Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Musics 1918-1955

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共24首歌曲

艺人: Various Artists
语种: 英语
厂牌: Dust to Digital
发行时间: 2007年11月20日
专辑类别: 合集、杂锦

专辑介绍

Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Music (1918-1955) is an enthused, superbly-curated collection of rare 78s. The set was compiled by Ian Nagoski, who runs the respected True Vine record shop in Baltimore, Md. Nagoski-- a righteous bliss-drone musician whose own recorded output is worth hearing-- was once an intern for La Monte Young's long-running "Dream House" installation in New York. He's written about music for The Wire, and in the 1990s he was a contributing editor for the exceptional and sorely-missed 'zine Halana. Nagoski's been collecting 78s since he was in high school, intrepidly and often blindly looking for stuff that sounds cool, even if the labels were all in Russian and he had no idea what it was going to sound like. As you can guess from the title, this assemblage of material comes from long ago and far away, all over the globe: Syria, Thailand, Laos, Yugoslavia, Scotland, Cameroon, China, Vietnam, England, Turkey, and a dozen more.

It's always a treat to be reminded of how much amazing music there is in the world that you've never heard. Seventy-five percent of this material has never been issued on CD, so both bushy-eyed world music newcomers and intrepid crate-combers will find an awful lot to dig in these 24 songs. In fact, only one track's ever been released on a CD in the States before. Black Mirror stacks performers of great renown (at the time) next to uncredited musicians performing folk musics that stretch back for centuries. All of them are obscure today, of course.

Most people associate 78s with inferior sound quality. The word "scratchy" seems quite nearly wedded to the numbers "78," in fact. However, nary a scratch, pop, or crackle is to be heard here. Great care has gone into transferring and mastering these tracks. And unlike a lot of digital processing done in the 90s (when this kind of technology first became affordable), it hasn't heavy-handedly lopped off entire frequencies in the process. Sure, there's a little background hiss in the back of Nino de Priego's gorgeous, flamenco-y "Envidia Yo No Tengo A Nadie", but whatever. There's far more hiss on a Sebadoh record.

It's tough to say what unites these recordings, aside from the fact that they weren't made for export and most represent a tradition in danger of extinction. Highly mannered female vocals flutter on top of string orchestras on a few tracks, while there's a delightful Cameroonian rumba and "Songs in Grief" from Japan (which lives up to its name). A monk rhythmically and effortlessly recites a prayer for what might be the millionth time; he's devoted his life to this particular chant. But some other kind of glue holds all these pieces together: the sequencing, the way the songs unfold, is a large part of the pleasure here. A woozy, melted-sounding "horizontal monochord" recording from Vietnam in 1930 segues perfectly into a passionate recording of Handel performed on a piano in Germany in 1931.

When a thing is done with absolute love, it tends to show. I'm not a huge fan of CDs myself; I have a lot of vinyl and more mp3s than I can count. But it's awfully hard to imagine these songs without the lovely 24-page booklet that comes with the set. The liner notes are lush with information about each track, as much as Nagoski could find anyway. He also brings the listener back to the very dawn of recorded sound by reproducing some of the earliest reactions to Edison's great invention, the phonograph. Nagoski writes with awe himself about finding a special, strange record in a dusty corner, and about how amazing it is that these round, brittle discs can transfer such absolute magic from one generation to another.

There are indeed magical possibilities when it comes to assembling and editing a collection such as this; it's no accident that alchemical symbols dot Harry Smith's liner notes to his celebrated urtext, the three-volume Anthology of American Folk Music. Nagoski also quotes from his own translation of the spiritual-minded, avant-garde poet Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, even borrowing the album's title from one of his works. All that places the material in a different context than one usually finds in globetrotting collections of ye olde records, which often suffer the post-colonial hangover of exoticism. Here's to hoping that Nagoski compiles at least a dozen more records like it. Black Mirror just might be the most remarkable collection of its sort since Pat Conte ceased his CD reissue series Secret Museum of Mankind in 1998.

Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Musics 1918-1955

专辑介绍

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