What we listened to last night (March 2024 edition)

Another incredible night of strange sounds at Dreamhouse Records...

It was another evening of weird and wonderful musical discoveries at Dreamhouse Records last night as The Really Strange Record Club met for the fourth time. We enjoyed some truly incredible music gathered from around the globe and from the deepest recesses of Leyton’s most adventurous record collections.

Tommaso opened proceedings with Safe Inside The Day, the title track from Baby Dee’s 2008 album on Drag City that boasts an all-star cast of collaborators including Bonnie Prince Billy and Andrew WK. Tommaso said that this gem of an album has been someone overlooked in the years since its release, and on the basis of the soaring, lovely ballad we heard, it’s definitely one to revisit.

Mark played us two cuts from Mort Garson’s Electronic Hairpieces, a bubbly slice of Moog whimsy from 1969 whose sleevenotes make the bold claim that “hair and electronic music are both innovations that make a break with tradition”. Mark stuck with the hair theme for his next choice, Future Dog Hairstyles from Wevie Stonder’s cut-and-paste opus Eat Your Own Ears (2000) - an illuminating discussion of how our canine friends might be styled in the future.

Erin took us into classic braindance territory with Smúð by Planet Mu alum Chevron, taken from a super-rare split 7” with Posthuman on Balkan Vinyl that was mailed, unannounced and free of charge, as a thank you to supporters of the label via Bandcamp. This was followed by Optimo legend JD Twitch’s re-edit of War by Zounds, from his 2008 10” of re-edits from the Crass Records back catalogue.

Gus stepped up with a true rarity - a 1992 bootleg 12” he bought in Jakarta of Indonesian DJ Tommy Fan’s re-edit of Maalaam Mingu by Indonesian girl group 3 Dara - a terrific slice of Weatherall-tinged baggy club pop, and a reminder that we’ve barely scratched the surface in documenting the tunes that have lit up nightlife culture in other parts of the globe.

Ben brought us a tune I’ve frequently read about but never actually heard - Bring Me Edelweiss by Edelweiss, notorious for being the only chart hit that claimed to have followed the instructions laid down in The KLF’s book The Manual. He expressed some scepticism about Genesis P’Orridge’s claim to have invented acid house, but played the undeniably banging Meet Every Situation Head On by M.E.S.H., a collaborative project with The Grid’s Dave Ball and Richard Norris before finishing with Nine Inch Nails’ cover of Queen’s Get Down Make Love, b-side to the Sin single.

I then made the questionable decision to drop L.E.D. - a surprisingly straight-faced parody/rip-off of LFO’s seminal Warp banger LFO by the duo of Timmy Mallet and Andrew Lloyd Webber in their Bombalurina guise, taken from the b-side of their flop single Seven Little Girls. Try sneaking this into your next classic bleep set and see who notices.

Chris bailed me out with some ‘proper’ rave courtesy of 4Hero’s Mr Kirk’s Nightmare, which makes ominous use of a sample from Think’s When You Understand - as played by Josh at our very first event. A fascinating time capsule from the early days of hardcore where many of the component parts (breaks, rave stabs) were present and correct but the formula hadn’t been locked in. In some further sample archaeology, he played Sweat Loaf by the Butthole Surfers - as memorably sampled by Orbital on Satan.

Geoff really kicked things up a level with a Soviet curio that might be the most extraordinary format we’ve ever seen at the RSRC - a playable cardboard-backed postcard containing some traditional Georgian music, which felt truly miraculous when played on the Dreamhouse soundsystem. He followed with a pair of unaccompanied acapella recordings: Albania: Vocal And Instrumental Polyphony (released on Le Chant Du Monde in 1988 and my pick for the most arresting record of the night - a truly stunning recording) and The Trallaleri Of Genoa, a 1954 Alan Lomax recording of Italian dockworkers, before rounding his selection out with an uncategorisable selection from Angherr Shisspa, a 2005 album by Koenjihyakkei that scaled some truly heady prog/metal heights.

Paul continued the global explorations with a Lyrichord album (date unknown) of Moroccan Sufi Music attributed to the Islamic Mystical Brotherhood - a relentless, hypnotic recording. In solidarity we then heard excerpts from three stunning recordings of Palestinian music across the decades - Folkways’ 1951 collection Folk Music Of Palestine, Le Chant Du Monde’s 1971 album Chants De La Résistance Palestinienne and the Virgin album Palestine: Music of the Intifada from 1989. Paul finished this incredible selection with Gharbala 2020 by 1127 - an enveloping slab of Egyptian noise taken from the 2020 compilation This Is Cairo Not The Screamers.

Finally, Mark returned to the turntable to close us out with V/VM’s abrasion of Lionel Richie’s All Night Long - the most delightfully unpleasant record of the night, and the perfect finishing move.

Thanks to everyone who came down - both those who mined their record collections for these wonderful records, and those who came to listen / hang out - I hope something interesting caught your ear! And thanks as always to Jon at Dreamhouse for hosting this madness and keeping the drinks flowing.

Stay tuned - the next date will be announced very soon…

Have a great weekend.

Matt