Eclectic Grooves

Recently I have been digging into my old crates of tapes looking for forgotten gems to play in the tape deck of my girlfriend's Saturn. Since she only has a tape deck in her car, and this is the only mode of transportation we have right now, I have been revisiting old favorites that I compiled many moons ago in a dusty basement with nothing but my record collection, a creative imagination and my trusty JVC dual cassette deck. Similar to the warm crackle of vinyl, the grainy hiss of a cassette tape gives it a more raw, analog sound that is largely missing on the highly digitized reproduction of a compact disc. Because of this, I am more drawn to compiling mix-tapes than mix CD's. Lately, there have been numerous books released which discuss the merits of making mix-tapes and reflecting on mix tapes that remind us about the best and worst times of our lives. My favorite book on mix tapes is called Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture which was curated by Thurston Moore. From th...

Today is probably one of the first times that I have featured a fairly new album in its entirety at a great bitrate. The reason that I have chosen to stray from the normal policy is that this fantastic Sublime Frequencies release from Omar Khorshid came out back in May and went out of print within 6 weeks of its actual release date. This is an astonishing feat to say the least, and I feel that it should not fall on deaf ears. While I wasn't fortunate enough to snag a limited pressing of this record, I was lucky enough to download the complete album from a friend on Soulseek at an astonishingly rare 320k bitrate. For those of you who are familiar with the discography of Sublime Frequencies, you know that the quality of their albums is top-notch and that their releases typically go out-of-print at a rapid rate. Hisham Mayet, along with Alan and Richard Bishop (from the now defunct and legendary experimental band Sun City Girls) started Sublime Frequencies a few years ago to primari...

It hasn't quite been a month since I've posted on here, but it's definitely not due to a lack of creative ideas. Lately, I have been listening to a wide variety of albums from 2010 as I gear up for the annual "Best Albums of the Year" list. Be on the lookout for this list when it officially drops in December. Until, then, I will whet your appetite with some of my favorite records from 2010 in an upcoming I Hear a New World podcast. Also, for those of you who live in Portland, OR, get your ass to Dante's this Friday to check out Thee Oh Sees. What comes to my mind when listening to Thee Oh See's lates EP Warm Slime is an image of a speeding freight train as it violently careens off the tracks. This isnt too far from the feeling one gets when experiencing their live show. When they bring their catchy brand of psychedelic-garage rock to Dante's, you can bet that the whole place will be a sweaty mass of bodies frantically bobbing up and down to the sound ...

As I promised two week's ago, here is the answer to the latest Plain Brown Wrappers: Tomrerclaus- En Spade Er En Spade. No-head decided not to ruin it for the rest of the readers, but it turned out that no one else even ventured a guess this time around. Anyway, En Spade Er En Spade was a towering achievement for this phenomenally talented guitarist from Denmark who played nearly all of the instruments on the record himself. As far as I know, this record is way out of print, so I hope that you enjoyed it. Today, I am introducing a new series to Eclectic Grooves called One From the Vaults. This series will showcase out-of print and extremely hard to find records that have generally been slept on by the general public. I figured that this record by German kraut-psych masters Roman Bunka would be a perfect album to introduce this series to you. All I really need to say about Dein Kopf ist ein schlafendes Auto is that it transcends genre tags, throwing every imaginable musical style i...

Recently, I managed to give the blog a spiritual cleanse, as I deleted over fifty spam messages that had accumulated on here over the past several months. Hopefully, the rate at which I have been receiving spam will go down considerably since I now require all users to enter a code whenever they leave a comment. Well, let's get on to the matter at hand. This is the 9th episode of Plain Brown Wrappers , and I am proud to say that this is one of the most mind-bending platters of wax to ever be featured on Eclectic Grooves. As I listen closely to each sound that the guitarist on this record manages to squeeze out of his instrument, it is clear to me that this is either the product of a brain-fried visionary from the psychedelic era, or the whacked-out experiments of a lonely, pimply-faced music geek set loose into a musical playground filled with echo chambers, effects pedals and stompboxes. While you are taking this musical excursion for the first time, I want you to think about what...

Yeah, I know that it's been way too long since I've graced your presence, but between visits from family and friends, summer concerts and basking in the sun with my sweetheart, I have had absolutely no time or energy left for posting here. Besides checking out the incredibly talented trio of gypsy-klezmer stylists, Shicky Gnarowitz, last week at the Division Clinton Fair and yesterday at The Woods, I have been gathering a list of upcoming shows that I plan on checking out during the remainder of the summer. PDX Pop Now, SMMR BMMR and Music Fest 2010 are three festivals that I plan on attending, but every time I check the local weeklies there are more that hadn't been on my radar yet. Be on the lookout for a breakdown of these shows, as well as an exhaustive list of the bands that I plan to check out during each show. Other things that are on tap at Eclectic Grooves are new features that I have been cooking up in my mind over the past couple months, the long overdue podcast ...

The latest edition of I Hear a New World is available for download here, and at http://ihearanewworld.podomatic.com/. This episode features a wide-ranging set of eclectic styles including psychedelic, blues, free jazz, garage, post rock and afro-funk. Bands that are featured on this episode include Brainiac, Animal Collective, Slint, Reverend Gary Davis and Orchestre Poly Rhythmo. I hope that you enjoy this episode as much as, or more, than I had putting it together. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think of this week's show. I have a friend coming out to visit over the next week, so things are going to be pretty slow on here during that time. Feel free to pillage the archives while you are awaiting the next post.