Fishing with John

This is the soundtrack to the cult television show "Fishing with John," starring John Lurie.  Taking the loose framework of a PBS nature show and twisting it into a hilarious beatnik riff on culture shock, cryptozoology, manliness, booze, frenetic dancing, and the nature of sport, the six extant episodes stand as one of the weirdest TV experiments ever.  With guests like Tom Waits, Willem Defoe, Dennis Hopper, and Jim Jarmusch, and wild expressionist music by Lurie's many amorphous jazz combos, it's settling nicely right now with the mixture of whiskey and cough syrup fueling your helpless narrator's feverish battle with Mother Nature herself, also nicely reflecting the over-arching theme of the show.  Perhaps tomorrow will find me more lucid, or perhaps floating face down in an icy bog somewhere.

Ahhhhhh.....

Muddy Waters - After the Rain

Muddy Water's Electric Mud was arguably the first example of post-war bluesmen adapting their sound to the burgeoning psych scene, and unlike many of his contemporaries, Muddy fully embraced the style.  After the Rain, the follow up album, gave Muddy a chance to compose in the style and adapt some of his older riffs and motifs.   Consequently the songs are a bit less far-out, but noticeably heavier and grimier.   With sidemen who played for everyone from Earth Wind and Fire to Miles Davis and early flower power group Rotary Connection, he brews up a potent stew of soul, jazz, rock, funk, and weirdness, stretching the limits of the blues and slicing razorlines in it with his slide guitar.

Bottom of the Sea

Peter Wyngarde - When Sex Leers Its Inquisitive Head

Tonight we have the mad album When Sex Leers Its Inquisitive Head by British TV actor Peter Wyngarde.  Originally commissioned by RCA to cash in on his popularity, it was released and quickly withdrawn a week later.  Presumably nobody had actually listened to it prior to its release.  Instead of the requested set of easy listening tunes, Wyngarde delivered a series of wild, pervy spoken word rants, backed by wild free-form noise jazz, tribal drums, lustful moaning, and shouts of exultation.  It's practically impossible to describe the myriad fragments sufficiently, and it boggles the mind to think of how this got made in the first place.  One of a kind, for sure.

Hippie and the Skinhead

Demon Fuzz - Afreaka!

Demon Fuzz is another one of those bands whose freaky, forward-looking sounds were far enough ahead of their time that they achieved little success and remain obscure outside of crate-digging DJs continually in search of more esoteric and obscure grooves.  While ostensibly being a funk band, Demon Fuzz combines jazzy, menacing dissonance with prog and psych tendencies and a soulful backbone that keeps even the strangest moments grounded.  The opening instrumental, "Past Present and Future," opens with a muted guitar figure that could've been lifted from a Fugazi record twenty years in the future, shortly followed by the sly insinuation of horns and a martial rhythm that unfolds into full-on brass band swagger and then dissolves into a Fun House-era Stooges freakout.  The vocals don't arrive until track two, the spidery "Disillusioned," but aptly named crooner Smokey Adams expresses righteous anger over a bed of organ, harmonica, and buzzing trumpet.  There's a few more killer originals and covers of the mandatory "I Put a Spell on You" and a song from the British Invasion combo Electric Flag, rounded out with another expressionistic instrumental capper.  Truly freaky.

Mercy (variation 1)

Orthodox - Amanecer En Puerta Oscura

Spain's Orthodox plays a curious hybrid of hypnotic drone-doom, bass-driven bop jazz, and liturgical chant informed by the folklore of their native land. For those skeptical of that description, know that they sound completely unlike any other metal band, and have been one of my personal favorites since their first release. This year's Baal is an instant cult classic, but this second album is perhaps the strongest and most coherent statement. Equally influenced by Mingus, Morricone, and the Melvins, this strange and slowly unfolding flower rewards careful and repeated listening. The vocals take a distinctive tack too, warbling and ululating like one of Edison's wax cylinders, a transmission from beyond
time and reason. Frankly, I'm surprised I haven't posted anything by them yet - this is the kind of thing that keeps the Swamp florid.
Templos

Angel Dust - Music for Movie Bikers

This wild compilation collects the best and strangest cuts from the late sixties-early seventies biker flick wave, mostly wild surf/instrumental stuff peppered with hilarious samples. Davie Allan & the Arrows, who make up about a third of the tracks, basically pioneered the sound associated with these movies: psychedelic surf more influenced by cheap acid and speed and the open road than the relatively benign themes most of the genre is associated with. Also notable is the Paul Wibier forgotten gem "Satan (Theme)," which absolutely floored me upon first listen and has subsequently appeared on many a mixtape since. A shocking story of a child raised to kill for Satan, its matter-of-fact lyrics and easy lounge vibe combine to create an aura of hedonistic Manson-esque menace. Shuffle in a little abstract cocktail jazz and some unclassifiable strangeness and you've got a wonderful soundtrack for a pill-fueled orgy in the woods followed by a berserk rampage through whatever shithole town you're cruising through today, brothers and sisters.
Skip to my Mary J

Bob Ohiri & His Uhuru Sounds - Uhuru Aiye

Well, I need another breather from all the metal, so lets venture deep into Nigeria and visit with Bob Ohiri and his band. Primarily famous for playing guitar for the legendary Kind Sunny Adé, pioneer of the Jùjú genre, Ohiri breaks loose here and plays a forward-thinking brand of afrobeat colored with bop jazz and gritty funk. I don't have much of a clue as to what's gong on lyrically, as most of the songs are in Yoruba, but two of the English ones express a yearning for freedom and a cry for solidarity. Beyond that, the music is heavily percussive - there must be a dozen drummers and percussionists - and shot through with horn lines, quivering wah-wah, and layered background chants, producing a danceable but vaguely unsettling cacophony. Heady, sweaty stuff for a hot summer night.
Nigeria London Na Lagos

Nightmare!

Here's a moody little slice of cinematic horror jazz from Creed Taylor and his orchestra, simultaneously oozing hepcat cool and slithery menace. The third of three collaborations with film composer Kenny Hopkins, these albums are not connected to specific films but based on short horror stories and classic monster archetypes. Anticipating much strange fringe music of the next fifty years, the mix of creaky sound effects with abstract tone poems and lounge rhythm, along with occasional muffled voices, creates a delightfully eerie atmosphere that must've been a riot at cocktail parties and secretive black masses alike.
Red Eyed Rats

Banged Up: American Jailhouse Songs

This fairly self-explanatory collection of blues, hillbilly, and early rock music spans thirty years and includes such household names as Johnny Cash, Bessie Smith, Jimmie Rogers, and Swamp hero Bukka White, alongside a wide spectrum of lesser-knowns. Of note are Smith's absolutely brutal "Send Me To The 'Lectric Chair" and the barnstorming "Riot in Cell Block 9," alongside Leroy Carr's hilarious "Christmas in Jail, Ain't That a Shame." Not much else to say, so reach for the sky, punk.

Daniele Luppi - An Italian Story

An Italian Story is a love note to Italian soundtrack music made with many of the core players on such famous films as The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, notably the unmistakeable whistling stylings of Alessandro Alessandroni. The album shifts through diverse moods, from laid back summer hedonism to tense fight music and horrific psychedelia. Composer Luppi became famous for his collaborations with Danger Mouse but this fine little record seems to be out of print, making it Swamp fodder for sure.
Psychovision

Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos - The Prosthetic Cubans

Los Cubanos Postizos is the abstract Latin jazz combo of longtime Tom Waits and John Zorn guitar wrangler Marc Ribot. Sinister cinematic sambas coexist with mellow, percussion heavy waltzes, with Ribot loosely weaving his razor-sharp guitar throughout. Most of these are fractured covers of famed guitarritsta Arsenio Rodriguez, father of the mambo. Not too much to say about this one, just trying to keep the cold at bay.
Como Se Goza En El Barrio

John Zorn - Magick

In this first post of the new year, we find the furthest mystickal and alchemical explorations of jazz misanthropist John Zorn, primarily situated around a five-movement suite based on the Necronomicon. This work ebbs between Zorn's characteristic frenetic scribbling and some moodier ambient moments, at times verging on a sort of Spaghetti western starring Aleister Crowley. Entrancing and repellant.
Thought Forms

Joseph Spence - Happy All the Time

A bit of a palate cleanser here for you after all that morbidity from last week. Joseph Spence is the most famous proponent of the Bahamian guitar style, a mixture of American blues and pop with calypso and wild improvisation. A large part of his appeal, aside from the deft and circular guitar playing, is his voice: a gravelly, gurgling rasp spit out in bursts of scatting gibberish, garbled English, girlish high-pitched wailing, deep epiglottal humming, and the occasional mad roar. It's infectious in its subtle charming madness, teasing parts of your brain that might not get much of a workout if you just sit around and listen to heavy metal all the time, you grumpy bastard!
Out On The Rolling Sea

The Big Gundown: John Zorn Plays the Music of Ennio Morricone

Even wilder than yesterday's post, but somewhat connected, is this collection of Morricone music played by frequent Blind Idiot God collaborator John Zorn. Dialing up the old master's eclecticism and fondness for strange voicings and aural collage, Zorn twists these varied movie themes into bizarre new patterns, weaving a wobbling skeleton of chiming bells, booming percussion, and breathy gibberish. One part menacing spaghetti western, one part no-wave jazz, and one part cartoon violence, braided into a fine silken rope and swaying in the desert breeze.

Once Upon a Time in The Swamp

Lalo Schifrin - Black Widow

Primarily known as a film composer whose works range from Mission: Impossible to Enter the Dragon, Argentine Lalo Schifrin also sporadically released strange albums of futuristic horror disco funk, sinister jazz, and further madness. This one, an especially dark and trippy album, features remakes of world-music standard "Quiet Village" and a startling funk version of the theme from Jaws dripping with wah guitar, among many percolating originals and cinematic snippets. Surely the heavy disco trappings will alienate many of you, but if you're willing to tolerate a little slap bass and hi-hat abuse there is much dark material to be mined here. The perfect soundtrack to a cocaine-induced heart attack and out-of-body experience.
Con Alma

Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits - Carmelita Sings!: Visions of a Rock Apocalypse

In anticipation of their upcoming tour after a mysterious lapse into silence for damn nigh on a decade, I present the more-than-full-length apocalyptic musical mindfuck album by Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits, of San Francisco. Presumably they will have these for sale when you go see them, but it would be nice to have a copy beforehand so you can sing along with all the cool kids, yes? Rest assured, little seedling, that though it somehow seems like there's a million songs on here, and each one is funnier and more painfully, disturbingly true than the last, it's really only about 25 and the funniest one is "Child Killer" once the choir of 5-year-olds swells in the background to sing the chorus - it's enough to make the little vestigial hairs on your throat stand up and sway. Enough talk!
Dance!

Curt Sobel - Cast a Deadly Spell OST

Big thanks to Alymer over at Unflinching Eye for pointing me in the direction of this little rare gem. Cast a Deadly Spell was a 1991 HBO movie about Detective Harry Lovecraft, an affectionate tribute to HPL, film noir, detective fiction, and a sharp and funny satire to boot. It left a distinct mark on my impressionable young soul and probably helped shape my interest in esoteric pursuits and, consequently, may be in some way partially responsible for the very existence of the Swamp itself. Musically it's a fine mix of sinister lounge jazz, leftover 80's synth cheese, the occasional torch song, incidental stabs of orchestration, and some wild noise.
Do the Dunwich Rumba

Incedentally, if anyone has the soundtrack to its sequel, Witch Hunt, please do share.

Colin Timothy Gagnon - Fungi from Yuggoth

Quite a strange little artifact tonight wee ones, an album of cinematic space jazz with its creator and seemingly sole musician, one Colin Timothy Gagnon, reading Lovecraft's entire sonnet cycle Fungi from Yuggoth in chilly monotone, punctuated by eerie whispers and mysterious scraping noises. Much of this seems produced on a cheap keyboard, but strangely the tinny horn sections and rubbery pounding of tribal drums gain a bit of eldritch majesty in context. The poetry of H.P. Lovecraft has never received the attention that his prose works continually enjoy, and I'll admit they have tested even my attention span at times, but this strange Gagnon person seems to have devoted much research and experimentation to this project with no chance of monetary reward or public recognition outside of esoteric circles such as this Swamp. Not to be dissuaded, his enthusiasm carries much weight here, turning his monotone delivery and low-budget cinematic ambition into positives, creating an atmosphere of dread against all odds. Quite the role model for those lone figures among, locked in your room, shouting alien gibberish into your tape machine, driven by urges beyond your ken.
Silent and lean and cryptically proud...

Telectu - Ctu-Telectu

This is the debut album of Portuguese mutli-media avant-guard free-range etc. duo Telectu, not necessarily a concept album (as far as I can discern) but a collection of very strange songs titled after various Philip K. Dick stories. Tentative research turns up little meaningful information in English on the group besides a massive list of albums - even a simple Google search turns up bootlegs within the first several hits, or pages of hyperbolic gibberish like: "In its triple conception, Telectu states in “Quartetos” the refinement of the experimental language, in ambitious pieces, captivating, of rare idiomatic and solistic [sic] value, proposing jazz-off in a context of total improvisation." What is the truth behind this mad album of synthesizer squeals, echo chambers, woodblock percussion, and barked vocalization? Who cares? Besides the sheer twisted glory of the album itself, it also allows your host to introduce a new "Dick" tag, and gives me an excuse to post a picture of a tiger wearing a fucking necktie.
Tighten the screws on your inner wingnut.

Kriminal - Soundtrack - Roberto Pregadio & Romano Mussolini

Ecco una strana da fuori campo a sinistra per voi in questo giorno d'estate. E 'la colonna sonora del film Kriminal nocciola italiana, la storia di un ladro maestro capperi e la sua audacia. E 'swinging jazz degli anni Sessanta, non a tutti onimous minaccioso o in qualsiasi modo, ma appena sufficiente a squittire bizzarro passato i giudici qui alla Palude.
Godetevi o fronteggiare la rabbia!