Abstract Index Playlist - June 17/09

So often I blog about discs that are yet to be released or difficult/expensive to find (yeah, I know, I'm a total hipster snob). Here's something we can all enjoy.

Buguinha Dub released his album Vitrola Adubada on the Les Cristaux Liquident netlabel earlier this year. In one sense, this is just another soundman cobbling together grooves that he's worked on over a number of years while toiling with different bands. However, when the main band is Brazil's mighty Nacao Zumbi, things get interesting in a hurry. This band is unfortunately still best known for its deceased front man, Chico Science, who left this plane some 12 years ago, leaving an Jimi Hendrix-like hole in the modern era of Brazilian experimental pop in his wake.

Of course, Brazil, especially its northern reaches, has been under reggae's spell for decades, and there you'll find just as many half assed Marley knockoffs as anywhere in the world. Fortunately, so many imitations have given way to some truly distinctive sounds which fuse traditional north-easterly Brazilian grooves with nationally-approved samba, African elements from just across the pond, a variety of Caribbean elements and the latest music technology. While Nacao Zumbi were part of the Mangue Bit/Beat movement - not unlike tropicalia or Native Tongue era hip hop in its breadth of influence - Buguinha Dub is based in Sao Paolo, not Recife, the home of some of the more interesting musical mashups in the world at present.

This album covers everything from Afrobeat to illbience to disjointed samba melodies and is of course slathered in a thick layer of dub. But this doesn't sound Jamaican, it's more reminiscent of European style dub -fast and fierce, with sharp, not billowy, delay settings. Last week's track featured a very traditional sounding trombone line and abstract crowd noise giving way to a "Shine Eye Gal" groove which somehow didn't smooth out the essential bumpiness of its folkloric foundation. This is utterly urban music but has ample space for pastoral influences. And it's free - FREE I tell you! Just go here.

undefined behavior - zebra wood (no label)
a short time to sing - john butcher (emanem)
nina tusuna - lulacruza & mj greenmountain (uji)
sherbrooke - biosphere (touch)
every april - naw (noise factory)
let me see you tonight - our theory (nublu)
donsu - oumou sangare (nonesuch)
liyanzi ekoti ngai na motema - syran mbenza & rumba congo (riverboat)
hypnotic brass - hypnotic brass ensemble (honest jons)
cowboy - the nite liters (rca/dusty groove)
nootropics - jesse zubot (drip audio)
air dub I - kanada 70 (no label)
toxine (live) - brain damage (jarring effects)
troca abudaba - buguinha dub (les cristaux liquides)
kingston dancehall dub - dubblestandart feat. ari up (collision cause of chapter 3)
almasti - omfo (essay)
the cyclops - 10 ft ganja plant (roir)
one and only one - adrian miller & earth roots and water (light in the attic)
bond street rock - tommy mccook and the supersonics (pressure sounds)