Wednesday, December 22, 2004  5:42 am 

Murciana Japones

We Love travelling…

Murcia, Spain: Schwarz are a band from Murcia, in the south-east coast of Spain, and they are quite weird, which is of course something I love.

I have caught up with their stuff quite late (living in the UK etc), so the only thing I can say is that their last album, ‘Arty Party’, out recently in Astro Discos, deserves the attention of all the 20JazzFunkGreatsters out there, cos it’s…out there (HA HA you can kill me if you wanna): psychedelic rock, drones, german influences and wild freak outs, plus some rather lush sixties pop.

The song I’m posting today is called ‘Droning Forever’and it’s got a start where you go down one of those mindbending acid trips with a jam that brings to mind Primal Scream circa XTRMNTR (drums of fury, epic synths, a storm of feedback a bit a la Spacemen 3 etc) but more vintage before sliding into a wonderful space quest for Barbarella taking place a couple of months before Kraut Rock became New Age.

Murcia and Martian sound similar when you pronounce it in English, doesn’t it? (HA HA stole the ‘joke’ from here, don’t kill me this time)

Schwarz-Droning Forever

Osaka, Japan- Afrirampo, mentioned in the last Wire (check out the James Murphy photos and interview, hats off to the best music mag these days) and by the wise Music for Robots people some time ago.

Afrirampo- Afurirampo

The song I’m posting today is a party I wanna be invited to, the Slits, Bikini Kill and B52s are obvious cuts played by the DJ, but there’s also garage punk (forget the 12345s…), OOIOO/J.O.Y. have taken over that corner and they prance around like little beautiful polychromatic frogs.

Meanwhile, the Afrirampo girls, Oni and Pikacyu, neck shots of something heavy like there was no tomorrow, setting the tone of their voices before starting a mindbending gig (apparently they are amazing live, stream one of their gigs at WMFU).

This is an irresistible invitation to chaos and fun, that old skool boredoms Raincoats spirit of stop tatari start derangement lalala (or better, dododo) a bit like drunk sex, different groups of people jump at different moments, brought together by the crashing drums and the screeching guitars and the best hysteric shouting this side of Karen O and Ida No.

I can’t say much more cos I don’t read Japanese (Japanese readers, help us please!!), it doesn’t matter anyway, it’s like when I played Les Georges Leningrad for the first time, eye twitching, spasms, contortions, YEAH! Not music for grannies, apparently (waiting for a granny to post a comment contesting my claim, now that would be ace!)

This song is taken from a self titled EP in Gyuune Cassette which is sehr gut. I don’t know if it was recorded live or what. Read an interview with the girls themselves here.

And coming soon, 20JazFunkGreats list of ‘best albums, songs, gigs of the year and so on to do stuff to’ guess you can wait eh troopers?

labels >> xxjfg