Thursday, June 10, 2021 • The BuLLeTIn
GO! MAGAZINE • PAGE 3
ALL THINGS MUSIC
LIVE
MUSIC FOR
THE WEEK
p.4
bendbulletin.com/golisten
Bandcampin’: Good stuff for your ears
BY BEN SALMON • For The Bulletin
B
andcamp is an online music platform used largely by independent artists and record labels to stream songs and sell merchandise. It’s also a vibrant virtual
community teeming with interesting sounds just waiting to be discovered. Each week, I’ll highlight three releases available on the site that are well worth
your time and attention. If you find something you dig, please consider supporting the artist with a purchase.
WILLIAM ONYEABOR,
“World Psychedelic Classics 5:
Who is William Onyeabor?”
At this point, there are dozens if not hun-
dreds of examples of a modern record label
unearthing a wonderful old album by a for-
gotten and/or enigmatic songwriter from
the 20th century and giving it the full, fancy
reissue treatment. Of all of these, one of the
very best is Luaka Bop’s 2014 resurrection of
Nigerian funk giant William Onyeabor, who
“self-released eight albums between 1977 and
1985 and then became a born-again Chris-
tian, refusing to ever speak about himself or
his music again.” Before he peaced out, he
made a whole bunch of psychedelic, synth-
heavy electro-funk and Afrobeat music that
still sounds ahead of its time, decades later.
SONNY SHARROCK, “Ask the Ages”
Like William Onyeabor (see the previous
blurb, if you haven’t already), jazz guitar-
ist Sonny Sharrock seemed like he would be
lost to time. After recording a few albums in
the late ’60s and early ’70s, Sharrock — an ad-
venturous jazz guitarist from New York — re-
tired and spent the late ’70s working regular,
non-music jobs. But influential avant-garde
musician Bill Laswell coaxed him out of retire-
ment, and Sharrock made the best music of
his career in the late ’80s. This run culminated
with 1991’s “Ask the Ages,” which featured
legendary saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and
drummer Elvin Jones and brought together
the classic jazz sound of the ’60s and the mod-
ern energy and attitude of rock in a way that’s
vibrant, uncommon and beautiful.
KAREEM ALI, “Quantum Blackness”
Kareem Ali is one of the coolest cats mak-
ing music right now. And boy does he
make a lot of it. His Bandcamp page has 54
releases on it dating back just four years,
and while some of them are single tracks,
many are EPs or full-length albums. You
could drop in just about anywhere and
get a good idea of what Ali is all about,
but “Quantum Blackness” — released in
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It’s 24 tracks long, so you get a sustained
exposure to Ali’s aesthetic: electronic mu-
sic (specifically deep house music), jazz,
space-age sounds, Black liberation. The
man takes it all and turns it into some-
thing that’s endlessly listenable.
e
Ben Salmon is a Bend-based music journalist and host of
Left Of The Dial, which airs 8-10 p.m. Thursdays on KPOV,
88.9 FM and streams at kpov.org. You can find him on
Bandcamp and Twitter at @bcsalmon.
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