sublime frequencies

francesco

Minerva Estassi
Sublime Frequencies is a new Abduction-related label, overseen by Alan Bishop/Sun City Girls. The label defines itself as "a collective of explorers dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers via film and video, field recordings, radio and short wave transmissions, international folk and pop music, sound anomalies, and other forms of human and natural expression not documented sufficiently through all channels of academic research, the modern recording industry, media, or corporate foundations. SUBLIME FREQUENCIES is focused on an aesthetic of extra-geography and soulful experience inspired by music and culture, world travel, research, and the pioneering recording labels of the past including OCORA, SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS, ETHNIC FOLKWAYS, LYRICHORD, NONESUCH EXPLORER, MUSICAPHONE, BARONREITER, UNESCO, PLAYASOUND, MUSICAL ATLAS, CHANT DU MONDE, B.A.M., TANGENT, and TOPIC."


I am very interested in buying some stuff from this label, they put out al least 15 cds, but don't know exactly were to start. Some description, opinions and recomendations? Thanks!
 

Diggedy Derek

Stray Dog
Strange label but the quality of music is high. Very few liner notes, few titles or writer credits for songs, and it's not clear what is edited together and what was like that in the first place. Having said that, Cambodian Cassette Archives is a mind-bending mix of kinetic pop music, goofy genre splicing (16 bars of reggae.... 16 bars of heavy metal- why not?) and dubby/phased production. Staggeringly good. The follow up Radio Phnom Penh, which is contemporary rather than archived Cambodian pop, doesn't reach these mad genius heights, but instead is perfectly judged melodic pop honed through many years of pop remix-ology. There's a couple of lush, otherworldly ballads too.

Radio India Dream Of Eternal Sound is very good as well, as diverse and surprising as the Cambodian tape Archives release but with less "cut and paste", instead layers of meditational and folk music drifting in and out of the mix. Sporadically stunning.

Bush Taxi Mali is less succesful than the CDs above. The above CDs are cultural broadcasts of one sort or another that are pretty alien to Westerners, but are astonishing just because you can here the logic of popular music twisted to serve a totally different function; Bush Taxi Mali is one person's aural journey through Mali, but it's difficult to tell if the dusty, primitive percussion interludes you hear are someone trying to fix a broken car or "true ethnic music". You've got no idea where you are, what's you're hearing, or whether it's important. As a thermometer of the cultural temperature, you;ve no idea if it's hot or not.

There's also the oddity Broken Hearted Dragonflies, which claims to be a recording of a field of Dragonflies, but which David Toop thought might have been electronically treated to sound weird and phasy. It's quite an enjoyable listen nonetheless.

Anyway, certainly a couple of wonderful wonderful CDs there.
 

mms

sometimes
very exciting.
nice one derek i was gonna bring this up myself.
i got the i remember syria cd and it's ace, i've heard the javanese pop cd as well and that is absolutley insane, some of the music on there is incredible, really super lysergic.

i have a really good feeling about these cds i think they are getting popular and taking the word music thing away from horrible hippy types who want something to feel smug about whilst they discuss their new whatever treatment they are wasting money on whist their husbands work in the oil business or whatever.
Hopefully they will change and inspire, they're kinda punk in a way.

Alot of them are just recordings of really fantastic explorative holidays it seems. if you get them direct from their site they are relativley cheap, esp with the current exchange rate, i want to get them all but then i want alot of things.
 

steve-k

Active member
It's too bad they haven't been able to(or didn't try to?) track down the names of individual artists for some of these comps. Yea it might be hard to do, but otherwise , non-hippie or not, isn't there a dose of exploitation of the "other" here. Hey, listen to these cool, weird non-English language sounds....
 

arcaNa

Snakes + Ladders
I Remember Syria, Cambodian Cassette Archives: Khmer Folk & Pop Music vol.1, Radio Morocco are my favourites from Sublime Frequencies.

*"I Remember Syria" is incredibly detailed, crisp field recordings of street life/people in the syrian capital and the countryside, listening to it you feel as though you are there with them, lots of snippets from radio and music playing in the street, plus an incredible recording of a young nomad boy/street busker playing in the street to amused passer-by's,
a whole track of an arabic children's programme and sometimes you will get conversations/small "interviews" in english from the guy who recorded it, asking people about their life in syria. really recommended. Recorded 1998-2000.

*"Cambodian Cassette Archives": see the "Thai Beat a Go-go"- thread here at Dissensus for a description and review. Pop music before the Khmer Rouge killed them off along with the other intellectuals....really sad when you remember that. this music is incredible.

*"Radio Morocco": Recordings taken straight off Moroccan radio in 1983. the odd moroccan serge gainsbourg impersonation, and lots of more moroccan-style music and news reports, commercials etc.
 
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martin

----
Can only speak for the Cambodian / Thai releases. The Thai stuff is a lot more wacky / knockabout - not that that makes it bad, but if yr looking for 'serious' music it might prove a bit too much. And agree with mms' comment about wrenching music back from the po-faced ethno-hippies who want some neatly packed spiritual experience.
 

rupture

teeth puller outer
I know the Sublime Frequencies folks, and they mean well basically, but -- for example-- on the RADIO MOROCCO CD, they use the image of a friend of mine on the cover without his knowlege or consent, in lurid photoshopped colors to boot (Maalem Mahmoud Gania, one of the country's eminent gnawa musicos).

The CD itself uses lengthy excerpts from several easily recognizeable Moroccan & Arabic groups, including more people I know personally-- Nass El Ghiwane.

NeG & Gania are still alive, still making a living as musicians... So, however well-intentioned, it turns into the worst kind of bootlegging-- ripping off artists & not even helping the curious listener to learn about who/what they are listening to.

So as a listening experience its great, aleatoric, you hear radio tuning, static snatches, gorgeous maghrebi music, french pop, etc., but it would have been pretty easy to make an attempt to gather info about the music & artists presented on each Sublime Freq CD.

Even though the Bush admin's economic policy keeps sinking the dollar, Sublime Freq is making money off the sale of this music, and I know for a fact that even minor sums kicked-back to the various artists whose music they publish would be truly appreciated, as would the smallest attempt to print tracklisting / artist info, etc.

-/r
 
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mms

sometimes
rupture said:
I know the Sublime Frequencies folks, and they mean well basically, but -- for example-- on the RADIO MOROCCO CD, they use the image of a friend of mine on the cover without his knowlege or consent, in lurid photoshopped colors to boot (Maalem Mahmoud Gania, one of the country's eminent gnawa musicos).

The CD itself uses lengthy excerpts from several easily recognizeable Moroccan & Arabic groups, including more people I know personally-- Nass El Ghiwane.

NeG & Gania are still alive, still making a living as musicians... So, however well-intentioned, it turns into the worst kind of bootlegging-- ripping off artists & not even helping the curious listener to learn about who/what they are listening to.

So as a listening experience its great, aleatoric, you hear radio tuning, static snatches, gorgeous maghrebi music, french pop, etc., but it would have been pretty easy to make an attempt to gather info about the music & artists presented on each Sublime Freq CD.

Even though the Bush admin's economic policy keeps sinking the dollar, Sublime Freq is making money off the sale of this music, and I know for a fact that even minor sums kicked-back to the various artists whose music they publish would be truly appreciated, as would the smallest attempt to print tracklisting / artist info, etc.

-/r


that's interesting, have you let them know this and are they making any plans to revise this?
Im interested in what the world is doing sonically on one level, the lack of centre is inspiring and i want people to take this as a cue, if i had time when i'm not just trying to survive i would, i hope to.
 

rupture

teeth puller outer
mms said:
that's interesting, have you let them know this and are they making any plans to revise this?

Yes. and not exactly. We were discussing it a lot last year. At the end it was sort of like -- they were really busy but also supportive of me figuring out the tracks & writing new liner notes & whatnot for a (euro?) re-release on my label soot, or split release or whatever,-- Alan was quite open-- then I got really busy & the ball was dropped... maybe we'll pick it up again.


mms said:
Im interested in what the world is doing sonically on one level, the lack of centre is inspiring and i want people to take this as a cue, if i had time when i'm not just trying to survive i would, i hope to.

yeah, i hear you. they are genuinely excited to pump weird non-western music into the world from a fast & D.I.Y. , decidely non RealWorld / Putumayo perspective, but in this punky eagerness they strip the music of all buts its most basic history / context / info. That to me contributes to this idea of world music as a foreign block, it disconnects the sounds from the people who made it--which seems fundamentally disrespectful --they would never release a CD of underground NYC bands from the No Wave years and just slap on a title w/ no artist info or track listing
Issues of bootlegging aside, as a curious listener, it just sucks to hear some amazing sounds, then have no clue of where to search to find more (except by purchasing another Sublime Freq. CD!!).

/r
 

mms

sometimes
rupture said:
yeah, i hear you. they are genuinely excited to pump weird non-western music into the world from a fast & D.I.Y. , decidely non RealWorld / Putumayo perspective, but in this punky eagerness they strip the music of all buts its most basic history / context / info. That to me contributes to this idea of world music as a foreign block, it disconnects the sounds from the people who made it--which seems fundamentally disrespectful --they would never release a CD of underground NYC bands from the No Wave years and just slap on a title w/ no artist info or track listing
Issues of bootlegging aside, as a curious listener, it just sucks to hear some amazing sounds, then have no clue of where to search to find more (except by purchasing another Sublime Freq. CD!!). /r

surely it's half the point to go out and search for new sounds, the impetus is on the listener to explore and build, rather than have everything done for you, there are perspectives and stories actually built onto the cds which are very 'real' if you like, you could have versions of those kind of stories anywhere in any place.
they make that music seem less 'foreign' to me, they don't smack of the whole hippified 'other peoples social or worship music as a trancendental force while you eat your dinner' that alot of world music is both cursed and marketed as. Neither does it have the forces of mystery and reverence on it's side.
i do agree on a level tho, even if they do not have notes on the cds they should feature them on the website.
 

MiltonParker

Well-known member
interesting to hear Rupture's points about the easily identifiable nature of the tunes. I agree they should be setting a fair amount of the money aside for renumeration, even if at present they haven't discerned the performers.

it should be mentioned that not _all_ of the SF releases lack credits. I've seen at least two (Cambodian Cassette Archives and Molam) that have extensive group & song details, with translations, historical essays about the development of the genre, etc. -- many of these discs were compiled from cassettes and vinyl, and when the information was available, they present it.

the 'Radio X' series come with no info whatsoever, mainly because they're assembled from recordings they made themselves of radio broadcasts while travelling. these releases are also generally heavily collaged & fragmented; some people are frustrated and wish they stayed in place more, while some people enjoy the freeform composition & montage, it's all dreamy.

I think it's a good thing these records are out and generating interest, because it's clearly a sign there's more work to be done. Many people seem to want the hard details, so hopefully track listings can now be generated and posted online, readily available. I think it'd be cool if they organized some way of compiling this data from knowledgable people. john oswald's 'mystery tapes' project came with no track information and disruptive liners, but always with the sentence to the effect of: 'musical sources made available upon specific request'. which he honored the one time I asked him (the 'ninjas' song on X1 is an Oswald remix of a song by the Frank Chickens).
 
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