Ladysmith Black Mambazo founder and lead singer Jospeh Shabala has died. Like just about everyone else in the world, the first time I heard them was on Paul Simon’s Graceland. Unlike most, I actually picked up a few Ladysmith Black Mambazo albums. (In fact, I just counted and I have seven, a lot of which came out on Shanachie records, which put out a lot of world music in the 1980s and 90s.)
If you only know them from Graceland, you might not have realized that they’re primarily a gospel group. Most of the songs end with “Amen! Halleluya! Amen!” The track below is from Umthombo Wamanzi.
Like last week’s selection, “All We Have Is Now” is off Static Waves 5. It’s a beautiful, echoey piece of steady state Shoegaze:
Between this and The Capsules, the Static Wave compilations aren’t so much introducing me to new bands as presenting new work from bands I already liked but hadn’t tracked closely enough.
As a guy who only owns Moving Pictures, I’m not the right person to talk about the passing of Rush drummer Neil Peart. So instead, here’s every Rush reference in Mystery Science Theater 3000:
(Dwight already posted all the Archer references, though I think that video is missing an incarnation or two Krieger’s van.)
Blue Oyster Cult isn’t Shoegaze by most definitions, but the person who slowed it down 800% also filled it with “huge reverse and forward reverbs fill in the huge gaps that would remain without.” Which makes it very sound very shoegaze/ambient/darkwave/space rock, the sort of music you would play upon discovery of a long lost alien city deep beneath the earth.
Back when MP3.com was a going concern, I bought A Beautiful Machine’s Solar Winds, White Noise, Antigravity based on the strength of “Breathe in Space.” In fact, it’s the third most played track on my iTunes. It lasts from 37:06 to 42:50 here.
A Beautiful Machine is evidently a part-time project of Skye Klein, better known for Terminal Sound System and HALO.