Obscure Records (Brian Eno's Label)

MP3s, not MP3's.

this is SO HARD. i havent heard 8 or 9, but otherwise, i think it's like...

toop side of 4 = 10 > 6 > 7 > 5 > eastley side of 4 > 1 > 3 > 2

so just for the sake of it being my favorite FULL record, and on the strength of marion brown, ill go with #10.

this is maybe my favorite track on the label though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFDzHHD-8IU

at this point i've only heard 1, 3, and 7. i'm probably not critical enough, but i love all three! so i can't wait to check out the others.

penguin cafe record is great. i love all the ones ive heard, too -- just a few really stand out...

man that nyman too.

also, this is new information to me so maybe it'll be interesting for someone reading this thread:

Brian Eno's album Music for Airports (1978) was intended as the eleventh Obscure album, and has catalogue number OBS-11 written and then scratched out in the matrix area on original UK copies. But this album became the first volume of a new Ambient Records series ("Ambient 1") instead, and this decision marked the end of the Obscure label.

ill stop after this, but this is a pretty common "need to chill" choice in my house :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfrmWdTwjO4

don't stop!

Pavilion of Dreams = prettiest record ever?

xpost
man, that is beautiful. i think i'll start my Obscure odyssey with decay music.

TOOP

btw make sure to NOT listen to the reissued SINKING OF THE T, cause they dubbed tom fucking waits into "jesus' blood never failed me yet"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oRPvTYod_0&feature=BFa&list=PLC456CFAF80606AE5

best PCO song imo -- the yt uploader screwed up, btw, this is from the OBSCURE release, not the one they pictured there.

i think it sounds like a punk-less THIS HEAT

the Point release of jesus blood with Waits is an all-new recording. Unless you're saying they also took the orig recording and dubbed Waits into that as well?

"The 74-minute version was recorded in 1993 for the Point label with Tom Waits singing along with the original recording of the tramp during the later sections."

Did anyone reissue the shorter orig version?

no idea, i just meant that one

Obscure No. 5: Voices and Instruments – Jan Steele, John Cage (1976)

voted for this one, absolutely adore the Jan Steele side & the Cage side is no slouch either with Robert Wyatt & In A Landscape

yeah i thought there was a youtube of DISTANT SAXOPHONES from the steele side!

zappi, i'm intrigued because although i've always heavily admired john cage the conceptual thinker (his essay collection Silence is an all-time fav for me) i've never been able to really wrap my head around his music. will check it out!

its probably his most accessible work, minimal piano & vocal pieces. i sampled distant saxophones on a record in the 90s!

cool!

I was telling a friend and Eno obsessive about Obscure. He'd never heard of it, which is really weird. I mean, Discreet Music is a major Eno release, right? I really think that just by virtue of naming this label "obscure" it has really maintained that quality. I didn't know they were all on Ubu web, I will have to listen to the Toop and Bryars, for sure. Of the ones I have heard, though, it's tempting to vote for Voices and Instruments, but Discreet Music is just fantastic.

"All Day" on Voices and Instruments is a jam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8SpYnYe77s

After all these years I finally learned that Laraaji was actually just a dude named Larry G. Who knew?

I voted 10. "Pavilion Of Dreams". An untouchable, strange and beautiful album.

me too. harold budd is the man

Voted The Sinking of the Titanic because I fell asleep to almost every night of my early 20's.

OMG, I've been looking for these for forever. Thanking you Z S!

thank UbuWeb! seriously, i don't work for them or anything but it's a great, great GREAT resource. there's a ton of musical stuff, but the main focus is on visual arts, lots of videos, lectures, etc. if you're ever hurting for something new to be obsessed about, it's the place to go.

Oh yeah, I love Ubuweb, I just don't think to check it very often.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

welp, i was out of town during the majority of this poll so i didn't get a chance to check everything out, but i HAVE listened to Decay Music and The Pavilion of Dreams, and they're both fantastic. the faint aria-like singing in pavilion of dreams, in particular...just gorgeous.

ubuweb has an elastic approach to copyright. a lot of this stuff is still in print.

yeah, when i saw ubuweb had posted all of the obscure stuff, i assumed it was all OOP, but that is not the case. as neat as it is, i kind of wish they'd stick to actually out of print recordings.

Eh, maybe they mean on vinyl? Because these are all vinyl rips.

yeah, from what i can tell, the eno and penguin cafe obscures are the only ones that are really available these days.

also the Bryars one.

Decay Music is on Spotify.

xp is it? i might be confused, but i thought the version of titanic that's readily available is a different recording from the obscure release. could be totally wrong.

I was just going by this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bryars-Sinking-Titanic-Jesuss-Failed/dp/B0000269VM/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1348506842&sr=1-1

yeah i guess that looks like the same thing!

But can you get any of these new on vinyl?

guys just go to a record store!

i paid like $100 total for clean copies of the eight of these i have!

yeah the fact that it's a vinyl rip rather than a CD rip is not really here nor there w.r.t. potential infringement of copyright

Well, neither is whether it is in print or not, no?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

NYMAN GOT HOSED

forgot to vote, add another vote for budddddd

i think I forgot to vote, too. I dunno. Voices and instruments for me. Though I do love Budd.
I have the Editions EG reissue of Pavilion and the original obscure V&I, so my vote makes sense, i guess.

got machine music and IRMA in the mail today -- gotta say, bryars is consistently great in his niche/style. might actually leapfrog MM/IRMA/sinking over eastley side of toop/eastley into a tie w cage/steele.

so we're at:

4T=10>6>7>1=8=9=5>4E>3>2

where'd you get them from? used?

yeah, discogs, from this guy ive lovingly dubbed "the undergrader."

nice! i've been cataloging my stuff on discogs recently (i've got a long way to go - it takes fucking forever!) and i've been thinking of buying/selling stuff on there.

its great. im "plsmith" on there.

fuck, listening to ENSEMBLE PIECES, and i mean, it's kind of good.

yeah, i was listening to that one all weekend.

i'm also really digging everything that involves gavin bryars. i need to check out more of his stuff, it's consistently awesome. the second piece on The Sinking of the Titanic (not the title track but the one that features a short loop of a man singing this really mournful dirge) is incredible. so fucking melancholy it put me in an altered state of sadness for the entire weekend, and i mean that in a complimentary way

yeah that's Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, Bryars' best known piece after Titanic. Avoid the Tom Waits version.

It's unavoidable

Sinking/Jesus' Blood is still my pick for best release on this label, but I completely and totally love the Harold Budd album. it's probably my favorite thing he's ever done.

guys I finally have up all 10 of these! all original issues too except for the vastly overrated Toop/Eastley one (I SAID IT). IRMA was by far the hardest one to find but it is soooooooooooo good.

Learned yesterday that the track 'Hydrophone' on the toop/eastley is nearly identical to the soundtrack Eastley recorded for Greenaway's early short film Water Wrackets. Water Wrackets being an object of obsession for me, I was pretty excited.

https://www.forcedexposure.com/App_Themes/Default/Images/product_images/product_page/D/DIACD926BOX_PROD.jpg

This would be nice, please.

I got the CD set recently. Between this and the Avant Garde box and a house full of people with limited taste for these things, it will be a while before I work through it. I've listened to Pavilion of Dreams a few times though, and I like it quite a lot. Parts of it remind me of the Bladerunner strck.

I got a promo download of the whole box last month, and reviewed it. Didn't like everything enough to buy a copy, but I liked more of it than I thought I would.

This is a box that I have thought should exist for many years now. Preordered a copy of the CD set through Forced Exposure - they say the release date is tomorrow, so hoping it will ship soon. Just curious, where did you get yours? I'm always a little anxious about ordering these limited sets - wondering whether the order will be fulfilled. I missed out on the Avant Garde series box because I tried to get it through a local store who eventually were unable to obtain it. (Not too sad about that one, as I have many of the LPs and the whole box is streaming anyway).

My CD box came a few days ago (to the US) from Soundohm.

Same.

This Dominique Lawalree was planned to be on Obsure befor it shut down, at least according to its press release.
https://catchwaveltd.bandcamp.com/album/first-meeting