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Best Guns ‘n’ Roses cover ever?

In fact, this is one of the best covers of any song, ever. Marissa Nadler is always wonderful, but she doesn’t normally do a lot of recorded covers. This, with Stephen Brodsky, is sensational. Not just a great choice (perhaps the best written Guns ‘n’ Roses song?), it’s also brilliantly but subtly adopted into Nadler’s own style, as if she’d written it herself. You should definitely buy this song on Bandcamp, and you should definitely check out the rest of her beautiful, sad, ethereal Americana as well…

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Streaming Diamanda Galas

Happy to see that Diamanda Galas’ work is available on streaming services at long last! Although I’ve got all of her albums on CD or digital download, I’ve become reliant on Spotify for ease of access. Also, the more people who discover her astounding body of the work, the better!

I was lucky enough to see her live in Paris a few years ago, after a day spent exploring the Catacombs and failing to have my poor French pronunciation understood. She was as wonderful live as I’d hoped for, and her audience were as entertainingly dressed as I’d hoped, too!

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Ahmed Ag Kaedy – Akaline Kidal

Really loving this album of Tuareg style guitar folk by Ahmed Ag Kaedy, released last month on the brilliant Sahel Sounds label (one of our favourite labels at Kaboodle Sound). Hard to believe the album was recorded in single takes on to 8 track cassette!

Definitely needed if you like Tinariwen and Tuareg or Mali music in general, as are all of the Sahel Sounds releases… Plus, we’re loving Ag Kaedy’s awesome scorpion guitar and his cool, natural look here:

Ahmed Ag Kaedy
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Cinematic Sound Compendium at Puremagnetik

Puremagnetik released a brilliant and large collection of cinematic sound effects yesterday. They’ve currently got it on offer this week for $19 – I highly recommend getting in there and buying it immediately! Very useful for all types of production. We’ve only skimmed the surface since yesterday, but it’s already clear that it’s treasure trove of great sounds.

Phil Michalski - field recordist

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Z’ev – Rhythmajik

So excited to find this amazing rare book by Z’ev! He was an amazing performer and a very experimental, avant-garde musician. He was mostly focused on percussive instruments, but he performed them almost as if dancing, and made otherworldly soundscapes rather than merely providing a ‘beat’. He was often credited with inventing or being a large part of ‘industrial ambient’, but that’s quite a superficial view of his work, in which he collaborated with a very wide cross section of both underground and popular musicians and artists.

I’ve been interested in his often hard to find albums for years, but I didn’t even know he’d written a book until I found this in a local second hand book shop today.

And what a book! It’s an incredible mix of mysticism, mathematics and music, essentially using sound, rhythm and music to create healing and magical effects (“majikle” as Z’ev calls it). It manages to throw together elements of the Qabala, astrology, the tarot, numerology, elements of mathematics and various mystical and magical approaches in a very original, extremely well thought-out system.

Z’ev also manages to make the system spiritually very open – meaning that it doesn’t focus on any one religion or magical practice, but gives a nod and appreciation of many spiritual systems without making it confusing or jumbled. But despite that, it’s not an easy read!

Anyway, I’m sure this book will be another great companion on our journeys through spiritual sound, magical music and mystical mathematics… And no, you can’t borrow it!