211. Persian Love

“The only reason why Holger Czukay’s Persian Love isn’t way higher on this list is because many people have already heard it, even if they couldn’t really tell you when or where, or who for that matter. It first came to me via Music + Rhythm (Peter Gabriel’s 1982 Womad compilation). Exotic, sweetly melodic, modern — it instantly hooked me, and thus I had to know more, and there was a lot to know. Because, it turns out Holger Czukay came from an obscure German band called Can … and so on. One of those journeys that started small, but damned if didn’t lead me to a vast mansion of musical (and thus human) possibility: doors within doors within doors, and they all kept inviting me deeper, higher. And somewhere along the way, I got the back story on Persian Love itself – how Mr. Czukay constructed it around a fragment of song he’d recorded from shortwave radio. Like a ghost … out of ancient Persia.” (Philip Random)

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845. pengosekan

Vic Coppersmith-Heaven (now there’s a name) was a sound guy, producer, engineer (big in the early days of punk and before), who somewhere along the line, got his own thing going, tripping out some very earthbound grooves and sounds, including working with a certain monkey chant (from both beyond and before time) indigenous to the Indonesian backwoods. “I found Pengosekan on on 1982’s Music + Rhythm, a fundraiser for Peter Gabriel’s WOMAD Festival and, in retrospect, one of my essential compilation albums of the decade. So-called World Music started there. At least, it did for me.” (Philip Random)