"Make It Fast Make It Slow" from Rob’s 1977 LP of the same name (which Soundway reissued in late March) is an irresistible slab of Ghanaian funk. It’s a bit more subdued than the fieriest material on Rob’s party-igniting Funky Rob Way album, but the song charms through serpentine guitar motifs, uproarious horn charts, curt organ squawks, a füünky bass line, constant metallic tintinnabulation, and Rob’s warm, soulful vocals. “Make It Fast Make It Slow” exudes a distinct Cymande vibe to boot, and you can never go wrong by evoking Cymande—who recently reunited after a 35-year absence, by the way. The entire Make It Fast Make It Slow album is as solid as Rob's muscular, 1970s build and is a crucial addition to your African funk collection. (Don't tell me you don't have one...)

Check out the title track after the cut.

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Don’t know much at all about this current Portuguese trio Sunflare, but their track “Facemelt” is an aptly titled blast of High Rise/Psychic Paramount-style rock chaos, which makes the MC5 sound like coffeehouse folkies and comes in handy when deadline pressures become overwhelming (maybe you deadline-havers can relate). The combustible intensity and throbbing density on display here are extraordinary. Is it possible to headbang while your hair’s on fire?

Suzanne Ciani is another of those unjustly obscure electronic-music composers who is finally receiving wider recognition decades after her peak years. The impeccable UK reissue specialists behind FindersKeepers/B-Music have curated a wonderful collection titled Lixiviation, which gathers 16 pieces that Ciani realized from 1969 to 1985.

The album includes brief, alternately charming and discombobulatory snippets for Atari video game and Coca-Cola logos and various TV spots as well as longer, more ambitious compositions that soar at the level of the most cosmic emanations of figures like J.D. Emmanuel, Pauline Oliveros, Ariel Kalma, and Wendy Carlos. Ciani lives up to B-Music’s brilliant tagline, “The American Delia Derbyshire of the Atari Generation.”

To my mind, Lixiviation’s highlight is “Second Breath,” a nine-minute drone symphony of piercing, oscillatory intensity. Clamp on headphones and crank the volume for this one, and burrow into an existential reverie that makes your mental interior seem like an absurdly momentous anteroom to Nirvana. “This type of piece had no time limit and could go on for weeks,” Ciani wrote in Lixiviation’s liner notes. You’ll get no argument from me on that score.

The leadoff track from Mirroring’s new album, Foreign Body (Kranky), the beyond-oneiric “Fell Sound” drifts in on a cloud of pacific drone, with Grouper (Liz Harris) whispering enigmatically. After a while, the faintest of guitar spangles (probably from Mirroring’s other member, Jesy Fortino, aka Tiny Vipers) enters the picture. The only lyric I can pick out is “shadows” (of course). Listening to “Fell Sound” is like being caressed by feather dusters for six minutes. Perfect fodder for dealing with the stress of deadlines (apologies to everyone to whom I owe copy; it’s coming!).

Look for a review of Foreign Body in next week’s paper.

“Thoughts Are Bells”—from 2008’s Beach Head—is Sun Araw’s most serene track, a minimalist, exoticambient breeze of cosmic otherness. Sun Araw (aka Cameron Stallones) has moved on from this steez in subsequent recordings, but his early works still powerfully transport you to deeper states of consciousness. Let’s hope this piece is still in his live repertoire.

Sun Araw and his band play the Rendezvous Wed. March 28.

Soundway Records is slated to release an 18-track collection by the Funkees titled Dancing Time: The Best of Eastern Nigeria’s Afro Rock Exponents 1973-77. It’s an infectious, filler-free document from that African nation’s fertile ’70s psych-funk scene. Of the many highlights on the disc, the most inspirational is “Acid Rock.” Closer to regimented funk of the Meters and bold organ flourishes of Jackie Mittoo than to the virtuosic distortions of Jimi Hendrix, the song nonetheless takes you to a better, more exalted place. By all rights, it should be at least three times longer than its sub-3-minute duration.

(Dancing Time comes out April 10.)

The lead-off track from Michael Chapman’s 1969 LP Rainmaker (reissued earlier this year by Light in the Attic), “It Didn’t Work Out” sets the tone for this classic folk-rock opus with Chapman's gorgeous, cyclical acoustic guitar riff; Norman Haines’ snarling organ and Clem Clempson’s fluid, electric-guitar arabesques glint spectacularly off of this foundation, while Aynsley Dunbar’s drums form a deceptively funky bottom. The song builds in intensity and majesty as it goes, hinting at a “Morning Dew”-like splendor, and Chapman sings (in the exact midpoint between Bob Dylan and Gordon Lightfoot) the lyrics with impassioned resignation.

For overall melodic chill-inducement, Rainmaker—produced with impeccable punch and clarity by Gus Dudgeon—might even edge out Chapman’s other excellent LITA revamp, Fully Qualified Survivor. This guy deserves to be so much better known than he is; kudos to LITA for improving the chances of that happening.

(See the video for "It Didn't Work Out" after the cut.)

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I am quite stoned, and Larry just made me edit a blog post, so I'm just going to say that this is the best song ever (this week), because it was Larry who reminded me that Vex Ruffin existed. So inventive and rudimentary and perfect.

Ain't no neo-krautrock like Finnish neo-kraturock, as Siinai prove on their new album, Olympic Games, out domestically in late February on Splendour Records. As a teaser for that great release (destined to appear on my top whatever year-end chart, for what it's worth), check out "Anthem Part 1 & Part 2," a majestic, celestial gust of Harmonia-like portent and motorik chug. As a bonus, the band made a video featuring footage from Alejandro Jodorowsky's endlessly fascinating The Holy Mountain.

At Emerald City Soul Club’s Talcum event on Christmas night, DJ Mike Nipper (Line Out’s resident operator of the Wayback Machine) spun the Delfonics’ 1969 single “Funny Feeling,” which hit me like a revelatory, euphoric kiss. How have I gone so long without hearing this? Well, in an attempt to make up for lost time, I’m putting “Funny Feeling” on repeat this week. The song captures that urgent, butterfly-stomached, slightly disorienting sensation of early romantic infatuation. Phenomenal vocal harmonies and arrangements, mood-elevating orchestrations, and some of the greatest “bah bah bah”s ever bah-bah-bah-ed thrust “Funny Feeling” into soul hall-of-fame status.

Further props to Nipper for slipping the Osmonds’ “Yo-Yo” into a northern-soul set, unbeknown to probably 99 percent of the crowd.

*I know—I already did one of these BSE (TW) posts, but sometimes all logic and protocol need to be brushed aside to bring the gospel truth to the Line Out masses.

Tuesday at Captain Blacks, Jon François was spinning at the Chicken & Waffles night. Amid a phenomenal stream of funk 45s, he dropped Beaufort Express’ 1972 single “You Got to Do Your Best,” a simmering cauldron of minimal funk that practically approaches dub status, it’s so fractured and psychedelically laid-back. This sounds like Funkadelic and the Meters at their most stoned, the sly, raised-eyebrows bass line and waka-waka guitar working an almost subliminal hypnosis on your hips. “Nasty, nasty” indeed.

Compaoré Issouf’s “Dambakale” is the standout cut from the solid compilation Bambara Mystic Soul: The Raw Sound of Burkina Faso 1974-1979 (released Oct. 25 on Analog Africa). I don’t understand a word Issouf’s singing, but his timbre and inflections stab my soul in its most tender parts; the female backing vocals—“DAHM-BAH-KAH-LAY!”— rub salve in the wounds. The groove is at once relaxed and indestructible, and if you have any sense, you'll never want it to end. The electric piano ornately flits around the rhythm like Chick Corea and Terry Riley in an especially flighty mood, and the guitars squawk and ring in perfectly loose, funky regimentation. Burkina Faso, goddamn!

Jonti’s recent album on Stones Throw, Twirligig, is a vivid extrapolation of post-Boards of Canada/post-Dilla/post-chillwave beatscaping. It’s full of uplifting head-nodders to which you can hum along.

The LP highlight for me, though, is “Firework Spraying Moon”; I’m an absolute sucker for any track that samples anything from David Byrne and Brian Eno’s sampladelic game-changer My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. And “FSM” has the gumption to appropriate the clipped rhythm and the weird bird trill (or is it a monkey screech?) from “Qu’ran,” a sublime cut that was deleted from subsequent issues of Bush of Ghosts due to pressure from hardcore Muslims who opposed the use of recorded readings from their holy book. Jonti went there and the risk paid off.

The Italian group Sensations’ Fix released an album in 1974 titled Fragments of Light. On it is the poetically titled “Music Is Painting in the Air,” which stands as one of the greatest songs in rock history. From the first time you hear it, you should be spellbound by its tranquil, sun-sinking-into-the-sea beauty, its almost unbearable poignancy. Franco Falsini—for it is he—conceived the guitar parts on “Music Is Painting in the Air” that deserve to reign in the pantheon with the most sublime ever conceived (see Jeff Beck’s “Beck’s Bolero,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing,” JJ Cale’s “Crazy Mama,” Danny Kirwan’s “Sunny Side of Heaven” [on Fleetwood Mac’s Bare Trees], Bruce Gilbert and Colin Newman’s “Map Ref. 41ºN 93ºW” [on Wire’s 154], and a thousand others both familiar and obscure).

“Music Is Painting in the Air” evaporates any negativity in your sensorium and gives you hope that homo sapiens are going to get out of the massive mess in which we’re ensnared. It’s that effective of a panacea.

[Blasphemously, the title is incorrectly rendered in this clip.]

The Numero Group—one of the land’s most outstanding reissue/archival labels—recently sent us a sampler of a 3-CD/5-LP boxed set titled Boddie Recording Company: Cleveland, Ohio (out Oct. 25). The 17 tracks on the sampler hint that this is going to be a treasure trove of soul and gospel nuggets for true believers and godless motherfuckers alike.

The disc’s standout song is King James Version’s “He’s Forever (Amen).” Why? Because it appropriates the melody from John Barry’s “Midnight Cowboy Theme,” the most poignant piece of music ever written (I’m willing to hear arguments to the contrary, but I’m pretty sure this is, uh, gospel truth).

Played on electric guitar, the famously heart-piercing tune underpins a helluva moving vocal performance by a man whose identity I've searched in vain to find; anyway, he flamboyantly testifies that Jesus' love makes one feel better than any woman could. (Controversial!) Further, sometimes Jesus' love will make you do the Funky Chicken and sometimes Jesus' love will make you cry. In conclusion, he’s forever.

This is a strange hijacking of a song that inhabited an ultra-decadent film about a hick male hustler trying to make it in Nixon-era New York City. Whatever the case, King James Version use the gorgeous theme to help gradually build the song into a swelling, hallelujah-provoking climax. This godless motherfucker is suitably impressed.

(This video cuts off the song's last 15 seconds.)