DIVERSE AND ECLECTIC FUN FOR YOUR EARS - 60s to 90s rock, prog, psychedelia, folk music, folk rock, world music, experimental, doom metal, strange and creative music videos, deep cuts and more!
Saturday, February 8, 2025
Je Suis Animal - Beginning of Time
With the end of the year quickly approaching I was trying to assemble a rough cut of my favorite albums for 2008 and when I looked through the stack of cd’s I realized that there were more than a couple that I somehow neglected to write about. It’s probably laziness or just a simple lack of time. I work slowly, and am in constant awe of how other people seem to be so prolific with their writing. So in an effort to bring you up to speed - at least my speed - I’ve got a couple posts about albums I’ve been enjoying this year but neglected here on the Finest Kiss.
The first such album is Self-Taught Magic from a Book by Je Suis Animal which came out way back in February over in Norway on the Perfect Pop Label. It then got released in Australia on Lost and Lonesome in June and will be released in the UK in December on Angular. No word on a US release date, but all of those labels do mail order. Je Suis Animal are mostly from Norway but sound like they’ve been hanging out with Broadcast circa The Noise Made By People or maybe they are Electrelane reincarnated. They have a slight 60’s spy sound provided by the use of old synthesizers, mixed with a 60’s girl group feel not dissimilar with what Lichtenstein are doing. What makes this album so engaging is the guitar sound that rattles, drones and engulfs you like Stereolab at their most Krautrock. I’m not kidding about the Broadcast comparison. It is uncanny - on songs like Fortune Map, Mystery of Marie Roget and Indifferent Boy the band ratchet up their haunting, evocative charm. I’ve been listening to this record most of the year and my favorite songs have evolved, starting with the more straightforward krautrock like Indifferent Boy and Secret Place, but like all really good records, every song ends up being a favorite and you can’t pick just one. From: https://finestkiss.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/catching-up-je-suis-animal/
-
Hailing from Amsterdam but coming from various backgrounds, Altın Gün has captured the world’s imagination with an indelible fusion, for ove...
-
Laboratorium Pieśni (Song Laboratory) (world/ethno/spiritual/mystic folk music) is a female group of singers from Poland, created in 2013. ...
-
If you’re of a certain age, the Sunday night of September 9th, 1956 is seared indelibly upon your memory, because it’s the night Elvis Presl...
-
A Rock Oaklanders Inner Ear Brigade were founded in 2006 as a quartet by a guitarist / frontman Bill Wolter and his fellow musicians. Althou...
-
A relatively unknown but intermittently astounding indie pop album that answers the question: What happens when you give a power pop refugee...