4. Iles Salomon – Musique De Guadalcanal
This is one I keep coming back to, and I play it for people when they come round the house, I say, listen to this! If they don’t have a strong reaction to it then we ask them to leave, ha ha ha!
It isn’t a particularly easy one to find, although the odd copy does come up on eBay every now and then. I knew about the Ocora label from Windows again, as we had this amazing international section, which was stocked full of Ocora and Chants Du Monde – can you imagine? It was like university really, like higher education. Graham, who was the owner, took a few trips to France and brought back two or three car loads from these two old ladies who were selling them out of a garage. It was a proper business, and he brought back this absolute haul of wonderment.
These Ocora records are really influential in this quiet way – the Burundi one for example, there are samples from that all over the place.
There’s something about the presentation too – you look at it and straight away know it’s an Ocora release, so it’s gonna be interesting, then when you dig in the notes are always fantastic. The recordings are always great, and what’s kind of amazing is that when you try and share this stuff, there’s maybe one track online, or no tracks. Not everything’s made it on to the internet – so this is one of those, there is one track on YouTube. It’s a really special record, I would heartily recommend getting a copy. It’s so, so beautiful.
