BOMBAY LAUGHING CLUB
the golden years
1. Workin' Boy Blues
2. Suba Deba
3. Space Machine
4. Black Cat Veins
5. Blue Berry
6. Embarrased By Prayer
7. Yaks
8. Coi Bhat Ne Hey
9. Kill You Dead
10. When Your Gone
11. You Want It All
12. Brother
13. Bridge Jumping
14. Slippery Sleep
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album credits
Five months in an isolated cabin can be dangerous. Too much time on your hands can be hazardous for the mental health, and after the first month we were all courting madness, behaving quite erratically.
Thankfully, we were equipped with weapons to stave of the slow approach of insanity. There were cellos, saxophones, guitars, moog synthesizers, bizarre eastern instruments, turntables, xylophones, mandolins, dulcimers, violins, keyboards, hand drums, microphones and all sorts of other musical devices of mayhem; a veritable arsenal of sonic destruction.
We recorded songs like sick animals possessed by some dark muse from the far reaches of space. We averaged a song a day, and came out of the winter with more than one hundred songs recorded, and about three times as many freestyle jams recorded. There was nothing else to do, no way to measure the days, except for the relentless flow of songs that poured out from us. For some weeks we would just do blues songs, other weeks were possessed by reggae, sometimes we would just spend days creating atonal noise collages. Creative process was the only thing that added any meaning to life in the cabin, so we created.
This collection represents some of our best tracks, and were hand picked to showcase the diversity of styles that we were juggling. Its only the smallest of drops in the bucket. We all met at tree planting camp, a creamshow in the rugged heights of the Malakwa Valley in Southern BC. It was some of the most dangerous land that any of us had ever seen, but the money was great.
After sensing a chemistry with eachother, we decided to hit an open mic jam at a local biker bar. The results were fantastic. People from all walks of life praised us, and that's what led us to form a band. Unfortunately, the strain of being in a cabin together for so long strained the experience, and the band disbanded over the next tree planting season. There may be more in the future though, who knows.
"Todays selection has a recipe: 2 parts George Clinton, 3 parts Red Hot Chili Peppers and a dash of Sun Ra and you have Suba Deba. Bombay Laughing Club is the band behind this tune and they have a terrific release called The Golden Years on Peppermill Records that went live at archive.org on January 23. That's right, it's being served to you hot and fresh!
Not much on to go on regarding the Bombay Laughing Club (although, we think they may have taken the name from the interesting social phenomenon that happens in Mumbai, India where citizens form into groups, make funny faces, tell jokes and otherwise inspire mirth in their fellows). The only facts we have come from a comment in the Netlabel Forum area of archive.org:
it's a mix of blues, funk, rock, and weird experimenting, by a bunch of guys who met out in the woods treeplanting and started playing shows at local biker bars. hippies in small town bars in general, especially trying to be artful, is generally a bad thing but they won the crowd over.
It is a loud, in-your-face kind of release and it left me with a smile on my face."
- Hypem
"Bombay Laughing Club is a curious mixture of blues, ragtime, psychedelica, and rock that is stirred, shaken, and served with a generous heap of humor. The best comparisons I can think of are the Holy Modal Rounders from the psychedic 60s and the music hall sound of The Bonzo Dog Band but the harder edged Captain Beefheart and the blues of Howlin’ Wolf are also influences. Bombay Laughing Club keeps us guessing with 14 highly varied tracks on their album The Golden Years. “Working Boy Blues” and “Kill You Dead” is coarse throated juke joint blues. “Suba Deba” is an Beefheart inspired romp that borrows from both punk and hip-hop as does the dance crazy “Space Machine. “Blue Berry” is ol’ timey madness while other tracks like “Jumping Bridge” and “Yak” confound easy classification. I really like this album but even if you don’t, you will certainly not be bored."
This album is free to download, under a Creative Commons license. Sharing this album with others is highly encouraged.