The most warm exotic other-worldly music you've ever heard.

I've recently been exploring these Old World 78's, as found here:

http://excavatedshellac.com/
http://canary-records.bandcamp.com/

(My favorite tracks are foreign but not immediately recognizable as from a specific culture; Balkan, Chinese, West African etc. I love the slow yet moving pieces, with both a grounding element as well as very esoteric alien components).

I'm curating a mix. What does this invoke for you?

Much of the Ethiopiques series falls into this too.

I can't say I love that you're describing it as "alien" or "other-worldly," but the music is great.

Uh huh. The tracks I'm referring too (like Ballad of the Spirits by Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou or Tombs Egyptian by Music for Zombies) absolutely meet that description. For me.

Hi, welcome to ILX

Can we strike the word 'exotic' from the dictionary? Or, at very least, from the dictionaries of white Western SFF writers, critics and fans? Before crying Oh No, Censorship, bear with me. And have a caveat: I'm writing about a problem in which I'm complicit, so there's a good chance I'll not do it justice, or get at least some things wrong.

'Exotic' is a horrible, harmful word, and treating it as a neutral descriptor erases the experiences of those that it harms. It posits the value of a place as how excitingly different it is to outsiders, rather than how it's experienced by local people. It allows outsiders to coo over things we/they find sexy or strange, without giving a fuck about their context. It fetishises. It also carries a ton of racist baggage.

http://amagiclantern.livejournal.com/138876.html

you might want to hang out on this thread:

Rolling Outernational Non-West Non-English (Some Exceptions) 2014 Thread Formerly Known as World

I've been thinking about this a lot recently, since I collect exotica records. But recently I found a copy of Calypso by Robert Mitchum, yeah the actor guy. He puts on this accent and it's sort of silly, but I can't figure out why he made this record and something bothers me about it. Granted I haven't googled it or really researched anything about him. I heard he was heavy into pot? Anyway, a lot of the records I'm into are imagined sounds of the orient, far east, or what ever it is Les Baxter and company were trying to conjure up. I've always approached this sound from an ambient/mood/almost psychedelic perspective. But am I ignoring something underhanded at work within these records? Sorry to hijack your thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOm2u8Gc0pw

But doesn't 'exotic' imply a certain joy and intoxication with an unfamiliar cultural milieu? Is that not a positive thing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_%28book%29

;-)

That's my fav track from that Chicha comp.

But doesn't 'exotic' imply a certain joy and intoxication with an unfamiliar cultural milieu? Is that not a positive thing?

― I wish to incorporate disco into my small business (chap), Tuesday, February 25, 2014 6:17 PM (2 hours ago)

good question, imo. i agree with what sleeve posted above, that fascination with what one perceives as "exotic" in other cultures can be condescending, marginalizing and even actively oppressive, but i think it's important to keep the "can be" in focus.

to take delight in discovery, in experiencing things as not-local, isn't necessarily a bad thing. most of the world will forever remain not-local to most of us no matter what we do. that shouldn't oblige us to suppress the pleasure we take in discovery (inseparable, after all, from the experience of difference).

it's okay to be unfamiliar, to lack context. it's okay to take a tourist's pleasure in dislocation, so long as that pleasure remains tempered with respect and humility, a genuine desire to shed ignorance.

it's okay to be unfamiliar, to lack context. it's okay to take a tourist's pleasure in dislocation, so long as that pleasure remains tempered with respect and humility, a genuine desire to shed ignorance.

who are you to say what's okay? two words brony: cool. it.

everybody gets to say what's okay, as they see it. and everybody else gets to disagree, if they care to.

forget it contenderizer! i'm so livid with your patriarchal bullshit.

OK, if anybody was actually harmed by my thread post I invite you to say so explicitly here. If this is the case, I look forward to reassessing my use of language.

Grad-school social critics aside, I think you understood the feeling I attempted to communicate, and I invite your musical suggestions. After all the thing we have in common is, we "love music". (I believe you will appreciate and understand the words "other-worldy / alien" when I eventually post my mix here... esoteric, unusual, etc). Thanks for your suggestions.

leon septaleast

You got me, "a commentary on self-absorbed youth culture in the social media age"!!

that dn is about you

Which part specifically is about me? I'm a middle aged woman from Oakland. Clearly this is not the place to post an earnest question without anticipation of a smarmy self righteous disingenuous response.

I do love music. And I do know music. I do not know what you're (individually or collectively) getting out of insulting me or diverting the thread. I come from the heart. This is a club in which I do not wish to be a member. I was barking up the wrong tree. Lesson learned.

Thanks / Out

gg

THANKS ASSHOLES WERE NEVER GOING TO HEAR THE MIX

leon septamost otm

And here I was hoping that this was going to be about *actual* alien, other-worldly music, like SETI transmissions and literal outer space-rock.

forget it contenderizer! i'm so livid with your patriarchal bullshit.

― james franco, Tuesday, February 25, 2014 10:06 PM (Yesterday)

ok, lol, i'm slow

and yeah, the music streaming on that bandcamp page is wonderful. i've got the string of pearls comp on mississippi, but not its sequel, brass pins & match heads. admit that my knowledge of such stuff is extremely limited, mostly to compilations on labels like mississippi, honest john's, dust to digital and revenant (to the extent that early american blues recordings belong to the same general family, and i suppose they do).

Ban​-​nhac Than​-​kinb - "Tieng ai Tram Bong"

so great! been forever since i played the LP, had completely forgotten about it. just the sound of the wood blocks alone.

http://dusttodigital.bandcamp.com/

for the sake of not falling even further behind on listening to shit I'm srsly glad they're only streaming selected tracks from those albums

god, some people just want to watch the other-world burn huh?

I've mentioned it recently but I find the Missa Criolla incredibly moving https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f8OBHVql7Y

A middle-aged woman called Leon? How strange.

A middle-aged man named Sick? How strange.

please, it's Scik

we shdn't be othering Scik's Slavic heriatge

Middle-aged?! Boohoo. I've only ever come across footballers called Leon, I think.

Fucking Devonians, I ain't being culturally sensitive to them.

"battle of the tamar"

1 result (0.34 seconds)

Big argument in the office this morning about how you pronounce scone and whether you put cream or jam on first.

Rhymes with "gone" and I was kicked out a coffeeshop in Trevaunance Cove for doing my clotted cream the Devonian way.

I mean, you want exotic and alien, fucking Devon, man.

"are scones exotic?" - original title of Tubeway Army hit

See I think it rhymes with 'own'; our office is split about 60/40 to 'gone'. Though I was born closest to the office, my Yorkshire parents might have fucked me up.

the real answer is "it doesn't matter" obv, i've got an unexamined feeling that the flat "o" is closer to the origin of the word tho

p'raps we shd not prematurely rule out "scoon" tho

hooj scoons

Mancunian wife reckons 'gone' pronunciation is closest to shortened northern vowels, but it sounds dead posh to me, like.

"Drop scone" (rhyming with gone) was taught to me by my Scots Granny, so that's even more North. Then again, said Granny had lived in the Transkei for most of her life, which flattened her vowels as flat as, erm, drop scones.

Now I want to dig out my "You can learn to speak... !Xhosa" records from the 1930s which is, erm, possibly within the original remit of the thread? But with actual Colonialism as opposed to all the nasty post-Colonial Exoticism.

Scown sounds posher to me than sgone.

Say the 'own' pronunciation in a Brummie accent and tell me it sounds posh!

It comes out as 'scaaaaoooown'

You can't say sgone as a Brummie.

not really our finest hour here

i hear the "own" pronunciation as being a bit posh and ornate when said in an southern RP accent: "Ergh, we went to the Queen's hice for ay sc-own"

xp more dead white male bashing from the PC thugs of ILX

The moist warm erotic other-worldly jorts you've ever worn.

oh wow another music thread turned to "race, subtext, and you (horrible white man)", I for one am shocked

since I'm not an internet troll I will just post this excellent song that I am too stupid to understand the context of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeaVRC453M0&noredirect=1

What are you talking about. This thread is about important Britishes scone business.

It would be helpful if ppl wrote the song titles when linking YouTubes, I have no idea what song that is. All I know is it's excellent and frogbs is too stupid to understand its context which yknow

"Hanuman Ashtak" by Hariharan

thx man

leon is a smart lady.
that's the 3rd time I've used that sentence today, weird.

you might want to hang out on this thread:

Rolling Outernational Non-West Non-English (Some Exceptions) 2014 Thread Formerly Known as World

― sleeve, Wednesday, February 26, 2014 1:34 AM (15 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We avoid the use of the word exotic there btw

But Greg Kot in the Chicago Tribune likes it(see his Sting with Paul Simon review):

their mutual affinity for exotic rhythms unified the sprawling 2 1/2-hour show. Whenever Sting indulged in lethargic ballads (“The Hounds of Winter”) and Simon became wrapped up in wordy introspection (“Hearts and Bones”), those Third World grooves righted the course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNj3XSCqEeI

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

"Warm and other-worldly" calls to my mind the Sun Araw / Geddes / Congos album, Wobble's Molam Dub or parts of the two Djivan Gasparyan / Micheal Brooks collaborations. Studio fuckery really helps in some cases.

Which part specifically is about me? I'm a middle aged woman from Oakland. Clearly this is not the place to post an earnest question without anticipation of a smarmy self righteous disingenuous response.

I do love music. And I do know music. I do not know what you're (individually or collectively) getting out of insulting me or diverting the thread. I come from the heart. This is a club in which I do not wish to be a member. I was barking up the wrong tree. Lesson learned.

Thanks / Out

― Leon Septamost, Wednesday, February 26, 2014 3:00 AM (17 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it was a joke

Forget her. This board is a place for savvy, thick skinned cool people who also know how to get righteously outraged once in a while.

about ready to start a whose sock is james franco pool

"Warm and other-worldly" calls to my mind the Sun Araw / Geddes / Congos album

this seemed like a really intriguing little project, but somehow i never got around to really focusing on it.

Sorry I got this off to such a negative start. I'm still enjoying the bandcamp stuff and would love to check out the mix, Leon!

Yeah I'm sorry, I'd like to hear your mix too!

I have no knowledge of old music from other counties aside from the few sublime frequencies comps I have. But I do like a lot of music from our own shore that is other worldly. I've been getting all of Elisabeth Waldo's records, Realm of the Incas and Rites of the Pagan. She uses pre-columbian instruments and it's not as haunting as a few of the songs I sampled on the links posted, but worth listening. Also exoticaproject.com and the lonely beat have been a wealth of post war sounds into the ether.

i probably post abt gabor szabo too much and he's def more western than most of the stuff itt but if you're looking for ~other-worldly~ this song is titled SPACE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttwcTL5uolg

also ty dog latin for posting missa criolla, been on a loop for the last 2 days

Speaking of exotic scones:

I find these American-style pancakes almost unbearably exotic.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/feb/28/how-to-make-american-pancake-day-recipe