Brother from Another Planet

"What I'm dealing with is so vast and great that it can't be called the truth. It's above the truth" -- Sun Ra



Today l saw Don Letts' great documentary " Brother from another planet : Sun Ra " (2005). Nothing about this mystic man can be called average. Celebrating his profound creativeness for over 6 decades through music, perfomance, poetry and film, mr. Ra has influenced countless musicians and touched many hearts with his unearthly presence.

Watch " Brother From Another Planet " on YouTube :


• Pt 1 • • Pt 2 •
• Pt 3 • • Pt 4 •



His Sun Ra Arkestra being more of a commune, bringing their eccentric music through their out of this world live shows. Many members (John Gilmore, Marshall Allen) devotedly following Ra's every move. June Tyson, loyal soulmate to Sun Ra and vocalist and dancer in the Arkestra once said that when she was on stage singing Sun Ra's lyrics, she thought of herself as a celestial being.

On his selfmade label 'Saturn' Ra released hundreds of records with all kinds of oddities, handmade artwork, titleless sleeves, wrong credits or no covers at all. The oddity of the label probably being a collectors' ultimate dream... (or worst nightmare)

Even when you get passed the weird costumes, the wild perfomances and the far-out-ness of this mysticus, you must feel the honesty. Sun Ra was the embodiement of a mysterious cosmic spirituality which probably only he understood. It can't be explained and it probably is crazy but it can definitely be heard when you listen to his music.

He once said: "I'm a spirit master. I've been to a zone where there is no air, no light, no sound, no life, no death, nothing. There's five billion people on this planet, all out of tune. I've got to raise their consciousness, tell them about the wonderful potential to bypass death."

We ain't never gonna see another phenomenon like Sun Ra again;
in this world that is...

-Excerpt from "Space is The Place" (1974)-



Sun Ra Links:

• • Official website of the Sun Ra Arkestra under direction of Marshall Allen • •

• • " Space is the Place : The Lives and Times of Sun Ra " • •
>> Review of the biography by J.F. Szwed


• • " Sun Ra : The Immeasurable Equation " • •
>> Prose & Poetry by Sun Ra


• • Sun Ra Arkive • •
>> Magazine dedicated to The Sun Ra Arkestra


• • Astro Black • •
>> Devoted to the music of Sun Ra (with extensive discography)

• • Saturn Web • •
>> On Sun Ra, the Arkestra & Free Jazz

• • Sun Ra Photographs • •

• • Sun Ra on YouTube • •

• • Sun Ra on IMDB • •

• • More • •

Album Cover Wars

countdown

Free Record Swap continues

I ♥ Paris



>>>album<<<

Stumble Upon!

Everybody loves to surf the net.

Instead of coughing up random (yeah right) results in your search engine, StumbleUpon comes up with recommended sites by like-minded surfers. When you have time to surf it really does allow you to find some unique and relevant sites...

Just click thumbs up or down to rate the site you've been brought to.

To some the future of browsing; A nice tool at least...

Stumble On >> StumbleUpon . com <<

Attention Spam & Sound Pure

With 2 releases in july, the concrete crew show off their skills.
Both records, existing of new and previously unreleased material, go completely different ways.

Attention Spam (EAT004) goes tekno and then some, with raw grooves from 'underground' favourites Mononom & Z-Bombs' Freek and others... Beats gone awall!!! Appears on silver vinyl.

clips004

Sound Pure (EAT003) is a precious collection/compilation...
Beautifully built up, this LP is an intimate listening in on the featuring artists' and thus Eat Concrete's 'musical landscape'. Collected over 7 years it's a fine piece of work for anyone who loves the listening kind of electronic music. Nice artwork too!

clips003

How typical of Eat Concrete's broad platform and unique style to release these opposite records at once... More power to them!

Eat Concrete . net & Eat Concrete @ my space (more info, clips & links)

Daedelus Denies The Day's Demise

Sweet denial.

Pointing you out to Daedelus' space again. Get there and listen to his ' Denies the Days Demise'. Released in may, it took some time to win me over. More upbeat, more electronics, but the samba's man, those samba's....
Sundown's gone straight to my heart... I love what he does.

Check it out & Love it!

Harlem 1958

First published in Esquire magazine in january 1959, this Art Kane portrait has to be one of the most lovely pieces of jazz history. Kane was asked to come up with a photo to open a jazz article, he just called every major New York jazz musician he knew of. It was his first professional assignment (...) On the steps of 17E on 126th street, some summer morning at 10 am, these 57 musicians showed up.

Click for large version

Harlem.org is a great site entirely dedicated to this photograph, which says something about the sheer history captured with it. You can scroll around and click the picture to pop up details like who's who and if you click on you'll be able to get individual artist info and so on. Learning some jazz history through one single picture.






This is probably my favorite part:

You see (from top & left to right) : Sonny Rollins, Lawrence Brown, Marian McPartland & Mary Lou Williams, Emmet Berry and Thelonious Monk. Behind the laidback ( hungover?) looking Monk are Milt Hinton & Vic Dickinson (in the back). I'd imagine Count Basie got tired of waiting for the shot and sat his musical self down on the curb amongst the neighbourhoodkids who were just in it for the fun, legendary moment in time or not....



As a hommage to Kane's A Great day in Harlem photographer Gordon Parks reshot the original still living artists once for Life magazine as well as this hip hop interpretation of the photograph on the same (!!) steps on 126th Street, titeled Another Great Day, for the cover of XXL magazine. In the picture people like Rakim, Busta Rhymes & Wyclef Jean. Great days in jazz and hip hop all on the same simple stoop in Harlem...

Great Day links:

A Great Day in Hip Hop
Harlem.org
Art kane
Gordon Parks

Bootstrapping 1

'Bootstrapping' makes me think of starting without a beginning, creating something with nothing. As impossible as to pull oneself up by his bootstraps, reminiscent ofcourse of the Baron von Munchausen pulling himself up out of a swamp by his own hair.
- read & learn -

Bootstrapping 1 is Eat Concrete's first record release and there's 2 of them! Bootstrapping 1.1 & 1.2! Featuring 9 tracks, the records go anywhere from dark, spheric listeningmusic to seriously soulful dancetracks and beyond. ATeeze, Orgue Electronique, Evan Odd, Ro Lee, The Freak with Thousand E's, Sensory Overload, Mononom, Ricercar and Swonkdog are coming at you from all kinds of directions!












click individual pieces to check out tracklistings & artistinfo and have a listen right here


Eat Concrete is about providing interesting productions to and from the world of electronic music. Formed in 2005 as a network of friends disciplined in a wide range of styles, bound by the history of the dutch underground electronic music scene and their inspiration to spread the music, they joined forces and created these 2 EP's under the watchful eyes and ears of Pete Concrete, the instigator of this all.

If you're not anxiously waiting for the link to buy this record by now, you must be getting curious about it's music at least! Listen to some excerpts here and check out Pete Concrete's nicely selected, new and improved downloads page for sure! featuring mixes and sets from Banzaï radio, parties and other cool musical places...

Congratulations Eat Concrete!

Jaan Pehechaan Ho !!!!

Remember the exhilarating Ghost World opening? Jaan Pehechaan Ho!!! Masked dancers go bezerk dancing to a high energy gogo-like song by Bollywood legend Mohammed Rafi. Ghost World's Enid just goes along dancing the crazy dance wich is highley contagious, I'm sure you'll find as well.



Jaan Pehechaan Ho comes from Bollywoods' first "horror thriller", Raja Nawathe's Gumnaam (1965). The story is completely hilarious though, involving a very funny drunken showgirl, a planecrash on a spooky island, a mysterious book and naturally a murdermysterie and a lovestory.

Topping it all off with drunken duets, extravagant beachparties and more psychedelic dancemania. If you ever get the chance: Watch It!!

Now, thanks to WFMU's Beware of the Blog I finally have the complete clip, instead of just the Ghost World excerpt. Much obliged, WFMU's Brian & others!!!

< Take it here >

Just watching it makes you wanna join! Please do so! Throw back your head, close your eyes and shake yourself to the ecstatic Jaan Pehechaan Ho!

The Ministry of Sound

I like their site. It's very busy, packed with tunes, video's, mixes, games, reviews, a forum. One of the best features is their radiostream. Free (no signing up) and 'on air' 24/7. Also check the mixes and podcasts in the radiosection...

Their tvchannel requires you to register. It's free and you won't be spammed. I think it's video's only. Check out their photogallery too, partypics all round.

In the clubbers guide to life you can read all kinds of articles on all kinds of subjects from the clubbing perspective ;) from travel and work to sex and drugs, law and health. Nice section.

Birthday Hits

What was the nr. 1 song on your birthday? Wanna find out?!
What were people swinging out to when you came into this world?

You can find the right weeknumber of you birthday here,
ISO weekdate calendar. You need it to compare to the chartlists which go by week.

Here is the Dutch one > Top 4000
Uk charts > Uk Charts 1950 - 2000
US & the rest of the world > Charts all over the world

My birthday hit : Spargo's You and Me.

The Forevertron

I'm Loving this:

In 1983 the creator of the Forevertron, Tom Every, was reborn. After 3 decades of working as an industrial wrecker, Tom began to question his role in this destructive business of demolishing well designed but commercially outdated factories and machinery.

So, he gave up his demolition business and reinvented himself as Dr. Evermor. He adapted the identity of a Victorian inventor from Eggington, Britain to suit this new life. Now, as a child the fictive Dr. Evermore had been caught in a massive thunderstorm with his father, a Presbyterian minister. Evermore's father explained the huge force of the electric storm as an act of God. From that day on Dr. Evermor has made a life's work out of creating an extraordinary electromagnetically powered spacecraft that would ultimately deliver him to the celestial heavens above.


Dr. Evermor and the Forevertron

The Forevertron is a monumental sculpture weighing aproximately 300 tons and standing 50 feet high.
It consists almost entirely of iron, brass and stainless steel, welded and bolted together. A broad variety of generators, thrusters and other electromagnetic powersources are at the core of the Forevertron. The complete structure is capped by a glass ball meant to serve as space capsule.

The Space Capsule (upper right corner) in it's iron framework.


The Great Celestial Telescope

Secundairy components of the Fantastic Forevertron include a Celestial Listening Ear and the Gravitron, to reduce the doctor's body weight before take-off. At the north end the Great Celestial Telescope points to the heavens (in case someone would want visual proof of the doctor's spacetrip), while the south end holds a spiral staircase and a fancy vip-gazebo, originally reservered for the Royal Family on take-off day.

The Royal Gazebo

The Forevertron exemplifies Dr. Evermor's distinctive and deliberate creative priority; "to blend history with art". Each part of it consists and preserves some facet of early industrial technology or machine culture, now often disappearing underneath the wrecker's ball. Components such as Edison's late 19th century bipolar dynamos appear naturally linked to the Forevertron. Logically put together, imaginatively transformed or magically conceived, this industrial artifact of artifacts honors and recalls inventors and inventions of an age we have departed.


Dr. Evermor explains:

"These forms were made in a certain time frame and we can pick up the energy of whoever the creator was, whether it be a small blade or something else. That unique form comes along again and is put in that place, so that you always have that energy. That little piece may have a very historical connection to other things and beings of a certain time frame."

"If you look at this thing, it is all curved arches and circles. It is built on the principle of odd numbers -- sets of 3, 5, 7, 9. Given the historical make-up it seems appropriate that its essentially profuse, buoyant, undulating lines recall late Victorian aesthetics, from World's Fair architectural follies to Art Nouveau."

"form before function"















Forevertron Links:

roadsideamerica.com

drevermor.com

heart2art2hear

Making records

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Digigarden

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