Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Bololo O Kolilo (Groupo de Totoko Francois)
2. The Crow Flies Back to the Forest (Guangzhou Cantonese Opera Troupe)
3. Mes Tis Polis Ta Stena (Stella Haskil)
4. Balada Do Encantamento (Dr. Edmundo Bettencourt)
5. Shenai (Bismillah Khan and Party)
6. The Basement Blues (Noble Sissle and His Orchestra)
7. Step It Up and Go (Blind Boy Fuller)
8. Shin Shin Tankoubushi (Yukie Kubo)
9. O! Molly Dear Go Ask Your Mother (Kelly Harrell)
10. Big Idiot Buys a Pig (He Zemin / Huang Peiying)
11. Laughing Rag (Roy Smeck)
12. Wipe Em Off (Seven Gallon Jug Band)
13. Raks Baladi Hag Ibrahim (Mozmar Caire Orchestra)
14. Tora To Vrady Vrady (Yiorgos Papasideris / Yiorgos Anestopoulos)
15. Fireworks Music (Zapotec-Teotitlan Indians)
16. The Cowboy's Dizzy Sweetheart (Goebel Reeves)
17. Watching the Knife and Fork Spoon (Don Redman and His Orchestra)
18. Courting the Woman From Chiang Mai (Sri Ma Keow / Chai Wat)
19. Badia's Dance (Badia Massabni and Her Orchestra)
20. The Preacher Got Drunk and Laid Down His Bible (The Tennessee Ramblers)
21. Karciar Taksim (Zeki Duygulu)
22. Daegeum Solo (Kim Seong-jin)

Disc 2:

1. Impressions of London (Stanley Roper)
2. The Crucifixion of Christ (Jessie May Hill)
3. Torre de Belem (Carlos Ramos)
4. The Farmer's Dream (Frank Ferera)
5. Shiokumi Kasatsukashi (Kachikuri Mimasuya)
6. Mahawin Maita Zad (Po Sein / Maung Sein Maita)
7. Shan Village (St. Gun Khin May)
8. Mahour Gazel-Adjir idin beni (Haffouz Jachar Bey)
9. Little Mo-hee (The Hall Brothers)
10. Two Liquorice Drops in Jail (Cook and Flemming)
11. Cockeyed Jenny (Barton Brothers)
12. Darktown Court Room (Shelton Brooks and Co.)
13. Story of Tang On (Sa Ma Nang Noi / Ut Sa Win)
14. Memphis Kick Up (Slim Lamar's Orchestra)
15. My Wireless Set (John Henry and Blossom)
16. Yield Not to Temptation (Ernest Thompson)
17. Chanting the Ten Vows (Chinese Buddhist Nuns)
18. Mokihana (Kane's Hawaiians)
19. The Grass Widow (Maria Smyrnea)
20. Persian Popular Song (Unknown Artist)
21. Willie Willie Don't Go from Me (Harold Boyce and the Harlem Indians)
22. The Insect Powder Agent (Golden and Marlowe)
23. The Thingamajig (Johnnie Lee Wills and his Boys)
24. Yasukibushi (Komachiyo Okada)
25. Hamba Na Lo Isoko La Yo ( Mameyigudi and His Dancers)
26. Tabla-Taranga (Vishnudass Shirali)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #85579 in Music
• Released on: 2008-01-22
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: 1.22 pounds

Album Description
Recordings made between the 1920s-'50s compiled by Rob Millis and Jeffrey Taylor of the Seattle-based experimental band Climax Golden Twins from their collections of rare 78rpm records and design ephemera. Deluxe 144-page clothbound, full-color book with two CDs featuring Burmese guitars, Chinese opera, Persian folk songs, fado, hillbilly, jazz, blues and much, much more. Climax Golden Twins have designed gallery and museum installations, composed soundtracks (most notably the film Session Nine), worked on documentary films (Phi Ta Khon: Ghosts Of Isan released on Sublime Frequencies) and contributed soundscapes to NPR radio programs in addition to releasing numerous recordings on CD and LP, including a recent LP on the Sun City Girls' Abduction Records imprint entitled 5 Cents A Piece. Influenced by the Secret Museum of Mankind, Yazoo releases, Harry Smith's Anthology Of American Folk Music, as well as record labels like Sublime Frequencies, Ethnic Folkways and Ocora. Also inspired by art and design books such as those published by Chronicle. Sounds like vintage music from around the globe. Looks like a clothbound book printed on extremely fine museum quality wood-free paper and is meant as a visual manifestation of the sounds contained on the CDs. Hundreds of beautiful images of sleeves, photos, labels, needle tins and more.

Customer Reviews

a gem
by the description and reviews on this page it seems like it is a great buy but there was no way i was going to shell out $45 w/o hearing what was on it. so i googled it and found a site where you can preview each song. i was sold. i just got it and its perfect. you get what you pay for with this. a very sweet red book with cds and artwork inside. i think its wonderful and it would make a wonderful present to surprise somebody with (IF they appreciate this kind of vintage variety). listening to it now, i feel like im in a ship going around the world, its really nice.

A perfect Valentine

My Valentine knows that my taste in most things is eclectic. Dust-to-Digital label has compiled several anthologies of early to mid-20th century music from around the world. The two-CD "Victrola Favorites" is a worthy addition to their prior offerings.

The 48 songs are geographically and stylistically diverse. Chanting from Chinese Buddhist nuns, West Indian jazz-calypso, early American jazz, folk and blues, a Thai costume drama, Japanese bamboo xylophones, and an "actual recording of Big Ben and traffic noises" are a few of the offerings.

The liner "notes" are contained in a cloth bound, full-color book of record label artwork, archival photographs, listening instructions, postcards, and other music ephemera. (I write "notes" because the images are the stars of this show; the text is relatively skimpy.)

If you like world music and ethnic sounds, this is a wonderful journey.

Robert C. Ross 2008

A Small Taste of an Interesting Universe
I went into this with high hopes, although I guess I did know upfront that there was not enough material here to make this worth the price. Indeed, what is here is good, but painfully limited, and the elaborate presentation does not effectively facilitate a comprehensive journey through the songs.

There are vast archives of Victrola stuff; I know this because my grandparents had a Victrola player and I recall each thick platter to present a new odyssey. The technology may have been primitive back then, but the material encapsulated in those discs was astonishing. The sampling here is pretty good, but I think we needed something like eight or twelve discs. Since the material is out of copyright, the additional cost would have been negligible, or so I presume. (Proper Records of the UK does amazing box sets from the same era for about $20.)

The book here is handsome and well made. But the pictures are not identified in a convenient way to correspond with the songs. All the identifying information is in the back. I presume the photos are from the albums actually used in the set. I would have arranged them in the same sequence as the songs, with the song name superimposed over the picture in the lower corner. Instead, you have to go through a cross-referencing effort to know exactly what you're looking at, and what the song is and where and when it originated. Finally, the discs fit into the cover, but there is this rubber-like material that holds the disc and it is extremely hard to get the disc to hold, and then likewise hard to get it out again.

The folks who produced this obviously engaged in a labor of love, and to them I extend my compliments and my thanks for their efforts. But I encourage them, and anyone else producing the media products I buy, to remember functionality should be a paramount concern in packaging: ease of access to the discs; efficient storage volume; excellent documentation; great value; great material. Here we get a limited sampling of great material, but not much beyond that. In short, they lost sight of the principle of function preceding form.