Three albums to enjoy

punk, salsa and a third secret thing

I’m moving out of my apartment this Saturday so the actual post I’ve been writing for the newsletter will have to wait. It is about What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design, a book by Peter-Paul Verbeek. In the meanwhile, this edition of three things is focused on music I like. I hope some of these are new to you and you can enjoy some of them.

1 — Primera Dosis, Narcosis

There was a big punk movement in the 80’s and 90’s in Medellín, Colombia. It survives to these days with bands that have been active for over 30 years like I.R.A. or Fertil Miseria. There’s a very iconic Colombian realistic movie called Rodrigo D No Futuro, worth watching if you’re into extremely trashy punk by extremely untalented musicians (I am).

This album I like for many reasons: First, it is the first and only album from Narcosis, a peruvian band that started in 1984, they made this album by themselves with terrible recording, in a cassette, and redistributed them. A proof that you can really do things. Second, for this album to get to me it had to go through many hands, in a cassette form from the band to people that bought it, to many other people that redistributed and burned it into a cd, then to more people that continued burning it and eventually, after traveling from Peru to Colombia, got to my hands through a friend in my extracurricular Math class. Very ironic. I love knowing that so many people had to be involved for this album to survive. Third, the album is terrible. Really bad, the recording sucks, the voices are awful, some of the lyrics make no sense. In how terrible it is, you can feel the hands, voices, souls of real people talking about whatever they thought was important. I love that.

There’s a remanent from the cassette form at the end of song five, where they have an interlude and tell people to flip the cassette, extremely charming. My favorite song is Danza de los Cristales, to me it feels like a postpunk song in a punk era, and you can feel some of their influences like Talking Heads, Brian Eno, Echo & The Bunnymen.

2 — Musical Conquest, Sonora Ponceña

I’m a BIG fan of Sonora Ponceña, a Puerto Rican salsa band formed in 1954, and out of all of the albums of them that I love, this one is particularly good. One of my very good friend’s dad is selling a few vinyls from his massive collection and I found this album while checking their extensive excel file. Every song is so rich and has so much depth, it is a short album but every song is just packed with talent. Also, they seem to have a weird phase of extremely buffed guys riding horses, holding swords or in a very small skirt slaying dragons, I love all of them so much I even have an are.na board of some of my favorites. My favorite song is El Pio Pio, followed closely by Bomba Carambomba.

3 — Lovage: Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By, Lovage

I don’t know how I got this album. But I do know I discovered it a long time ago, it is also the only album of this venture called Lovage, formed by Nathaniel Merriwheather a.k.a. Dan The Automator, and multiple other artists. The vibe of the album is pretty much what the title says, the story from beginning to end is so beautifully done. My favorite song is To Catch A Thief. Not much else to say, listen to it.

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Next Monday I’ll be out of my apartment and in route to NY, that means plenty of flight time to finish writing my draft about What Things Do.

As always, feel free to leave me your comments with whatever opinions you have about this three albums.

Enjoy!

– Laura