can hold a candle to the absolutely scorching self-immolation of Life Fantastic. Leadoff "Knuckle Down" casts Honus as an all-too-willing supplicant in an emotionally and sexually draining relationship. But at least someone's getting their rocks off there-- more typical is the atomic "Dark Arts", which details an accident Honus suffered before the Life Fantastic sessions.
The autobiographical details are a bit stifling at times, but Honus' other lyrical subjects are no better off: Within the subtly hooky vocals of the title track, children find a corpse at a picnic and are informed by their parents that "the world is dying." If there's a better marimba-led tango about a killer who turns his victims into household items ("The fireman is an ashtray/ The DJ spins as fan blades"), I haven't heard it. And in the tradition of OutKast's "Toilet Tisha", don't let a silly title ("Spooky Jookie") distract you from a harrowing and grotesque account of a life slipping away to drugs ("She broke her teeth/ On an unsheathed piece of hard-tasting candy").
While Honus continues to prove himself one of rock's best working lyricists, Life Fantastic contains as many musically compelling moments as Rabbit Habits and Six Demon Bag. They've dialed down the wacky factor-- not as many cartoon voices, no kazoos-- though it's not a simple matter of having a "real producer" for the first time. Clearly, Mogis cleans them up nicely, importing lovely string sections for the title track and "Oh, La Brea". But for every song such as "Knuckle Down" that packs a sturdy, forceful melody, others struggle to fit the contours of Honus' syntax. Pay too much attention to the words and the songs can bleed into each other, or recall older Man Man material.
That's not a sin, considering Man Man have created a niche that's wholly theirs. It's natural for them to embrace this established identiy, most clearly expressed on closer "Oh, La Brea". Settling in Los Angeles after a few itinerant years, Honus finds himself disenfranchised by the west side ("Sepulveda and Pico, what the hell do they know about me?") as well as the artsier east side. He finds comfort in the thoroughfare sharing its name with a tar pit-- fitting for a pitch-black record that reveals as many skeletons as you're willing to dig for. ~ Ian Cohen

TRACK OF THE DAY - Вежливый Отказ

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TRACK OF THE DAY - Garage Chanson Show

Garage Chanson Show & Koshi Yamada on ICE-10

TRACK OF THE DAY - Marc Ribot

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TRACK OF THE DAY - Леонид Федоров

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TRACK OF THE DAY - mama!milk

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Koshi Yamada (2010) -Theatre Solo

Artist: Koshi Yamada
Album: Theatre Solo
Released: 2010
Quality: lossless (Flac)
Size: 186 MB

Swami Lateplate (2007) -Doom Jazz

Artist: Swami Lateplate
Album: Doom Jazz
Released: 2007
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 127 MB

«Although Jamie Saft is best known as a jazz pianist, especially for his work with various Masada projects, he's a rocker at heart who lists ZZ Top among his favorite bands. Swami LatePlate—his duo with drummer Bobby Previte—seeks to a degree to cross the divide. In one sense a piano trio, with Saft doubling on electric bass, the project borrows as much from heavy rock sensibilities. Their debut album and the first on Saft's new label Veal, falls closer to the jazz side, but the title indicates the process that got them there.
Using doom—a slow, foreboding style of heavy metal—as a template, the duo crafts a set of songs that creeps along powerfully. The themes are simple, generally carried by subdued bass lines and ornamented by the piano like salt on a glacier. What jumps out most is Previte's drumming. Every cymbal vibration and snare snap leaps to the foreground and, with rare exception, decays before the next strike, as much a testament to Previte's assured playing as Saft's engineering. The sound throughout is bright and super present.» ~Kurt Gottschalk, All About Jazz

Compostela (1997) -Wadachi

Artist: Compostela
Albums: Wadachi
Released: 1997
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 146 MB

Compostela (1995) -Aruku Hito

Artist: Compostela
Albums: Aruku Hito
Released: 1995
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 98 MB

Koshi Yamada au Bourbier (2001) -Yokubou Rondo

Artist: Koshi Yamada au Bourbier
Album: Yokubou Rondo
Released: 2001
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 85 MB