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Saturday, December 26, 2020

NHK'Koyxeи - (2012) Dance Classics Vol.I LP

 

Pan ‎– PAN 24.

"Prolific producer Kouhei Matsunaga's 'Dance Classics Vol.I' LP documents his more dance oriented material, as seen from his sets with Sensational and also his other minimal techno project NHK. Not feeling tied down to one genre, Matsunaga nestles in the PAN roster, and however that isn't to say that he is dance per se as witnessed from his recent collaborations with Conrad Schnitzler. The album focuses more on bass/base electronics, music for the dancefloor and/or altered state reflection. Having composed pieces for WDR based on Henry Chopin, Kouhei is equally at ease jamming with Sensational, whilst simultaneously executing a obsessively numerical sequence of dance pieces that borders on Hanne Darboven-like compulsivity."

Objekt - (2014) Flatland

 

Pan ‎– PAN 60.

Like many impressive artists, TJ Hertz seems to rarely be impressed with himself. Take, for instance, his first records. "All nine minutes and twenty-five seconds of Objekt's 'CLK Recovery' are thrilling," we wrote in our blurb for the A-side of Hertz's second EP, one of RA's top tracks of 2011. "Objekt's sound design is awesome to behold," Philip Sherburne said in his review of "Cactus," a track he called "as malevolently hungry as the carnivorous house plant in Little Shop Of Horrors." Hertz, meanwhile, was less enthused. "I just felt like I was clutching at straws," he recently told Angus Finlayson. "I guess in retrospect I was trying to do it too much by the numbers, which has never really suited me that well."

This is a little hard to accept—Hertz has never sounded unsure as an artist. But listening to Flatland, you start to see where he's coming from. Hertz's debut album is stylistically unleashed in a way that makes his early records sound conservative. Like the curls of synthetic material on its cover, it's tangled and glossy, abstract but also weirdly tactile. On one hand it's so rich with detail that it can be hard to wrap your head around, but it's also generous to the listener, delivering at every turn.

Sound design plays the role of a lead instrument on Flatland. Though incredibly vivid, the sonic palette is thoroughly artificial—aside from a single drum roll on "Dogma," nothing here recalls any instrument in the material world (even most of the drums seem barely suited to that term). As you listen, the mind's eye might conjure up a white laboratory, devoid of human life but whirring with activity—motors spinning, machines pivoting, screens flickering. Hearing that metronomic bleep on "One Fell Swoop," it's hard not to picture a red light blinking on a console.

The album's other masterstroke is its structure, which is totally unconventional but follows an intuitive logic that keeps you locked in. It starts with a bang ("Agnes Revenge") ends with a sigh ("Cataracts") and zig-zags wildly in the middle. Some tempos soar well above 140 BPM; "Dogma" chugs monolithically at 91. Individual tracks follow strange, seemingly improvised paths, but the album as a whole occasionally circles back on itself: that metronomic bleep from "One Fell Swoop" returns in "First Witness," "Agnes Revenge" and "Agnes Apparatus" share the sonic boom that opens the record (which also appears on last year's "Agnes Demise"), and various other bits of flotsam reappear throughout, always a little different from before.

As heady as all that may sound, Flatland is not a cerebral attempt to subvert the norm. It's bold, maybe even avant-garde, but from beginning to end it's raucous, barnstorming, chair-dancing fun. Hertz is not exactly a techno producer, but neither is he an experimental artist—it seems his ultimate goal is always, if not club utility, then a thrilling visceral reaction, often one that will make you want to move. He's not rejecting convention to be clever, he's doing it because the alternative feels unnatural to him. Hertz says he had trouble making straight techno. What he made instead is absolutely killer.

Rashad Becker - (2013) Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. I LP

 

Pan ‎– PAN 34.

Pressed on 140g vinyl, packaged in a pro-press color jacket and a silkscreened pvc sleeve* At long last PAN present the radical, revelatory debut album of sonic fictions by peerless mastering engineer, sound artist and composer, Rashad Becker. Via his day job as a cutting engineer at Berlin's Dubplates & Mastering and his post-production studio, Clunk, the Syrian-born German-raised autodidact has in some respects contributed more to the shape and timbre of contemporary electronic and avant-garde music than anyone else. He's blessed with a heightened sensitivity to frequency and a love of bass and subbass which has no doubt enhanced hundreds of recordings and provided him an invaluable, hawk-like view of modern sonic aesthetics. With this in mind, the inspired architecture, dynamics and feel of 'Traditional Music Of Notional Species' can be heard as a deliberate and hyper-conscious bypassing of staid conventions in melody, harmony and meter, searching out and inhabiting the microtonal spaces between sounds with an in-depth understanding of their complex relationships and structures. Yet, far from being an avant-garde academic exercise, it provides a breathtaking richness of ambiguous human expression and emotional triggers, albeit from the periphery of human experience. His multi-tiered layers of oily quacks, slyding tones, convulsive spurts and spatial displacements present an embarrassment of fictional sonic capital, setting out a new and idiosyncratic grammar of computer music language with an inimitably exotic ancient-futuristic accent. For us it's something close to a waking dream rendered in sound, it's sincerely one of the most phantastical, far out records we've heard in a while, at once lending a gridless, human/alien aspect to the harsher sounds of say, Florian Hecker or Andre Vida, with the guile and unswerving, syncretic avant-folk vision of Ghedalia Tazartes and even the soured sensation of Korean classical music. It's one of the boldest musical statements on PAN yet, and, if like us you crave genuinely new sonic thrills, this album is an absolute must.


Rashad Becker - (2016) Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. II LP

 

Pan ‎– PAN 74.

Rashad Becker’s new full length album, ‘Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. II’ is a newly developed continuation and exploration of work since his highly-acclaimed first volume.

Incorporating more instrumental-sounding components, the record moves through both fluid and dissonant sounds which take on different structural and sculptural challenges through carefully-layered compositions. Following ‘Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. I’, the new album expands in various elements, distorted and warped, focusing in on the tension and energy of synthesized sounds that appear to exist hauntingly physical.

Known for his unrivalled attention to sonic detail across his work, Becker’s unique techniques and expressive manipulations of sound are laid bare in an exhilarating new form, stylistically distinctive and uncompromising.

The album is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, featuring artwork by Bill Kouligas.

Sensate Focus - (2012) Deviation Heat-Treated 12''

 

Pan ‎– PAN 38.

"Surprise release from the mighty PAN label, Heatsick re-worked by Mark Fell's Sensate Focus across two long tracks totalling 35 minutes* From behind your ear, PAN pluck a blink-and-miss exclusive: a 35 minute audio response by Mark Fell (Sensate Focus) to source material by Heatsick, somewhere between cover version, remix and deconstruction. Along the A-side 'X' plane, tones are exploded, harmonies refracted with HD dissonance; time is extruded, made ductile yet intangible. On the B-side 'Y' axis hydraulic undulations and roiling tones expand and contract between kinetic kink and gyroscopic funk with the pointillist, freeform choreography of a Merce Cunningham piece. One for the dancers and the DJs that know!"


Slikback / Soda Plains - (2020) Split 12''

 

Pan ‎– PAN 115.


Hong Kong born, UK-based producer Soda Plains (production for Chynna, Scintii, Ian Isiah) and the Kenyan, Nyege Nyege-affiliated artist Slikback bring their distinct sounds to the third instalment of PAN’s club-focused “Split” series.

Limited to 300 copies, hand stamped, no repress.

The EP is mastered by Jeremy Cox

Steven Warwick - (2019) MOI LP

 

Pan ‎– PAN 103.

 “MOI” is the fearless new full length album by artist and musician Steven Warwick. The record signals a more upbeat reprise following the previous, reflective release “Nadir”. “MOI”, the first physical release under his own name ( having previously recorded under the Heatsick monicker), is a journey considering interior worlds and personal architecture, as found in early spiritual narratives. Recorded in Berlin, the FUGA residency space in Zaragoza and and on location in New York, Warwick’s sonic vocabulary is further expanded with intense frenetic rhythms, prismatic melodies and resonant vocals.

Like the dopamine rush of contemporary life, “MOI” is a sonic roller coaster with a scream -if-you-wanna-go-faster urgency ; “Open Fire Hydrant” bursts out like a pressure valve spiralling onto the dancefloor, while Kaleidoscope offers cheeky anecdotes as told on a ride home soundtracked by a garage beat.
MOI is a spectrum both emotionally and musically, embedded with an underlying spirituality wrestling with existential dread, as witnessed in “Over There”, “Salvation”, “Kind of Blue” or the icy digital pulse of “Cold Light of Day”. “Danke” featuring guest vocals from visual artist Josephine Pryde offers a slightly gothic feel, albeit of the architectural variety, while the purgatorial transmissions of “Consolatio”, bring a moment of respite. “Rush” is a sensuous percussive workout before concluding on the rampaging seductive house track “Silhouette”.

Amnesia Scanner - (2020) Tearless LP

 

Pan ‎– PAN 108.

Berlin-based duo Amnesia Scanner have announced the impending release of their sophomore LP, Tearless, a sonic reflection of how it feels to experience Earth at a time when collapse is emerging as the prevailing narrative. As Amnesia Scanner founders, Ville Haimala and Martti Kalliala watch their icy home country of Finland thaw- the staggering scale of political recalibration and the worldwide climate crisis blows open old norms. “There’s a looming sense of radical change,” they noted pre-COVID, connecting the period of making the album to a fin de siecle horror and curiosity regarding what new world is being ushered in. Tearless has been referred to as “a breakup album with the planet”, to which Amnesia Scanner responds, on the LP’s closing track: “You will be fine, if we can help you lose your mind.” Amnesia Scanner are previewing the album in the form of a video for their accidental quarantine anthem “AS Going,” a clip featuring a cascade of images of spiraling humans.

Tearless marks a turning point in the duo’s trajectory, one begun in 2014 with the AS Live [][][][][] mixtape, followed by audio play Angels Rig Hook, two EP’s for Young Turks, and their 2018 debut album, Another Life (PAN). For Amnesia Scanner in 2020, the walls of the nightclubs, galleries, and institutions fall away and are replaced by full-scale theatrical productions complete with jumbotron stages, animatronics, and a surrealist costumed cast (literally so in the XL version of the album’s live show, Anesthesia Scammer). Likewise, the musical scope of the album is expansive, with guest vocalists — the Peruvian artist Lalita and the Brazillian DJ/producer LYZZA — descending into a vast uncanny valley of sound. With the crossfader on Tearless sitting closer to pop than abstraction, so too does the audience for this record widen in scope. Opener “AS Enter” sets a sombre tone until the fucking riffs of the second track (the titular, Lalita-helmed “AS Tearless”) make clear there’s plenty of roaring to come. A feature from metalcore band Code Orange on “AS Flat” follows, along with “AS Trouble” (feat. Oracle, the third, machinic ghost-member of Amnesia Scanner) and together they hit as black-metal-gaze dirges. Closing Tearless is the sadboy grunge of “AS U Will Be Fine” with a clear statement of intent: doom, despair, insanity, absurdity, it’s all natural, all cathartic, and all OK.

For the art direction of this release, Amnesia Scanner collaborators PWR scavenged the pop cultural unconscious, as if ventilating memory dissociated by trauma. The gatefold vinyl reveals a four-panel comic, full of iconic pre-millennial motifs, which arrive cut up and reassembled collage-style: fitting visuals for an album that channels Deftones as much as reggaeton, menace as much as the drop-outness of grunge. Refuse like the ‘90s and party like the ‘20s—if that seems senseless, you are doing it right.


John Zorn - (2016) Painted Bird

 

Tzadik ‎– TZ 8342

 The fourth CD in a 12-month period by Zorn’s most powerful new ensemble presents nine genre-busting compositions mixing jazz, metal, classical, world music and more. This time their trademark sound is augmented by the ringing tones of Kenny Wollesen’s vibraphone to create their wildest, most insane CD to date. Juxtaposing complex atonal lines, driving vamps, heavy metal riffs, improvisational madness, shredding solos and moments of profound lyricism, The Painted Bird is a surreal and expressive new world in sound. Moonchild meets Nova Express!

John Zorn - (2016) Sacred Visions

 

Tzadik ‎– TZ 8345

“Sacred Visions” presents two Zorn masterpieces touching upon the mediaeval world. “The Holy Visions” is a Mystery Play in eleven strophes concerning the life, work and philosophy of 12th century composer, healer and visionary mystic Hildegard von Bingen, and is one of Zorn’s most beloved and acclaimed works for voice. Here it is coupled with Zorn’s latest string quartet “The Remedy of Fortune,” six tableaux depicting the changing fortunes of romantic love, which was inspired by the work of 12th century troubadour Guillaume de Machaut and receives a precise and passionate reading by the brilliant JACK quartet. Two wondrous modern compositions drawing on mediaeval spirituality, both sacred and secular!

John Zorn - (2016) The Classic Guide To Strategy: Vol. 4

 

Tzadik ‎– TZ 8349 

 After over 40 years there is still no one who plays the sax quite like John Zorn. Using the instrument as sound maker, he commands a saxophone language of unmatched versatility. Collected under the enigmatic title of “The Classic Guide to Strategy,” five volumes were planned—“Volume 1” (1983), “Volume 2’ (1986), “Volume 3’ (2003) and now the penultimate “Volume 4” is finally made available on Tzadik. Filled with wit, drama, playfulness and intensity, the composer’s legendary virtuosity and powerful improvisational logic is on full display in this astonishing release recorded at EMPAC in early 2013. You have to hear it to believe it!

John Zorn - (2018) The Urmuz Epigrams

 

Tzadik ‎– TZ 8358

With The Urmuz Epigrams Zorn returns to his roots, using the recording studio as instrument to create an intensely personal suite of compositions in the style of his legendary File Card compositions and Zoetropes. Dedicated to the visionary Romanian writer Urmuz whose small, scattered body of work predated Dadaism by decades, The Urmuz Epigrams is a suite of surrealistic miniatures more akin to philosophical aphorisms than actual music. The pieces are presented here in two iterations, as a set of “rare 78rpm records” complete with surface scratches and limited dynamic range, and as a modern reconstruction of same with the full blown studio sound presented in all its perplexing glory. Some of the craziest music in the Zorn catalog!

Mary Halvorson Quartet - (2017) Paimon: Book of Angels Vol 32

 

Tzadik ‎– TZ 8356

After 13 years and 32 CDs Zorn’s expansive “Book of Angels” project is now complete! This final installment presents the last 10 unrecorded compositions from “Masada Book Two” and the variety, drama and lyricism is just as strong as the very first volume. Mary Halvorson, a longtime Masada fan and one of the most acclaimed guitarists of her generation, leads a dynamic quartet featuring Miles Okazaki, Drew Gress and Tomas Fujiwara. The music is intense, wild and incredibly varied—a beautiful and fitting conclusion to this historic Masada series—hailed as one of Zorn’s best!

John Zorn / Brian Marsella Trio - (2017) Buer: The Book of Angels Volume 31

 

Tzadik ‎– TZ 8353

Well versed in the music of John Zorn, the trio of Brian Marsella on piano, Trevor Dunnon bass and Kenny Wollesen on drums is the perfect group to interpret a collection of compositions from Zorn's Book of Angels. This is one for the jazziest albums in the series, with echoes of McCoy Tyner, Andrew Hill setting the scene for this collection. "Jekusiel" opens the album with a strong trio performance, and everyone is playing in a very fast and percussive manner. The brash and intrepid piano soloing resonates through the music with thick elastic bass and insistent drumming in support and on the full band improvisation. Crisp-sounding drumming opens "Akzariel," leading to a rattling and flowing trio section. Storming keyboard work keeps the excitement building, and crafty drumming adds to the feeling of propulsion, making for a fast and ferocious performance. "Parymel" uses powerful bass to begin, and intensely hued piano playing and ripe percussion draw from a deep well of energy. The music is loud but impeccably played, taking the interesting melody and expanding upon it, creating music that is at the same time provocative and probing, with Marsella moving percussively up and down the keyboard and recalling the great Don Pullen. There is a haunted medium tempo theme to begin "Karkiel", which gives way to a tempest of piano, percussion and bass that delves deeply into the music's emotional resonance. This track uses dynamic tension to provide shades of light and shadow, from sudden slashes of piano to rippling cymbal play, then coming together with high-speed cooperation. "Tsirya" is another short and furiously played performance, with an excellent drum solo and then the trio coming together to create music that’s both vivid and self-reliant. The improvisation is brimming with energy and dizzyingly well performed and together the trio creates a boiling stream of endlessly fascinating rhythm. Another very exciting fast paced performance is "Zagin," with muscular piano abutted by the interplay of powerful bass and drums. Much the same is "Petahel," developing deeply percussive music from all three instruments and allowing the music to take energy from a choppy theme and ply it in a sparkling improvised section. This makes for a spirited performance, encapsulating a some fine drum soloing and trade-offs between piano and drums. The music on this album is made by a trio of kindred spirits, and they make sounds that are inventive and inviting, using the memorable themes from the Book Of Angels and cooking up superb music from them.

VA - (2020) Send Me the Bones: From the Earliest Syrian-American Recordings, July 1913 - June 1919

 

Canary Records ‎– none

In the second half of the 19th century, troupes of Moroccans, Egyptians, and Syrians performed in the United States at tent shows, circuses, minstrel shows, vaudeville houses, and theaters as ethnographic/ exotic spectacles for American audiences. Several members of the first Syrian family to emigrate to the U.S., headed by a medical doctor named Yusuf Arbeely (b. 1828, five miles outside of Damascus) who arrived with his wife, niece, and five sons in August 1878, toured during the 1880s offering paying customers (25 cents for adults; 15 cents for kids) a chance to see people from the Holy Land in native costume. The 1893 Columbia World Exposition in Chicago offered many more Americans the chance to witness aspects of Arab and Turkish culture at its pavilions. (Three wax cylinders now at the Library of Congress, recorded in Chicago by Benjamin Ives Gilman on the morning of September 25, 1893 by four musicians from Beirut, totaling less than five minutes of sound, are, strictly speaking, the first sound recordings of Arabs made in the United States.)

Through the end of the 19th and beginning of the early 20th centuries Syrian immigrants to the U.S. developed enclaves in about a dozen cities and towns in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan, and New York. By 1920, over 150,000 Arabic-speaking immigrants from Greater Syria (the Ottoman districts of Aleppo, Damascus, Beirut, Mount Lebanon, and Jerusalem) established themselves in a variety of retail, service, financial, and manufacturing trades, especially the garment business. 40,000 more immigrants from the Syrian diaspora had settled in Canada and Mexico, 300,000 in Brazil and Argentina, and 40,000 more elsewhere in South America and the Caribbean. In the wake of the catastrophe of WWI, in which over 18% of the Syrian population died (including the famine that killed half of the population of Mount Lebanon in 1915-18), and the policies under French occupation in the 20s, most remained in the Americas rather than return home, as many immigrants had originally intended.

The first Syrian-American to have recorded in the U.S. was a composer and pianist named Alexander Maloof (b. ca. 1884-85) who arrived with his parents from Zahle (present-day Lebanon) in 1894. They applied for citizenship the following year. He was already publishing sheet music of his compositions as a teenager, had established himself as a music teacher in Brooklyn by 1905, and was performing in public in his 20s. His music often purposefully synthesized American and Syrian elements. In 1912, he copyrighted “America Ya Hilwa” (which he called “For Thee, America” in English) and campaigned for years to have it become the U.S. national anthem. In September and October, 1913, he recorded his ragtimesque piano arrangement of the traditional Ottoman tune “Aljazayer” and an original composition called “A Trip to Syria” (a trip that he himself never made). It is unclear whether the resulting disc was marketed to English or Arabic speaking audiences. In April 1916 a group credited only as “Syrian Band” recorded four sides for Columbia records in New York and were issued as part of their E (ethnic) series for the immigrant community; the hybridized style of those performances are similar to material Maloof's Oriental Orchestra recorded and self-released in the 20s. It seems reasonable to speculate that they were made under his direction. On his own label, his issued a wide variety of material by his own band as well as other immigrant performers. After folding the label, he recorded several more sessions for other labels in the 20s and 30s including Victor and Gennett Records in Richmond, Indiana. (Among them were a series of organ solos marketed to funeral parlors and roller rinks.) He produced piano rolls, performed on radio, toured widely, and continued teaching into the 1950s. Richard M. Breaux’s excellent biographical article on Maloof points out that when he died on leap day 1956 in New Jersey, his local obituary pointed out his efforts to transcribe and preserve Levantine folk music.

Arabic-language discs on various overseas labels were imported physically from Beirut and Cairo during throughout the 1910s by entrepreneurs including A.J. Macksoud who ran a series of music shops on and around Manhattan’s Washington Street in what was then Little Syria, while at the same time Victor Records issued foreign recordings domestically in the U.S. for the immigrant market. It was not until the Maronite priest Rev. George Aziz (b. 1872) recorded a single disc on May 15, 1914 in New York with violin accompaniment that the Arabic language was recorded commercially in the U.S. (Again we refer those interested in a recent biographical article on Aziz by Richard Breaux.) March 18 and 19 of 1915, the first Syrian recording star Nahum Simon began making discs for Columbia.

Simon appears to have been a professional shoemaker, born January 25, 1890. He seems to have tried to emigrate through Ellis Island initially in June 1904 at the age of 15, but after being detained for four days for medical reasons, was deported. He successfully entered the U.S. in 1912, settling on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn with his wife Rahill and their two American-born children Evaleen (b. ca. 1915) and Joseph (b. ca. 1917). Between March and September 1915, he recorded 12 discs, and then in 1916-17 another 21, all for Columbia. Their popularity catalyzed a wave of recordings of Arabic-speaking immigrants that took place over the second half of the 1910s. He did not however record again until the 1920s when he made 8 more discs for Victor Records (including two 12” discs) and 3 12” discs for Columbia. After a few appearances of WBBC’s Syrian Hour radio show in early 1933, we are unclear what happened to him.

The only other singers to have recorded nearly as prolifically as Simon during the 1910s and 20s were Selim Domani, who made at least 30 discs for Maloof’s label; Louis Wardini, who made 6 discs for Victor on May 16, 1917 and another 25 discs for independent labels in the 20s (including Maloof’s); and Constantine Sooss (or Souse), who released 17 discs on Victor and Columbia during the period October 1917 to February 1920. (Again, Richard Breaux has written biographical studies of all three of them.) One factor ties together the recordings of Simon, Domani, Sooss, Wardini, and (potentially) Aziz. They all include the violin accompaniment of Naim Karacand. My own 2500-word biographical article on Karacand was published at Breaux’s Midwest Majar blog, but here is a brief summary:

Karacand was born on September 2, 1890 in Aleppo, Syria, where he was raised Catholic. He arrived at Ellis Island October 10, 1909 and settled in Brooklyn, followed by his younger brother Hicmat and parents Abdullah and Susie. He was first married in 1912, and he had his wife Najeema had three children (1913-17) - the period during which he recorded scores of discs with Nahum Simon, William Kamel, Moses Cohen, and several others as well as about 10 discs under his own name or anonymously. His band at the time included Shehade Ashear (or Shehadi Ashkar, kanun) and Abraham Halaby (oud), both of whom were Halabi (Aleppan) Jews, or in some cases, oudist Toufic Gabriel Moubaid (born ca. 1887-88 in Tripoli, Lebanon). During 1921-22, he was involved in a protracted, bitter, and very public divorce that tore his family apart. He recorded prolifically through the 20s for Maloof and Macksoud labels.

His Declaration of Intent to naturalize as the citizen of the United States on July 10, 1923 was witnessed by his regular collaborator Toufic Moubaid and the dancer Anna Athena Arcus, a native of Mersin, Turkey five years his senior whom he later married. In 1930-32 Karacand worked as a music consultant on films in Hollywood, notably including Mata Hari starring Greta Garbo. In 1936-37, he traveled to Brazil for the wedding of his brother Chukri and performed there before returning to Brooklyn just after a retrospective concert of his work had been produced at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He spent the 1930s and 40s playing WHOM’s Friday evening Arabian Nights radio program and performing constantly at gatherings of the Syrian-Lebanese community. He continued to record prolifically for independent labels through the 1940s and 50s in New York. Among his last recordings were in 1958 at jazz-Arabic hybrid sessions for Riverside Records under the direction of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, who was then bassist for Thelonious Monk. Following the deaths of his second wife and all three of his children, he died in Astoria, Queens in 1973 and is buried in Green Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

A composer and performer who was held in high regard in his community, Karacand’s repertoire and skill allowed him to play with a wide variety of performers from many backgrounds. Even among his earliest recordings on this collection, he plays a classical peshrev (“bishro”) by the Ottoman-Armenian Tatyos Effendi (tracks 17-18), urban Beirut/Cairo-style classical tarab (tracks 5-6 and 9-10), and Syrian rural folk deke dances (tracks 21-22 which were originally issued uncredited). His collaborators included Jews (including Moses Cohen, who we suspect was born in Aleppo ca. 1894) as often as Christians. In 1953-54 he hosted the Orthodox native Aleppan violinist Sami el-Shawwa, who'd had a parallel career to Karacand's in Cairo and Baghdad, having become the single most celebrated violinist of the Arab world in the first half of the 20th century. The two of them palled around for several months, jamming at weddings.

Between May 1914 and February 1920, Columbia Records issued a total of 70 discs recorded by Arabic-speaking immigrants before ceasing to record them altogether. Victor issued a total of 32 discs between September 1913 and July 1921 and persisted only sporadically through the 1920s. By and large the market gap for Syrian-American performers on record during the 20s was filled by the Maloof and Macksoud labels. This collection represents about 5% of the total output for the time-period it covers. Although lacking certain key performers (Souss in particular), sourced from acoustically recorded discs in very mixed condition from over a century ago, and lacking in biographical details for two of its performers (William Kamel and Moses Cohen), I hope it serves as window into in the musical world of a remarkable American immigrant community deserving of more attention.
credits
released June 29, 2020

All tracks recorded at Columbia Grafophone's Woolworth Building studio on Broadway except for 1 & 2 recorded at Victor Records' New York City studio.

Instrumentalists on tracks 3-22 are likely Naim Karacand (violin), Shehade Ashear (or Shehadi Ashkar, kanun) and either Abraham Halaby or Toufic Moubaid (oud).

Recordings dates via Richard K. Spottswood Ethnic Music on Records (University of Illinois Press) and Columbia Records E Series, 1908-23 (Mainspring Press):
1 July 24, 1913
2 September 18 1913
3-6 April 1916
7-10 May 1916
11-18 June 1916
19-20 January 1917
21-22 May 1919

Transfers, restoration, and notes by Ian Nagoski, 2017-2020
Thanks to Richard M. Breaux whose ongoing research into early 20th century Arabic-speaking immigrants can be found at syrianlebanesediasporasound.blogspot.com

Thanks also to Steve Shapiro, Nancy Karacand, and Jorge Khlat.

Further reading:
Elmaz Abinader. Children of the Roojme: A Family’s Journey from Lebanon. University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.
Donna Carlton: Looking for Little Egypt. IDD Books, 2011
Stacy D. Fahrenthold. Between the Ottomans and the Etente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora, 1908-1925. Oxford University Press, 2019.
Sarah M. Gaultieri. Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora. University of Caltifornia Press, 2009
Princess [sic] Rahme Haidar. Under Syrian Stars. Fleming H. Revell, 1929.
Linda K. Jacobs. Strangers in the West: The Syrian Colony of New York City, 1880-1900. Kaliyah Press, 2015.
Salom Rizk. Syrian Yankee. Doubleday, 1943.
Najiba E. Saliba. Emigration from Syria and the Syrian-Lebanese Community in Worcester, MA. Antakya Press, 1992.
Lee S. Tesdell et al. The Way We Were: Arab-Americans in Central Iowa, an Oral History. Iowa Humanities Board, 1993. 

Number Of The Beast - (2020) ST CDr

 

Small Mercies ‎– Small Mercies 012

Lapse - (2020) Weaponization CDr

 

Small Mercies ‎– Small Mercies 011

Scant - (2020) Smothered Hope CDr

 

Small Mercies ‎– Small Mercies 010

Mesmer Trial - (2020) Atropine, Muskeg, & Telemetry CDr

 

Small Mercies ‎– Small Mercies 009

Lapse - (2020) Bedsores From Pity Fucking CDr

 

Small Mercies ‎– Small Mercies 008

Mistletoe - (2020) Gestas & Dismas CDr

 

Small Mercies ‎– Small Mercies 007

Plague Mother - (2020) Wither & Scatter CDr

 

Small Mercies ‎– Small Mercies 006

Lapse, Shredded Nerve, The Demons Of Mind Music - (2020) Everything Coming To An End CDr

 

Small Mercies ‎– Small Mercies 005



Climax Denial - (2020) Absurd Object CDr

 

Small Mercies ‎– Small Mercies 004



The Demons Of Mind Music - (2019) Night of the Infernal Mistress CDr

Small Mercies ‎– Small Mercies 003

Lapse - (2019) Transmissible Cancer CDr

 

Small Mercies ‎– Small Mercies 002

Shredded Nerve - (2019) It Was Meant To Be CDr

 

Small Mercies ‎– Small Mercies 001

Crossed Out - (1999) 1990-1993 CD

Slap A Ham Records ‎– 055

Tracks 1 to 7 were recorded on September 28, 1991. Originally released as the self-titled 7".

Tracks 8 to 15 were recorded on February 15, 1992. Tracks 8, 10, 11 and 12 were originally released on the split 5" with Dropdead. Tracks 9 and 13 were originally released on the Son Of Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh! compilation 7". Tracks 14 and 15 are unreleased versions.

Tracks 16 to 21 were recorded on October 17, 1992. Originally released on the split 7" with Man Is The Bastard.

Track 22 was recorded on December 15, 1990 at a rehearsal.

Tracks 23 to 29 were recorded in April 1991. Originally released as the demo tape.

Tracks 30 to 41 were recorded on March 27, 1992. Live on KSPC Radio in Claremont, CA.

Tracks 42 and 43 were recorded sometime in 1992 at a rehearsal. Track 42 is a previously unreleased instrumental.

Tracks 44 to 47 were recorded on August 21,1993. Live at the Ché Café in San Diego, CA.

Josh Lay - (2010) Rotted Afterlife LP

 

Urashima ‎– UMA 014 


Controlled Opposition - (2019) ST

 

 Unrest Productions ‎– UNREST51

CCR Headcleaner - (2020) Street Riffs LP

 In The Red Records ‎– ITR-341

San Francisco’s CCR Headcleaner are back with a brand new full length of dark, heavy, brutal, face-melting punk-adjacent stoner noise. These guys are as good as fucked up acid fried rock n’ roll gets and Street Riffs is their best statement yet!

Entartun - (2018) ST CD

 

Obsessive Fundamental Realism ‎– OFR-CD 02