The Underground of Happiness

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...

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...