The Underground of Happiness

*Dedicated to LK who loves autumn* Autumn. Fall. I’ve been threatening to do one of these for a while. What are autumn songs? What is autumn music? There are the ones that reference autumn explicitly. Leaves. Wind. Rain. Colours. Sun lower in the sky. Those unforgettable moons. But beyond that there’s the metaphor of time passing. A certain mood. The beginning of the end of something. That can still be beautiful. Lots of music taps into this well for its atmosphere. A certain meditative quality might be in it. A contemplation of something. Maybe nostalgia. Often a minor key. Or at least bittersweet. (Possibly related – many of the tracks here feature woodwind. Flutes. Clarinets. Double recorder. The force of breath? There’s even the sighing of an accordion. And a harmonica.) There might even be spirits involved. Souls. Halloween. Contact with another world. Or like birds taking off for warmer climates some kind of migration. Transformation. Death or decay...

A special show this week pairing two genres which I reckon have more in common than people might think. Kosmische is the electronic offshoot of "Krautrock", very often more meditative in tone and with a certain cosmic outlook as the name suggests. Hans Joachim Roedelius, Dieter Moebius & Michael Rother could be said to be the originators as Harmonia but you find kosmische leaking into folk, jazz/post rock, psych and all sorts these days. Exotica came about in the 1950s when American (predominantly) composers and orchestrators started taking influences from Asian & African music - the geo-politics of the time probably had something to do with this. So dreamy instrumentals by Les Baxter and glorious hippie manifestos by Eden Ahbez , all adorned with flutes and vibraphones and such, are in here, along with a few other suggestions for inclusion like Esquivel (space age bachelor pad), Ennio Morricone (soundtracks from Planet Heaven) & Serge Gainsbourg who was a f...

A Trunk Records Special before the summer break for the show, paying tribute to the wonderful, varied catalogue on that esteemed English label. It's associated with cratediggers and record collectors a lot - possibly novelty records too - but really there's plenty of very accessible material in its archive. It manages to accommodate artists operating on the fringes or the shadows alongside household names (although fewer of the latter in fairness). Certainly, there's no snobbery attached, something you sometimes find in collector circles. It's a label quite obviously run by music fans. There's something in it for everyone, the kind of comment that might be taken as derogatory but is the highest compliment in this case. The archive is also the result of curation and the utmost commitment to promoting lost treasures in many cases. I've discovered quite a few of my favourite albums of all time from Trunk. Full playlist and further background info below. And of ...

More from a few of my favourite current albums on the show this week (it's usually the way). V.O. from Brussels with a beautiful jazzy drift, produced by John McEntire , who of course is one of Tortoise . And from that band's 1998 album TNT, 'Suspension bridge...' is one of the highpoints of the Tortoise canon for me. O Emperor will win a lot of new friends with their second album Vitreous - I like it more every day. I hear shades of late 60s Beach Boys in there, although submerged under a heap of other great ideas. How better to appreciate it than next to a classic from Sunflower (1970). And Cork band Sans Chateaux draw a little on some of those vocal stylings too, quite brilliantly also. The Last Sound's (pic) Rainbow Xplode is another fantastic (Irish) album, electronic pop music with grooves to burn and killer melodies. And anyone in need of healing drones, you need some Fuxa . Nancy Elizabeth , love her of course. Peter Delaney , another com...

We mentioned an album last month, the great Eden's Island by Eden Ahbez, which has been re-issued on Trunk Records . First of all, you need to hear that. But secondly, it made me think again about another Eden Ahbez song, Nature boy , which was made famous by Nat King Cole . Here's some footage of the Nat trio doing a version, very close to the recorded one. The date isn't given but I'd guess it's around 1948 or so, when the song was a hit. That's one of the high water marks in pop music history, hands down. I went through a period, some years ago, of being quite obsessed with the tune, but I haven't listened to it in too long (my CD copy went astray). It's great to hear it again. Plus Nat could play one mean piano, in fairness.

Another lost classic re-issued by the wonderful Jonny Trunk . This album was originally released in 1960 on Del-Fi Records and features one of life’s proto-hippies in the shape of Eden Ahbez (an assumed name, as you may have guessed, born Alexander Aberle in Brooklyn in 1908), a drifter, performer, student of Oriental mysticism, who moved west and reportedly lived outdoors with his family in Los Angeles , under the first L in the Hollywood sign. He was also a regular performer at the city’s coffeehouses in the 1940’s, mixing poetry with flute and bongo arrangements. And, most famously, he was responsible for the song Nature boy , that superb evocation of innocence abroad which was turned into a hit by Nat King Cole in 1947. All those elements are present on this album, along with a strong undercurrent of Central American rhythms which tends to bring Esquivel to mind (this is always welcome). Especially on songs like Full moon , a beautiful, sombre vibes arrangement with a spoken word p...