Guitar & Percussion

I love this record. I love how scratchy it is. I love the little picture of the drums and guitar. I love that the guitarist and percussionist are both named "Siegfried." I even love that only one side of it is good so that I don't have to bother with the other. These are simple, almost childlike German medieval folk songs from the 1500s. Very beautiful and soothing stuff. In a weird way, listening to this puts me in the same mood that listening to Elizabeth Cotten does. Not that there's anything Teutonic about Elizabeth Cotten. It's just that there is a spare, elemental quality to the music that, combined with all the surface noise from the vinyl, gives it a very satisfying rustic earthiness. One of the song titles, for instance, translates as "poultry noises." And the percussion is also really cool -- lots of mallet instruments and castanets and tambourines. There are no breaks on this record.