You Never Know is now available to buy on the Northern Thorns BandCamp page.
CDs on the way soon!
Category: Records (Page 1 of 2)
I know I’ve sat on this album for months longer than was necessary. Really it was all about album art and title, and laziness. But I’m pleased to report that the art is finished and I’ll be ordering CDs in the next day or so! Hoping to have them to give out to all alumni and start selling by the end of September.
Here are some of the concepts for the art. I won’t reveal which one became the design just yet:
Oh, and in show news: we have jumped on a bill with Brothers Gow at The High Dive on October 2nd. Looking for some good friends to fill the last slot on the bill…
The Northern Thorns LP is finished, here’s a taste:
11 songs became 10 during recording, and 8 will make it onto a piece of vinyl. The remaining 2 will perhaps be a 7″ release, and I have an alt version of one song for digital only release as well.
Now to find a vinyl press…
I think I mentioned before on this blog, a while ago I was sent a 45RPM record that I hadn’t ordered in a package with one that I had. The bonus LP had no sleeve and was filthy, but when I cleaned it up and put it on I was taken quickly with it. Gorgeous guitar-driven rumba with a touch of north African mystery in the notes. All played by a very tight band.
Conde Demba Chanteur Horoya Band
I researched it a bit looking for more by the same group. Not knowing the intricacies of French, I assumed that the full name of the project was Conde Demba Chanteur Horoya Band, or perhaps the operative searchable words were Conde Demba. I didn’t find much, they had another LP under the same name that I tracked down and it’s just as good.
Months later I stumbled across Horoya Band, and realized I had no idea what I was searching for. Conde Demba was a guest vocalist for two records, it seems. I’ve since found a lot of amazing music from them, from several iterations and with a diverse quality of sounds and styles.
The Horoya Band was from Guinea (I had thought Ivory Coast for some reason), and they were a national treasure, to the extent that the state eventually nationalized them (whatever that means) and they became Horoya Band National.
I even tracked down a CD of theirs called Paya-Paya, on the Dakar Sound label. I love finding reissues of this stuff whenever possible, both because I like the opportunity to actually give the artists part of my purchase money and because it means that people are still listening to music that I like. Sometimes I feel like a lonely archeologist in Seattle with no peers who I can share this stuff with. Or at least no one who will care like I do.
Horoya Band Paya-Paya
Shout out to the worldservice blog, where I made this discovery.
August 6th at Barboza, with Brandon Krebs and Stella Crest. It should be a great night playing with good friends and other supportive friends in the crowd.
In other news, work continues on the full-length, with Bob Cheek at ExEx. It’s a fun way to make a record, passing the files back and forth in WAV format between ProTools and Logic. Lalo Bello came in and laid down some congas for a rumba-ish song that may end up as the final track. Now I get to edit them and give them back to Bob. Fun!
And we’re re-amping guitars. It’s great hearing them come alive and picking out pedals. A selection of what we’ve been using:
More on that soon! We hope to finish the re-amping this afternoon in fact.
Kiam Collection Is Now Complete!
Kiam Super Hits
I finally found the last two Kiam songs that I hadn’t heard! This LP popped up as an auction on eBay a couple weeks ago and I jumped on it. I have been looking to collect all the Kiam songs on vinyl, which I assume will be a years-long project. This is the third of the four Kiam LPs that I have now (they have a lot of 45s as well).
However, I was also missing two songs from my digital collection of Kiam songs, and in fact had never heard them at all. Yule and Namaraley are on this record, and I now have the whole Kiam discography in some form or another.
I listened to them for the first time yesterday. It’s a collector-grade piece of vinyl, very clean jacket and record, and it plays perfectly (this means I’ll have better versions of Mbale, Makonda and Azangai too, as soon as I get around to ripping them). I paid an awful lot for it, more than I ever expected I would. There were other bidders but in the end I was willing to spend whatever it took, and I scared them off when they weren’t able to outbid me.
As for the unheard songs? I see why no one bothered to put them online as of yet, they’re comparatively pretty weak. But they have their moments, and I’ve satisfied my completist desire for the whole catalog.
Also of great interest was the rear jacket, which has some great biographical info on it including a mantion of Lita Bembo playing in the group at one time. I had no idea about that.
Kiam Super Hits
The text on the rear jacket (complete with spelling and syntax errors):
Orchestre Kiam is not a new name in the music world as when most of us hear the name of this group we are reminded of their Top Single such as MEMI, KAMIKI, YANGA YANGA – to name but a few. This group was formed only three years ago but as a result of their efforts they have managed to get themselves a good place in the Top list of best players of Zaire in 1976 and so they were sent to Lagos Nigeria during the Black African Festival.
The name KIAM in it’s long form means KIAMUANGANA so when you hear this you know undoubtedly that Kiamuangana Mateta – the Pop star is involved in one way or the other. I should say he advises them in the musical field and arranges orchestration. It is his own band but he doesn’t play with them. The group is composed of very special members whose functions apart from playing istruments are known for their compositions – people like Kanza Rayon, Muzola Ngunga, Bamueniki [Mwana-Moni Afinda] Lita Bembo, Nkodia via Nkodia to name but a few.
This is KIAM’S first LP in their super Hits series and includes the latest and newest hit “MBALE” by mfui Mwane as well as “AZANGAI” by Shgungu.
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