Planet Waves
The Sublime Frequencies label hunts down the world's elusive soundtracks

story by Jesse Jarnow

As D.I.Y. ossifies into lazy 2.0isms (a MySpace profile can be as grassroots as many labels get), the once/future Sun City Girl Alan Bishop, partner Hisham Mayet and their cohorts really do it themselves. To compile music for their Sublime Frequencies label, they hit the Pacific Rim and byways beyond with shortwave radios and shoestring budgets. Grants and corporate funding stay far away... perhaps because of the .44 Magnum that Bishop counts among his travel gear.

Covering regions in ways CNN never could, Sublime Frequencies' catalog is a ground-level geo-political atlas collaged from cassette-dubbed third-world guitar jams, dictatorship-bred agit-pop (to borrow their term), incomprehensible commercials and field recordings of exploding dragonflies. Tune in for any duration and anything else starts to sound kind of bland. Their newest releases include Proibidåo C.V., Carlos Casas's compilation of gang-sponsored beatmakers from Rio favelas, and Albano Costillares's way-beyond-tropicália Latinamericarpet: Exploring The Vinyl Warp Of Latin American Psychedelia, Vol. 1. "I simply will not listen to any music that's recorded too slick or with supposed 'modern,' inferior—as I hear it—production," Bishop says. "End of story." Or, more accurately, just the beginning.

After 20-plus years of world travel, have foreign cultures gotten less strange and beautiful to you? Likewise, have you picked up any of the languages? If so, does that change how you perceive the music?
I'm obviously more familiar with cultures now when I go back to the places I've been before, yet the mood and ambiance, people, food and music never seem to lose their charm for me. Even after extended stays there is so much happening and everyday life is much more in your face and interesting than it is here in the States that the beauty cannot die for me.

The “strange,” as you put it, can happen anywhere at any time, so I can't associate geography with that. What others may find strange about Sumatra, I may find beautiful and not so strange at all. I can speak pidgin Indonesian, but very little or no Thai or Arabic, but I know some Burmese, but not enough to feel comfortable speaking it yet. English and my skull works fine everywhere.

With proibidåo/baile funk becoming such a reference point in contemporary music, why is it important to re-anonymize it on Proibidåo C.V.?
There was never any attempt to “re-anonymize” the Proibidåo CD at all. It's exactly the way the situation came down when Carlos Casas was in Rio acquiring it. The Commando Vermelho are still shrouded in a legendary haze. Of course you could rent City Of God and watch that for some "dramatized" version. I never would have released the CD if it wasn’t something raw and interesting. The more mainstream baile sound never interested me but Proibidåo has a genuine feel and some true emotion/expression which I’m not hearing at all from the mainstream material. Music can easily lose all beauty if it’s recorded in a controlled environment.

What kind of gear do you travel with?
A Canon GL-2 mini-DV video camera, Sangean 818-S shortwave radio with built-in cassette, digital still camera, MiniDisc recorder, a Javanese kris knife, Ray-Ban sunglasses, a .44 Magnum with plenty of ammo, all the needed media supplies, my notes and contacts, and my skull.

Some recent discs have had more traditional musicological documentation than the older collages and travel journal-like stuff.
It was the way the releases have played out. Some in the future may have notes similar to the earlier releases. There is no plan of agenda for liner notes. Many different people are contributing liner notes, they are all a bit different, and every single release has had them. If you actually have all the releases in front of you, and aren’t downloading them and trusting some hit-piece on the web saying we don’t do liner notes, then you wouldn’t really know. You seem to have the real copies yourself from what you’ve asked here, but some others do not and assume wrong because some blogger says we don’t include liner notes or track information. But that blogger probably downloaded the music only so how would he know?

You were just in Sri Lanka. Find anything good? How much do you collect and record that doesn't make it out on a SF release?
I just returned from somewhere. Maybe I was in Sri Lanka, I can’t remember. Did I find anything good? Are you kidding? There’s so much more in my personal collection than could ever get released.