pheloniusfriar | More can-con, spotlight on Dr. No (Poland)

Here's the playlist for my second show (Dec. 20th, 2010). As a reminder, it's broadcast every second Monday from 2PM to 3PM (Eastern Time) on 93.1FM in Ottawa or streaming audio on http://www.ckcufm.com/. You can always go here to find out when the next show will be (or read my playlists). Of this show, I simply wrote:

From garage to spaghetti westerns to Poland, all manner of glorious finds can be had in The Dollar Bin.

I did a spotlight on one of my favourite finds ever from a dollar bin: Dr. No. From my “show notes” to myself (ganked from various web sites):

Spotlight on one of the great surprises I’ve had in recent dollar bin dives. I picked up the album because it had a picture of a woman flinging her dreads on the cover and it was from Sony Music Entertainment “Polska”. Always on the lookout for the new and interesting, I thought I’d give it a try. Wow, I seriously love this band. We’ll start out with two tracks, “I Will” and “Light”... really interesting instrumentation and lyrics... They did release a video for “Light” if you’d like to see the face behind the voice (there’s also one for a song I’ll be playing later, “Zanim”).

Dr. No was formed by Marcin Orlowski (bass, keyboards, samples) and Michal Orzel (keyboards, samples) at the end of 1999. People got to know the band thanks to popular youth radio station called “Radiostacja” and it’s music festival Pepsi Faza. Two of the early Dr. No tracks “Funky fashion, funky beats” and “70's” were placed on Pepsi faza compilations. At that time Marcin and Michal cooperated with vocalist Wit Dziki.

In 2003 U-zek, owner of Sissy Secords (BMG sub-label) invites Dr. No to take part in his new compilation called “Projekt Si 031” where the band gets the chance to introduce a brand new track “Dziesiatka/Free me” recorded together with a new vocalist Karolina Kozak. The track is picked to be the first single to promote the whole album. Thanks to that, Dr. No shoots the first video. At the same time Karolina joins the band and all three start to work on the debut album with producer Bogdan Kondracki.

Dr. No debut album called “Almost done” is released on 9th of August 2004. It contains music based on swaying rhythms and spacy sounds enhanced with Karolina’s melodical, warm voices. Apart form typical electronic sounds one can find live instruments such as acoustic guitar, violin or trumpet. The whole material might be described as music alternative to pop. Ms. Kozak does appear to have gone on to do bunches of solo work and this does appear to be only album released so far (although they’ve done a couple of singles and contributions to compilations). Here’s hoping they do something new.

And how about something from them in Polish, just to show they’re the real deal and can do this in multiple languages too? Going to follow that up with another track with a harder edged, more electronica sound to it... but still with Kozak's distinctive vocals through it all.

My “Fromage” set featured one of my favourite composers, but these ones stand out because they're so odd:

From the master of the Italian western soundtrack, Morricone himself... the guy who brought us the sublime theme for “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” (which still gives me goosebumps to this day). Off of the soundtrack Il Ritorno Di Ringo (The Return of Ringo). Sung by Maurizio Graf (there must have been some sort of graft getting him on there). There’s tons of good music on this compilation, but there’s more than one that left me wondering what the heck he was thinking.

Off the We’ll Be Back, Isn’t That Fate? Title track. Don’t know why, but it has a sort-of Japanese feel to it. It makes me smile and raise my eyebrow at the same time... which is fine unless you have a headache, in which case it hurts. But maybe one shouldn’t listen to that sort of thing with a headache... just sayin’...

And here's the playlist (I'll toss up the audio sometime in the next few weeks):

1000 Mona Lisas, New Disease, "Maybe It's All Forgiven"
1000 Mona Lisas, New Disease, "New Disease"
Bonesugar, Human Cattle For The Greys, "Pleiadian"
Ashley MacIsaac, Hi(tm), How Are You Doing?, "Brenda Stubbert"
Crash Vegas, Red Earth, "Moving Too Fast"
Plague of Ethyls, Starball Contributions (Compilation), "Warped And Twisted"
Ennio Morricone, Spaghetti Western, "Il Ritorno Di Ringo (The Return Of Ringo)"
Ennio Morricone, Spaghetti Western, "Ci Risiamo, Vero Provvidenza (We'll Be Back, Isn't That Fate?)"
Dr. No, Almost Done, "I Will"
Dr. No, Almost Done, "Light"
Dr. No, Almost Done, "Zanim"
Dr. No, Almost Done, "Think"
Nelly Furtado, Whoa. Nelly!, "Legend"
Llama Farmers, Dead Letter Chorus, "PVC"