A few marks; nothing grievous.
A private press LP from early-eighties Youngstown, Ohio, featuring an absolutely killer Hammond B3 version of Chameleon, and an exceptionally funky The World Is A Ghetto, showcasing Lavorgna’s soulful saxophone, and more deep funk from David Thomas, on organ.
Fragile, deep, melancholic, enthralling home recordings from Beirut; lost in memories, worry, grief, rapture, love.
Very warmly recommended.
‘Highest recommendation’, Foxy Digitalis; ‘evanescent bliss, an invitation to a safe space both isolated and welcoming’, The Quietus; ‘a sweep of introspective, breath-catching moments of beauty’, Pitchfork. ‘The combination and contrast of highly familiar and highly alien elements give Asmar’s music a quality not quite like anything else I can name. The way she channels found voices into her surreal mix of sounds is particularly striking’
(Byron Coley, The Wire).
Her first two cassette releases remastered and presented in a gatefold sleeve featuring new art-work by Yara herself.
‘I was a music teacher. I wasn’t trying to make a record to compete, I was trying to make a record so the students would have something to remember the experience that we had… I was doing it for the kids.’
The reissue of a private pressing in 1973 by Prof James Benson and his students at Cal Poly, California, inspired by their recent trip to Africa, blending in the radical jazz idioms of early-seventies black America.
Insurgent music; full of life. Jazzman strikes again.
As originally, in a heavyweight tip-on sleeve.