Nov 9, 2014

Sundaze 1445

Hello,  unfortunately my browsers still go crazy..crashing all the time, it's truly bizarre, they do so in safe mode, refusing to start up even and it must be a hardware thing as these browsers crashed on linux too, uninstalled graphics driver-to no avail. All this mess started out of the blue 3 weeks ago and i have no idea what is going on....help

30 Nov, my PC is cured and the flacs have been re-zipped, should be all ok now

Another Sundaze, in the spotlight a former busker entertaining portugeese tourists but his birthtown London's music scene call had him return to take a serious dip into the music scene and within 3 years he released his first albums on cassette. The music of Banco de Gaia is best categorized as ambient dub, but Marks works to cross genres, often using Arabic and Middle Eastern samples against a bass heavy reggae, rock, or trance rhythm to produce deeply textured tracks that progress layer upon laye   ..N'joy

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In 1978, Marks began his musical career as a drummer in a heavy metal band. Marks moved to Portugal in 1986 and played Beatles music for tourists. He first delved into electronic music in 1989, when he bought a digital sampler. The first tune he recorded on it was called "Maxwell House."

Inspired to enter the field of electronic music by Britain's acid house explosion of the late '80s, Toby Marks took quite a different spin on electronica with his recordings as Banco de Gaia, introducing elements of Eastern and Arabic music, sampling similarly exotic sources, and tying the whole to ambient-dub rhythms. Marks began releasing cassette-only albums in the early '90s, distributed through a network of clubs and artists known as Planet Dog. These excellent self-produced albums Medium and (in 1992) Freeform Flutes And Fading Tibetans. His unique and evocative blend of electronica with world-music styles earned him a fast-growing and loyal live following.

When Planet Dog became a record label as well (later the home of Eat Static and Timeshard), Banco de Gaia debuted on disc with the Desert Wind EP, released in November 1993. Early the following year, Marks released his first much acclaimed album, Maya. Maya featured studio versions of many of the tracks that had become the mainstay of Banco de Gaia's live sets and consequently was an immediate hit with his growing fan-base. The Heliopolis EP was also released in 1994, a track from which appeared on Sasha and Digweed's ground-breaking Northern Exposure compilation the next year.

After a big success of the debut album Maya and a European tour with Transglobal Underground Toby Marks travelled the world collecting inspirations. He joined The Tibet Support Group, a part of International Tibet Independence Movement. As a response to the decision to build the Qingzang railway between the cities of Xining and the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, in 1995 Marks recorded a 12-minute long track with looped chants from Tibet. It soon appeared to be a start for the whole project, eventually creating a new album. As Marks said, the compositions were made as a result of political and human sensitivity

Banco's Last Train To Lhasa album collected huge critical acclaim across Europe as well as the US and Canada. The skilful blend of sounds on Last Train To Lhasa produced a timeless release that was one of the 'must have' albums of that year and limited edition versions of the release (featuring bonus mixes) now change hands for huge sums on the internet.

Live At Glastonbury was released in 1996. Featuring a storming set recorded in front of a large and enthusiastic crowd at the Glastonbury Festival in 1995, the album consolidated what had been a period of huge growth in Banco de Gaia's standing within the dance community and gave Toby a breathing space to work on his next studio album.

The result, Big Men Cry, released in 1997 was a deep and very personal album featuring many timeless and deeply moving tunes. The simultaneous release of Big Men Cry both across Europe and in the US, gave Toby the opportunity to completely revamp what had up till then, been a one-man live show. His already massive reputation for stunning live performances was enhanced by the creation of a 5 piece band to enable Banco de Gaia to perform Drunk As A Monk as 'live' as possible. band that included Ted Duggan (drums), Ashley Hopkins (bass), Larry Whelan (wind synth, saxophone and ethnic flutes), and Gary Spacey-Foot (percussion and saxophones). Enhanced with a specially designed lightshow, the band toured the US and much of Europe over the next year, securing a reputation for quality music that has endured to this day.The band reduced in number to just Marks, Duggan, and Hopkins in 1999, and then just Marks and Duggan from 2000 until 2003; when Marks went back to being a solo artist.

Banco de Gaia parted company with Planet Dog Records in 1998 and went on to set up his own Disco Gecko label through which he has released The Magical Sounds of Banco de Gaia two years later. In late 2000, Marks returned with Igizeh through Six Degrees Records, a label with which he decided to stay for 2004's You Are Here and 2006's Farewell Ferengistan. On 20 September 2009, Banco De Gaia played an album launch show for his album, Memories Dreams Reflections at Dingwalls in London. This show was to celebrate twenty years of Banco De Gaia. Marks was joined on stage by three members from the original five piece band, Hopkins, Whelan, and Duggan and vocalist Maya Preece, who sang on the latest album.

He released his latest album, Apollo, on 8 April 2013, on his own Disco Gecko Recordings.

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Live at Glastonbury captures Banco de Gaia's performance at the 1995 Glastonbury festival, where he ran through many of his most familiar songs -- such as "Maya" and "Heliopolis" -- often giving them radically new arrangements. Since the album isn't just a straight live set, it is of interest to more listeners than the usual live record. In fact, the album is one of the most convincing statements of purpose Toby Marks has yet released, since it captures most facets of his complex musical personality. This is a recording of the complete set performed on The Avalon Stage, Glastonbury Festival, England on June 24th 1995. We have tried to capture the spirit of the occasion rather than achieve technical perfection. No blame."



Banco De Gaia - Live At Glastonbury> (flac  499mb)

01 Last Train To Lhasa (Voc.Potala Band) 12:47
02 Mafich Arabi 8:03
03 Amber 7:31
04 White Paint 7:13
05 Kincajou 7:56
06 Kuos 6:39
07 887 8:08
08 Heliopolis 6:20
09 Data Inadequate 8:14

Banco De Gaia - Live At Glastonbury> (ogg 170mb)

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Toby isn't just a DJ -- he's a serious composer of complex works. He crafts wonderfully complex musical journeys incorporating long sound segments recorded from many places, filtered, distored, amplified, woven into new shapes, and then layered on top of some of the best rhythm lines you'll find among electronic/trance/dance/... musicians. I simply love how a solid beat emerges out of the ether, carries you into dancing, then fades as his ether gets you high in setting you up for the next track. The Magical Sounds... is an inspired collection of ambient keyboard washes, exotic vocal sound samples, and up-tempo hip-hop and dub influenced dance beats.  Anyone looking for an album that combines the best of electronica and world music, go no farther ...



Banco De Gaia - The  Magical Sounds of Banco de Gaia (flac  424mb)

01 I Love Baby Cheesy 6:34
02 Harvey And The Old Ones 8:25
03 Sinhala 9:17
04 Touching The Void 12:09
05 144k 8:52
06 Frog's Dinner 9:09
07 Glove Puppet 3:17
08 No Rain 8:13

Banco De Gaia - The  Magical Sounds of Banco de Gaia (ogg 153mb)

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After a year, Banco de Gaia (Toby Marks) returns with Igizeh, the full-length album on Six Degree Records. In the spirit of past Banco de Gaia efforts, Igizeh combines dancefloor European techno and chunks of global, ethnic snippets. The track "Gizeh" was recorded in the Great Pyramid, which in Marks' opinion, has great acoustics but not much atmosphere after its renovation. For "Gizeh," Marks adds to the global influence by using a Turkish clarinet to the keyboard sampled sounds. Banco fans will notice that a track on his previous album ("Glove Puppet" from the The Magical Sounds of Banco de Gaia) makes a reappearance on Igizeh. Besides the instrumental being revamped, the updated version features the vocals of Portland's, Jennifer Folker.



Banco De Gaia - Igizeh (flac 409mb)

01 Seti I 8:42
02 Obsidian 7:06
03 Creme Egg 5:49
04 Glove Puppet (Vocal Version) 4:12
05 Gizeh 9:22
06 How Much Reality Can You Take? 6:56
07 B2 6:11
08 Fake It Till You Make It 11:47
09 Sixty Sixteen (For Karina) 6:40

Banco De Gaia - Igizeh (ogg 151mb)

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3 comments:

Kenny said...

Hi sorry to bother you - it seems trivial, but I think the flac files are corrupt. I hear gaps in some tracks. For example, in 'Magical Sounds' track 02, I can hear it at 1:04, 1:12 and 1:21. In Audacity, if I zoom in, I can see the gaps. Unzipping the file on the Mac (Mavericks) does not show an error, but if I use unzip on the command line (v5.52 that comes with mavericks) it says
"extracting: Banco De Gaia - The Magical Sounds of Banco de Gaia (97)/02 Harvey and the Old Ones.flac bad CRC 44b95ea7 (should be 9c4b6145)"
and a few other times on the Magical Sounds file and the Igezeh file.

If it's a related issue to the chronic problems you've been having, without knowing all the details, I can only suggest it might be a slowly failing hard drive. This happened to me some months ago. I installed a new one and many weird chronic problems went away.
Nevertheless, thanks for all the time and care taken to provide all this excellent music.

Martyn said...

Unfortunately most of the files are corrupt which is explained by Rho at the top of the blog.

Is there some way to help?

Anonymous said...

Hi Rho

Sorry to hear about your computer problems (I know the feeling all too well).

Thank you for the excellent Banco De Gaia LP's.
I shall try out the freeware Zip program you have suggested.