Sublime Frequencies.

Sublime Frequencies

Sublime Frequencies.

Sublime Frequencies. A film by Robert Millis. Folk cinema from the eternal never-ending collage that is India. A journey through the ancient Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu featuring Hindu trance ceremonies, street music, festivals, nagaswaram improvisations, impossibly loud cities, ancient temples, processions, devotions, decay, fireworks, abstractions and more. India is impossible to know: it is impossibly old and impossibly new, impossibly rich and impossibly poor, quiet and chaotic. Offered here is one perspective, raw, captured live and in the moment, with an emphasis on India's complex and mesmerizing sounds. DVD features a bonus photo gallery with over 100 images. 50 minutes/Color; digipack; all-region DVD; NTSC format. Limited one-time edition of 1,000 copies.

First time vinyl issue of the out-of-print CD. Double LP Stoughton gatefold with the bonus track "Duniya Mein," (covered most famously by the Sun City Girls as "Apna Desh" on the Crossdressers release). Bollywood Steel Guitar is the most comprehensive collection to date of steel guitar pop instrumental music from India. All 21 tracks featured here were film hits from 1962-1986 and all the masters of the steel guitar sound from the period are represented: Van Shipley, Kazi Aniruddha, S. Hazarasingh, Sunil Ganguly, and Charanjit Singh. An entirely different approach that rocks, swings, and grooves through some of India's most beloved film tunes, the electric steel guitar as lead instrument transforms the already infectious melodies into a multitude of higher sound dimensions. This album was compiled and carefully selected from rare LPs over several years by Stuart Ellis. Here are some excerpts from his liner notes: "The term 'Bollywood' originally referred to Bombay's (now known as Mumbai) Hindi language film industry. Although there are a number of other studios that produce films in other languages, more recently the definition has been expanded in the West to describe pretty much all films produced on the sub-continent. But where in most countries a film's soundtrack would merely be used as a promotional tool for the film, in India, film music has become an industry unto itself with playback singers and dance numbers. The music is just as important as the film and lives on long after the film has left the theaters. These songs are, for the most part, the pop music of India. As with most popular music, other artists sometimes recorded cover versions of these songs. Of these musicians, a small number specialized in instrumental arrangements and created what could be called the elevator music of India. While there were a few who used the harmonium or 'mouth organ,' the most popular instrument used in these 'instrumental favorites' was the steel guitar."

Sublime Frequencies. Sublime Frequencies releases their second 78 rpm compilation, and true to form, these are sounds rarely heard by contemporary western ears. This album has been compiled by Robert Millis, a long-time Sublime Frequencies contributor and a founding member of Climax Golden Twins. He is the author of Victrola Favorites: Artifacts from Bygone Days (DTD 011CD), a book of historic early recording documentation, ephemera and music drawn from Millis' 78rpm collection. In 2011, he produced and helped design I Listen to the Wind That Obliterates My Traces (DTD 020CD), a similar book drawn from the collection of artist Steve Roden. In addition to composition, sound art practice, and design, he has filmed and produced experimental documentaries on Asian music: Phi Ta Khon: Ghosts of Isan and This World Is Unreal Like a Snake in a Rope (both for Sublime Frequencies DVD release) and is an obsessive collector of 78rpm music records and ephemera. The Crying Princess compiles rare Burmese 78 rpm records gathered by Robert Millis and Sublime Frequencies co-founder Alan Bishop during various trips to Burma (Myanmar) and continues the tradition of amazing music from this Southeast Asian nation released by SF (Princess Nicotine, Guitars from the Golden Triangle, Music of Nat Pwe). Spanning the years 1909 to 1960, these unique and ridiculously rare records feature early sides by Po Sein (one of the giants of early Burmese music and theater), vocal and harp music from 1929, "modern songs with electric guitar," and unique Burmese pop songs with piano, all from 78 rpm sources. This limited edition LP comes enclosed in a beautiful tip-on jacket with a two-sided insert featuring liner notes by compiler Robert Millis.

Sublime Frequencies. Gnawa Music From Essaouira.

Sublime Frequencies.Double LP reissue of the long out-of-print classic CD first released in 2004 -- the first modern electrified Molam recordings from the 1970s ever presented outside Thailand. Molam is a multi-faceted folk music native to Laos and the predominantly rural Northeastern region of Thailand known as Isan, home to myriad ethnic groups and provinces, and once a part of present-day Laos. Mo meaning "master" and lam meaning "song," "molam" literally translates into "master singer," but it remains more of an umbrella term covering over a dozen types of lam styles in which male and female singers can be backed by a free-reed bamboo mouth organ called a khaen, indigenous lute-like instruments (the phin or the soong), a bowed fiddle called a sor and a percussion ensemble featuring finger cymbals and hand drums. Lam phun and lam sing are the two molam styles featured most prominently in this collection. Also in the musical family is look thoong, a slower, more tragic style, usually lamenting lost love and perpetual poverty. Examples are heard on tracks 10, 15 and 20. Costumed Isan comedy troupes called Talok incorporate hyper-eccentric molam and look thoong renditions with low, vaudevillian comedy and high social satire on stages and TVs throughout the country. Maniacal examples are heard on tracks 2, 8 and 11. The classic recordings featured here are selections from rare vinyl LPs, 45s and cassettes recorded in Isan and beyond between the 1970s and 1980s. This was a pivotal time when music of the region began to be electrified and integrated with Western instruments, when electric bass, effected guitars, electric organs, kit drums and horns played alongside the khaen and the phin. Molam had never sounded this way before -- and due to the typically ephemeral nature of the music industry and the introduction of the modern keyboard work-station, molam will never sound like this again. This vinyl 2LP edition comes housed in a full-color heavy duty gatefold jacket with gorgeous original artwork and liner notes. Compiled by Alan Bishop and Mark Gergis, October, 2004.