LIFE IS DANCE / VARIOUS | VINYL RECORD (LP)

2015 repress. Once again, Finders Keepers Records is given unparalleled access to the EMI Pakistan vaults to bring you Life Is Dance, the 2011 follow-up to 2010's critically acclaimed groundbreaking Lollywood cinematic pop compendium The Sound of Wonder! (BMS 012 CD). Commonly, ignorantly, but understandably lumped in with it's wealthy not-too-distant cousin, Bollywood, Lollywood was inspired by, but often overshadowed by it's posh and welltravelled relative. Following the simplistic Bombay + Hollywood = Bollywood name game (that would in later years spawn Nollywood in Nigeria), Lollywood's Lahore, Pakistan-based film industry was a profitable and vibrant one that found great success in the modest boundaries of it's own country but was seldom savored outside Pakistan. However, the hugely important musical business spawned a byproduct that was viewed as a potential earner for international entertainment industry, EMI, which allowed talented musicians to create ambitious music with world-class media ranging throughout the '60s and '70s from fuzz guitars to space echo machines and American and European synthesizers, but, due to the composers' indigenous roots, rarely a drum kit. Here you'll find fuzzy, scuzzy, twang-happy, spaced-out, and funked-up Urdu-grooves complete with harmonium melodies and driven by some of the most random factor, freakish, finger-numbing percussion that the South East Asian mainstream has ever had to offer. Above all, Lollywood soundtracks sound RAW! The lack of gloss on a dusty Pakistani mini-LP makes for truly experimental Eastern pop music. So, it's time to meet the culprits - as an introduction, in place of R. D. Burman and Asha Bhosle, we have Mr. M. Ashraf and his long-term female collaborator, Naheed Akhtar. This duo would provide Pakistan with it's Gainsbourg/Birkin or Morricone/Dell'Orso for over 20 years, recording squillions of cut-and-paste sonic collages and moog-fuelled desperate love/hate/chase/chill/kill songs mixing onomatopoeic Urdu lyrics with unexpected bursts of user-friendly English language and the odd motif from a Barry White or Donna Summer hit. We also have legends like Noor Jehan, a national treasure and household name in Pakistan whose discography of film songs have deprived the vaults of EMI Pakistan of floor space for half a century. Also includes tracks by Tafo, Mehdi Hassan, A. Nayyar, Nazir Ali, Mehnaz, Kamel Ahmed, Sohail Rana, Abdul Hameed, Afshan, and Cheeku. All tracks licensed exclusively through the EMI Pakistan vaults in Lahore and remastered from the original reels.