Hades Forum

Desmond Dekker (July 16, 1941 — May 25, 2006) was a Jamaican ska and reggae singer and songwriter. Together with his backing group, The Aces (consisting of Wilson James and Easton Barrington Howard), he had one of the first international Jamaican hits with "Israelites". Other hits include "007 (Shanty Town)" (1967) and "It Mek" (1969). Before the ascent of Bob Marley, Dekker was one of the most popular musicians within Jamaica, and one of the best-known musicians outside it.

http://rapidshare.com/files/154607920/Desmond_Dekker_-_Sing_A_Little_Song__2004_.rar.html

...this is a magical, sublimely singular piece of gentle folk-psych that belongs with those lone album classics by folks like Skip Spence or Vashti Bunyan (or the countless other souls that only released one record before disappearing into history's communal farms or funny-farm madness, like Elyse). It is a sound so personal and intimate that I can only hear it in the privacy of my own room. Although it's been near-impossible to gain biographical information about her, the experience of hearing her music reveals so much about her soul and mindset at the time that I really don't think I could share it with anyone else...

...she's a love child in every sense, a young woman blossoming into her sensual world. Of the elements, every song culls its images from her forest environment, permeating down into her own physical core. "Chimacum Rain" is not only the forest's silence and that sound of rain washing over her, but the palpable sexual presence of her lover, too. In almost every evocation of a tactile natural image, there is a mysterious man who physically embodies these characteristics, a tension courses through her body as she sings about these near-deities. And as she reaches the bridge with lines such as "I'm spacing out/ I'm seeing silences between leaves...I'm seeing silences that are his," her voice begins to echo within itself, and her sung notes assuage open the aural synesthesia of the words. The diaphanous taste of lysergic acid creeps to the fore, and what was once a moderately played acoustic song about the forest expands into a hallucinatory clearing as her multi-tracked held tones meld with the infinite. As her voice dilates, so does the background, now all electrically-processed source sounds like xylophones and wind chimes, and all is enveloped by a low, distorted drone that would one day sound like Phill Niblock, created by-- as the liner notes so baldly state it-- "amplified shower hose for horn effects."

http://www.dump.ro/download.php?id=29336&act=NL91OXbyBhWgLJr9

Their third album which was a follow up to The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other, sees VDGG in a whirlpool of horror and science-fiction's twisted view of freak out music. H To He, Who Am The Only One features five tracks and as the band lets out a screeching roar as Peter Hammill tells the tales of different epics of Murderous Fishes living the sea searching for human flesh, A Room with No beginning at the end of the door, An Emperor's city crashing down upon him in his War Room, you get the idea. The group features Bassist Nic Potter's pre-punk prog sound on his guitar, David Jackson's hellish sound on the sax, Hugh Banton's twisted tour de force sounds on the keyboards, and Guy Evans playing the drums and keeping the tempo going for the band following along with him.

When you listen to this, you're thinking 'oh it's just a rip off of King Crimson', guess again, this isn't. It's almost a darker version of hell on this. And for Peter Hammill, let's say that he knows the score of not being a mainstream star and the punks like John Lydon, Mark E. Smith, and David Bowie admiring him of his work and the successful job that he's doing either as a solo artist or with VDGG. He took the Prog genre and he realized that he wasn't going to sing about King Arthur or sing about a Yoga god-like warrior, he is the true storyteller of a prog version of Edgar Allen Poe. And once you add guest guitarist from King Crimson Robert Fripp to the band, you got yourself a full weekend to get yourself stoned like a motherfucker.

Anyway, let's get to the music. The music is fucking weird and dare I say a masterpiece and the strange twist that would give Star Wars a run for its life with the Sci-Fi horror epic, Pioneers Over C. The album begans with the explosive Killer, as Peter sings about a blood and tasty sharp evil fish looking for something to crave on as David's sax fills the void while Hugh Batnon's intense keyboard solo sends a chill down your spine and Peter singing the line 'And I too am a Killer!/For Emotion runs a deep as flesh!" A perfect beginning number to get you crawling on your knees and bowing down to the masters and the shark-like killing fish. Soon, things get stranger and evil at the same moment after the opening track. The ballad House with No Door, which is almost based on Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, is very beautiful you can tell that Peter is singing about the main character who lives in an 18th century mansion who has now isolated himself with paintings of himself as he grows into a deep depression of cutting himself from everyone that he knows and loves while David Jackson's lushful flute solo sets the scene and Hugh's Piano does almost a jazz relative melody on the number.

The dark epic of gorefests, The Emperor in his War Room, gets more serious and heavier. The intro starts as a slow downbeat tempo, then becomes a hellish upbeat jazz fury with a monstrous sax solo, keyboard technqiues, and Nic Potter's bass lines while Robert Fripp comes in the midsection of the last 2-minutes laying down sinister guitar work. There is a moment in the piece where Fripp takes over as the band follows him as if they were following in the footsteps of King Crimson. And then the screeching shriek of 'the impartial knife sinks in your screaming flesh!' and then the band comes back in on the introduction and you know there is no turning back as it ends with Hugh Banton's keyboard note on the G major. Lost: The Dance In Sand And Sea/The Dance in the Frost (you never get a huge title like this before right listeners?!), an 11-minute epic in all of its prog glory which deals with death and being a loner without anyone to love. With Hammill lends out a voice of calmness, the band do some heavy improvisation along with Banton's organ going in a 3/3 time signature by going up and down while Evans plays the drums by using the bass drum and the hi-hat following the sinister sounds of David Jackson and Hugh by doing some Crimson influential sounds to the mix. And then it becomes a military drum beat in the midsection in the midsection as Peter wails it out with 'You know that I need you/but somehow I don't think you see my love at all' (You ain't going to hear this at a goddamn homecoming high school dance you prom date fuckos) And then the band do a Jazz waltz which is a relative tone to John Coltrane's My Favorite Things in this beautiful Prog ballad. The end of the last few minutes and 35 seconds, the band do a freak out improv in a bizarre time signature of 4/4, and then ending with a shock of suprise with David's sax going up like a fucking madmen and ends with a crescendo.

The sci-fi finale which is based on the front album and the inner sleeve cover done by Paul Whitehead, who worked on the cover of Pawn Hearts and Peter Hammill's first solo album Fools Mate, Pioneers Over C, a story of space travelers who left their home planet in 1983 to search for a new planet in the galaxy but are stuck in the outer space in a post-apocalyptic land of their universe being destroyed in flames which features some heavier darker tones from the group as Peter sings a very folky relative tone on his acoustic guitar about the lost astronauts in their spaceship in the outer space similar to David Bowie's Major Tom. The band do some ambient atmospheric jazz work again as David steals the show with his sax going up and down and then it becomes very spacey from Hugh Banton's organ and then an avant-garde twist to the mix. It then becomes a dark-like sound in the midsection as the sax sets the scene into oblivion and a sonic attack of him alone doing some strange notes on the instrument before the band go into a Floyd-like sound swirl of chaotic annihilation. Hammill's double-voice track goes weird and becomes a psychotic luantic at the moment the band comes in and do the 4/4 jazz time signature and ambient mood again. And then, ends with a sour note of pure fucking brilliance from the instruemnts as the astronauts commit suicide.

The album, H to He, isn't just a prog album, but more of a pure beauty, sinister, weird, and dark. Some of the time it is fucked, but awesome in a Prog-Punk way. Its still one of my favorties along with; Pawn Hearts, The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other, Aerosol Grey Machine, Godbluff, and Still Life. If you need 5 stars on this album, you need to get 6 more for this.

http://www.mediafire.com/?d2wutmvhell

Lester Bangs would’ve hated Tortoise. Asked to define good rock’n’roll in his last ever interview, Lester offered this semi-elegy: “I guess it’s just something that makes you feel alive. It’s just like, it’s something that’s human, and I think that most music today isn’t. And it’s like anything that I would want to listen to is made by human beings instead of computers and machines.” Tortoise, of course, does not play rock’n’roll, and they at times want to make their live playing appear as if it’s been made by a machine, in some kind of attempt at electronic sublimation. In yet another way, they fail to fit anyone’s mold of what a band, let alone a rock band, should be; the group, now almost two decades old, offers up very little in the way of backstory, drama, or even personnel and recording information. And one always wonders how much of a group they really are, since their ultra-clear, hyper-detailed sound is seemingly shaped by one man, percussionist and producer John McEntire.

But this ostensible detachment is at the core of Tortoise’s music. Graced with instrumental and studio virtuosity, they apply an endless reserve of tastefulness to their eclectic aesthetic, taking elements they find interesting from a spectrum of musical forms (dub, electronica and jazz most prominently) without ever aping them. This means they can get away with a tune (and title, it should be noted) like “High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In,” the opener to Beacons of Ancestorship, their sixth full-length. Over the course of eight minutes, they weave in a big brawny beat, dub-heavy bass, a monster dance-floor-ready synth hook, a dub-space-like disintegration of the groove, multiple time signatures and a pulsing, minimalist-synth coda. It’s a complex recipe, and ther aren’t many groups that could pull it off.

For a group with such a broad knowledge of music history, though, it’s strangely difficult to actually hear the past in their music, this being both a positive and negative. The occasional glance backward is visible (the twisting, soaring lines and shifting sections of “Prepare Coffin,” say, wouldn’t be out of place in a Zappa piece from Hot Rats), but most of the time the music sounds sealed off, and if not hermetic, then at least isolated, unable to see past itself as a reference point. It describes its own boundaries – a sure marker of originality – but all too easily stays close to friendly confines. On each of Tortoise’s albums, you can always find pieces like “The Fall of Seven Diamonds Plus One” or “Minors.” On the former, guitarist Jeff Parker’s nocturnal melody works strange angles, but ultimately sounds too polite. The groove on “Minors” just feels stiff and generic. Their tastefulness can produce some wondrous moments, but also some pretty intense boredom.

Yet, it’s when Tortoise crosses these self-prescribed boundaries (and they always manage to do it at least a few times an album) that they really make a listener take notice. Rather than the longer, complex compositions, the four shortest tracks here are the most intriguing, as they compress Tortoise’s way of layering disparate ideas into brief, disorienting beatscapes: A second-line drum pulse gets abstracted on “Northern Something” and played against multiple buzzing basslines. On “Monument Six One Thousand,” an electro-funk bass throb and a melancholic guitar melody fight for your attention. A whole album of Tortoise doing this would blow more than a few minds.

Despite the surprises and the occasional blast of rawness, Beacons of Ancestorship wouldn’t have changed Lester’s mind about Tortoise, and if your mind’s made up about them, it won’t change yours. But changing minds isn’t what Tortoise is about. They are concerned about their world and their sound – what limits it, what expands it – and not much else. Some call that indifference, even arrogance. Some call it self-sufficiency, or even vision – you decide. Just don’t look to Tortoise for help.

http://s6.transfer.ro/storage/T_-_BOA-e1a2a.rar

Believe this - The Dutchess & The Duke have cooked up what might be the most perfect guitar pop record in years and years.

The product description is pretty right on - the obvious sonic touchstones are the best of mid-60's rock - Stones, Beatles, Kinks, Dylan - with an emphasis on male/female two part harmony and some neat contrapuntal acoustic guitar parts. These dudes have definitely studied their Brian Jones as well, with neat minimal overdubbed 12-string guitar lines and other touches of musical color.

What the product description doesn't capture if how wonderful and captivating the songs of She's The Dutchess, He's The Duke are. With the exception of the last song (ironically titled "Armageddon Song"), the songs are all quite dark thematically, but leavened with super-memorable melodies and some dark humor. There's not a song on this record I skip, and most have been subject to numerous rewinds. Smart, wry lyrics are just such a rarity these days. After a few plays you'll want to sing along and after a few more you won't be able to help yourself.

So, so good. I just hope we don't have to wait too long for the next installment!

http://s4.transfer.ro/storage/dutchess_and_the_duke_-_she__s_the_dutchess__he__s_the_duke_-_2008__folk_____-f539a.zip

Some are born to greatness, some have it thrust upon them. And sometime the two are one; just ask the seven or eight horn-wielding siblings who, with a non-blood brother, comprise the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. They were born the sons of Kelan Phil Cohran, a multi-instrumentalist and bandleader who worked with Sun Ra, led the Artistic Heritage Ensemble, and schooled Maurice White of Earth Wind & Fire in the mysteries of the kalimba. Cohran handed each of his kids an instrument, woke them up at 6 AM, and made them participate in a few hours of pre-school musical practice. It probably didn’t seem too great at the time, but the training and brotherhood stuck.

The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble isn’t their first band together; aside from the youthful family practice band, some of the siblings have played in the hip-hop groups GWC (Gangsters With A Curfew) and Wolf Pak. Late in the 1990s, they picked their brass back up and started playing for tips on Chicago’s streets. I recall happening upon them years ago playing on State Street near the former Marshall Fields department store and quite enjoying them.

Like New Orleans’ Dirty Dozen Brass Band, which also took a street-level phenomenon on the road, the Hypnotic Ensemble has abandoned local thoroughfares to tour the world (they were signed to Honest Jon’s after they were overheard playing on a corner near the label’s London office), and contributed to projects involving Eryka Badu, Mos Def and Tony Allen.

The last association is the most pertinent when grasping the band’s sound. They might be members of the hip-hop generation, but the old schooling wins out when they play. The paternal heritage is hard to escape; they open the record with one of Phil Cohran’s songs, a swaggering party chant called “Alyo,” and his years of drilling show in the tightness of their ensemble. They may be equipped with jazz band instrumentation, but the tunes they write are steeped in ’70s soul values of tunefulness and clarity. Solos are short, to the point, and directly reference the song’s melody. Their massed horn voicings also bring to mind Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat. The latter influence is especially evident on “Sankofa,” which they previously contributed to a remix project that honored Fela drummer Tony Allen, and he returns the favor by playing drums on a few tracks.

That’s not the only re-recording present. The Ensemble has several self-released records under their belt, and much of this album’s material has shown up elsewhere in their discography. Which probably works to their benefit – they got to cherry-pick their best material and redo it at the end of a European tour when they were especially in synch. The highlights include “Balicki Bone” (a midtempo tune with a hint of Funkadelic seasoning in the groove), the celestial trumpet harmonies of “Jupiter,” and a frantic treatment of labelmate Moondog’s “Rabbit Hop.” But there isn’t a dog in the bunch. The record flows easily, then ends on a wiggy note with a synth-peppered remix of the Moondog cover that makes one wonder where the Ensemble might go if they really get turned loose in a studio.

http://s4.transfer.ro/storage/Hypnotic_Brass_Ensemble_-_2009_-_Hypnotic_Brass_Ensemble-1ddb5.rar

utp_ was commissioned for the 400th anniversary of Mannheim, Germany. The continuously flowing 10-section intermedia work derives its shape from a rasterized structure of the southwestern city, founded in 1608. The recording documents a live performance of electro-acoustic music by Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai), Ryuichi Sakamoto and the Ensemble Modern, Germany’s premiere new music group – an ensemble of classically trained musicians known for venturing across musical and artistic genres (it has performed works by Frank Zappa, Anthony Braxton and Bill Viola among others). The audiovisual portion of the release that comes as a DVD, shows the digital “visual score” created by Nicolai and Simon Mayer, and lighting design by Nigel Edwards. Melded seamlessly into a single form of intermedia expression, and the result is an awesome theater of light and sound.

Slowly transforming minimalist tones and textures, and meticulously crafted formal structures based on conceptual principles – signatures of Alva Noto’s style – are central to utp_ both sonically and visually. However, Sakamoto’s compositional skills shine equally in this work. He orchestrates Alva Noto’s artistic language, borrowing techniques from French spectral composers like Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail.

The music is soothing, graceful, and poignant, and the encounters between the electronic and acoustic, the visual and sonic, dwells on the delicious liminal spaces between each. Basic elements of sound like attack, resonance and decay become musical material, and their reassembling becomes a structural principle: In the section titled “Broken Line,” single tones played on the piano by Sakamoto bleed into a sumptuous resonance-without-decay with expanding and contracting marimba rolls and long wind and string instrument tones. In another section titled “Silence,” the orchestration draws attention to the durations between sounds and actions by basing the musical material entirely on ephemeral and fragmentary gestures, like the sonic dust of that which once was. Additionally, the execution by the superbly skilled musicians of Ensemble Modern adds an incredible robustness to the performance. In counterpoint to Alva Noto’s sleek minimal gestures, the timbral subtlety and sweet intensity emerging from the interaction between the many players help this album stand out among Alva Noto’s many releases.

http://s4.transfer.ro/storage/utp_-5057a.rar