Three In A Row

Another time I return an old series where I feature three songs that appeared one after another when I listened to the music on my mobile phone when I was on my way to the office the other day. Still I am fascinated to those thousand songs on my phone and mostly they make a good start into usual business. 

In 2015 Natasha Khan and English rock band Toy made a collaboration playing psychedelic and folk songs from Iran, Morocco, Thailand and the US. They created a very unique and also danceable sound that was played often at my place and it is still a pleasure to listen to them.

Johnny Cash recorded an old classic by Bob Nolan during his American Recordings. The song tells of a man traveling with his donkey named Dan in the desert and suffering from thirst. I first heard this song when Leo Kottke played this on one his early recordings and still grabs me in mostly any version.

In 1991 Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine appeared with their second album and created one of the sound of this summer. I was lucky enough to watch them live in a small venue in the university close to my hometown. It was legendary when Jim Bob and Fruitbat were on the stage with just samples and guitar performing like I have never seen before and after. A classic album that stood the test of time.

 

This Year's List 13/15

 

Sexwitch, the side project of Bat For Lashes' Natasha Khan is also one of those records that I played often this year. For me it is a perfect combination of old and new. Old because the songs were translated covers from varying locations worldwide; new because of its instrumentation falls within the decidedly Western guitar-bass-drums paradigm. The whole thing is reminiscent of early Krautrock — Amon Düül II, Can, et al — where percussive repetition and effects-laden guitars are the salient features of a lengthy jam. For an example, at almost eight minutes long  “Kassidat El Hakka”, a re-working of a Moroccan folk song, is Khan and co.’s most prolonged venture. Its refrains oscillate between the prophetic (“it will linger in your soul”) and the agnostic (“I am fleeing / but I do not know what from”). Tension is built, eased, and reestablished through the layering of ambient noise over the track’s incisive guitar riff and cyclical drumbeat. Khan’s voice carves its own route through the mire, with her lyrical reiterations periodically devolving into climatic shrieks and yelps. This is the most raw and unhinged she’s ever sounded, and it’s mesmerising.All in all it will be a record that sounds fresh even in the upcoming years.

 

Ha Howa Ha Howa

Maybe one of the craziest ideas these days was transfered to reality. Bat for Lashes' Natasha Khan, TOY and producer Dan Carey teamed to form Sexwitch to cover a bunch of early 60 psychedelic songs from Iran, Thailand and Morocco. The lyrics from the originals were transfered into English and the songs were recorded in almost one day. The result is nothing more than something magic and hard to describe music. Based on a permanent drums in the foreground some guitar and organ prepare the ground for Natasha's voice that reminds me sometimes to Siouxie Sioux. All in all music you can get addicted to.