Sidenote: I am going to be out of town from this Wednesday (4/24/24) until next Wednesday (5/1/24). I don't take breaks from Record Club, so your reviews are going to be published as usual. Just allow for some patience, as my responses to your emailed reviews may not be much more detailed than "thanks!" But thanks in advance for listening and writing!
Record Club:
WEEK 273 — April 21-27, 2024
Waak Waak ga Min Min
by Waak Waak Djungi
LISTEN:
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PICKED BY REAL ESTATE ALEX BLEEKER
PoYB: My friends and I have an Album of the Week club. A couple years ago, during an AMA here, I asked for a suggestion for an album for us to listen to. Alex suggested a William DeVaughn album. It was great! Any other suggestions?JOE'S COMMENTS: Shoutout to my boy Alex Bleeker, who becomes the first RC alumnus to choose two subsequent RC albums for us to enjoy. I didn't even plan on asking him. I just happened to be on Reddit at the time of Real Estate's AMA, and dropped my comment real quick, and our pal Bleeker was on that shit in about two seconds flat.
Alex: listen to waak waak djungi - Bleeker
Sometimes I keep these random RC picks in my back pocket for a while, but I figured I should get this one out there as soon as possible, mainly because I thought it would be fucking hilarious to take all the momentum that we've built up over the past four weeks' worth of reviews in RC Team Battle Royale and absolutely murder that momentum with a weird-ass new age ambient album from the 1997 Australian desert.
My backup plan for this week was to pay another RC alumni, Famoe, to choose an album (he's still only charging $2 per video, which ends up being $4/minute, since he does the absolute bare minimum for Cameo), but unfortunately, I'm going to ignore his request:
FAMOE'S COMMENTS:
JOE'S ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: I'm going to ignore it because I scrolled down to the "Legal Issues" section on the Game's Wikipedia page, as one typically does, and saw that he committed sexual assault, which isn't technically against RC rules, but I'm personally not going to be a party to trafficking sex abusers through this music club.
Still, Famoe's video was pretty funny, especially the part where assumes that a man named "Puke" sent him two dollars and that the last time he sent Famoe two dollars, it was on his birthday. Cameo participants have seven days to complete the video, and the three times I've requested a video from Famoe, he's sent me the video on the night of the seventh day, and the dude continues to look like he just woke up from a nap in every video.
Oh shit, I forgot that I also that I asked glass beach to choose an album for us too. Let's see what they said.
GLASS BEACH'S COMMENTS: "cheekface?"
JOE'S FINAL COMMENTS: It's a repeat artist, thank god... because I really fucking hate Cheekface...
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ALBUM DETAILS
GENRE: Indigenous Australian traditional music, downtempo, ambient, new age
RELEASED: June 8, 2018 officially, but some recordings trace back to 1997
LENGTH: 35:07
TRACKLIST:
- Rainbow Serpent
- Djambaku
- White Cockatoo
- Mother I'm Going
- Gandi Bawong
- Black Crow
LYRICS: I don't think there is any, mostly chanting. If there are lyrics in these songs, I cannot find written copies of them.
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ARTIST DETAILS
PRONOUNS: He/him/his for the three musicians, and he/him/his for the producer
ABOUT: Arnhem Land is in the Northern Territory of Australia. "Yolngu" is an aggregation of Aboriginal Australian people inhabiting northeastern Arnhem Land. Three Yolngu songmen named Bobby Bunnungurr, Jimmy Djamunba, and Peter Milaynga were, in the mid-'90s, introduced to English producer and musician Peter Mumme (via Yolngu actor David Gulpilil), and the four of them worked together to record the music of the Yolngu, and mix it with contemporary "new age" sounds. That album was released to little fanfare in 1997 (though it was allegedly quite popular in northeastern Arnhem Land). In 2015, someone found a copy of that forgotten album in the archives of Triple R 102.7FM, Melbourne Independent Radio, and spent three years tracking down the musicians who made it (though Peter Milaynga had passed away in 2007). In 2018, the album was rereleased, with updated mixing and a previously unreleased track. That 2018 release is known as Waak Waak ga Min Min.
DISCOGRAPHY: This is Waak Waak Djungi's only album, technically. But that 1997 original release was named Crow Fire Music, which is not available for listening now that Waak Waak ga Min Min has supplanted it. And, if you consider "discography" to mean all music that an artist has made, then I assume there are thousands of hours of music created by the Yolngu songmen that will never see recording or release.
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ADDITIONAL INFO
READING SOME SHIT: I could only find two write-ups for this artist/album—the Bandcamp description, and this other similar blurb from In Sheep's Clothing. (With so little out there, I'd say that this was a good find by our friend and confidant Alex Bleeker.)
WATCHING SOME SHIT: 20-minute tour documentary through Japan
PREVIOUSLY ON RECORD CLUB: Let's make sure we're keeping track of all the kind RC alum who have helped us choose an album prior to this. Real Estate chose Be Thankful for What You Got by William DeVaughn; Hidden Things chose Power Chords by Mike Krol; Foals chose Emotional Eternal by Melody's Echo Chamber.
Other than that, I can't imagine that this is going to sound like anything else we've ever done in this music club (ensuring that it will receive a maximum of two reviews). But both this album and Inside Out by Emmy Rossum both have a "New Age" genre tag, so that's something. Is Waak Waak Djungi going to sound like Emmy Rossum? Almost assuredly not. But there's only one way to find out.
Other than that, I can't imagine that this is going to sound like anything else we've ever done in this music club (ensuring that it will receive a maximum of two reviews). But both this album and Inside Out by Emmy Rossum both have a "New Age" genre tag, so that's something. Is Waak Waak Djungi going to sound like Emmy Rossum? Almost assuredly not. But there's only one way to find out.
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RC CLASSIC ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Every week from now on, we're giving a quick re-listen to the RC album we covered five years ago exactly. Check out the quick reevaluation every Friday morning, before the regular reviews. Reevaluation, reflection, something like that. We'll see.
Every week from now on, we're giving a quick re-listen to the RC album we covered five years ago exactly. Check out the quick reevaluation every Friday morning, before the regular reviews. Reevaluation, reflection, something like that. We'll see.
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Happy listening, RC family!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
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