One String Sam - I need $100 (1.78 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download).... the man who needs a hundred dollars, possibly to replace the guitar he plays in this cut which he built himself, features - you guessed it - only one string, and which he plays with a glass or 'shine jar. "Everybody needs that doan they" he calls near the track's conclusion. Well, I can relate..

Overhang Party - Prayer of a fool (7.53 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download).... possibly the best ever Sunday morning band, even if based on name alone. This track from the Japanese psych rock combo appeared on the PSF compilation "Tokyo Flashback volume 5" and supposedly makes comment on world affairs in general and in particular, the events of 11 Sept. 2001. EDIT don't let that put you off though -- you can barely understand a word he is saying and anyway, he sings like a man who's heart has just been ripped out and is being held there before him, dripping, pulsing, while the ripper cackles gleefully and dances strange Slavonic dances with a troupe of circus-midets who just kinda turned up.

A track from Tetuzi Akiyama's very very rare and stunning minimalist guitar blues-boogie LP from 2003 "Don't Forget To Boogie".. Tetuzi Akiyama - Blues for Dirty Hunter (1.53 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download) - "a collection of seemingly trad Rock 'n' Roll riffs, but played with a minimalist repetition, attention given to overtones and texture. I've always found Akiyama's solo music extremely resonant, even emotional, and that is certainly in evidence here, evoking the desperation and sadness of the lone guitar player, but finding that place deep within the ecstatic language of rock, more specifically, boogie" (Different Waters)..

.. and finishing with some cosmische-Ur-blues from The Lost Domain's album "Palace" on PseudoArcana. The Lost Domain - Palace pt. 3 (10.3 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download). In my review of this album I wrote: "An interstellar blues band gets the nod and sounds off [...] making some foolhardy attempt to introduce some semblance of normality, some rhythm, some pitch, some... it's no use; the laws of the universe are beginning to come unstuck and anyway all the band can manage is something which sounds like the Doppler effect applied to Van Morrison as he sails past you in another dimension, singing "TB Sheets". After 10 or 15 minutes Van briefly struggles free of the warp trapping him in space-time to bellow something; and you're hearing what has to be the slowest, saddest, good-god-damn pitiful and downright-anguished blues holler in the history of humankind"..

blogpost :: by Stephen Clover   comments (6)

at 17 December, 2006 06:46,  brad rose said...

that tetuzi akiyama track is awesome. and the lost domain... who knew a bunch of cracker-ass aussies could play the mutherfucken blues?  

at 17 December, 2006 13:23,  stephen said...

I should probably point out that if you follow the link to Different Waters re. the Tetuzi Akiyama track, you should be able to download the entire album.  

at 17 December, 2006 16:33,  brad rose said...

akiyama really should be some kind of rock star at this point.  

at 17 December, 2006 22:42,  niwi said...

that one string sam is the shit...  

at 18 December, 2006 00:19,  Anonymous said...

woah. i remeber capt. beefheart talkin about one string sam in an interview, i figured id never get to hear him, (its downloading as i type!!!) cheers stephen!
-s.neville.  

at 28 December, 2006 19:35,  sara saljoughi said...

well it wasn't sunday by the time i got to this, but it definitely helped. good stuff.  

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