Tuesday 6 September 2022

Five tracks vol. 6: oddballs


Had a couple of stranger bits I felt like sharing this week and I figured I'd dump all the outsider weirdos into one place. I love strange records by unusual people who have completely their own sound and vision, and they usually come with really interesting stories attached. Anyways, here are a few of those things. 


Ronald Langestraat - I'm Ready For Dancing



I really quite adore the first Ronald Langestraat album that South Of North unearthed and reissued a few years back. Supposedly the Amsterdammer was getting weary of the "high brow" jazz scene in the early '80s and did the LPs as a bit of a personal space jazz project, playing every instrument and self-recording in his living room. This track is one of my faves from the record - it's a little jazz, a little leftfield disco, a little weirdo lounge, wrapped up in an endearingly primitive package.


Vito Ricci - I'm At That Party Right Now



Dunno how I ended up uncovering this one but it vividly transports me back to the first time I went to London in 2015 or something and it was on heavy rotation at the RA office. It's from a Music From Memory retrospective of New York weirdo Vito Ricci's mid-80s releases, and it's somehow completely mesmerising to me. It's astonishingly lo-fi outsider boogie that's addictively groovy in a way that doesn't quite make sense to me.


Tonetta - A Really Big Cock



Of all places I heard this played on FBi Radio while I was driving and it floored me, quickly sending me into a years-long fascination with the now-73-year-old Canadian sex-freak enigma that is Tonetta. There's just too much to begin to explain, but if you haven't gone down the Tonetta rabbit hole, I can't recommend it enough. In any case, this is a song about his big dick that happens to be deviantly funky and remains one of my favourites.


Human Egg - Feeling On My Mind



This is not a weird song but, as a whole package, the self-titled 1978 Human Egg album is remarkably diverse and downright WEIRD. I picked up the reissue on Favorite in 2010 after hearing this chunky low-tempo strutter and was quite bamboozled. There's other funky stuff like this, including the uptempo jazz workout 'Love Like This' that flicks between space disco and Head Hunters-grade fusion, and then there's some totally off the wall shit like 'Onomatopoeia'. But all in all, a very special record.


Osamu Shoji - Airport in South Islands (Waffles Edit)



Ok this is totally splitting from the formula because it's a reworking that hardly resembles the original, but my blog my rules. Osamu Shoji's 1979 cosmic synth album Night Flight is a real oddball beauty. This edit on the anonymous Waffles label, which I wouldn't make any connection to the original if it wasn't listed on the Discogs page, is squelchy, low-tempo electronic funk that's sure to impress anyone you play it for.

Back with regular programming next week 🫡

1 comment:

Carlo said...

Glad youre back!
The waffle label was founded by those two crazy 2manydjs aka deewee(now).

keep it up!

PS: I'm italian vinyl dj and I bought a lot of records because of you!