![]() Heart-bursting harp-and-voice ballads sit next to piano-led pop and winding melodies crafted on electric guitar. Instead, it compiles music made in Burma as early as 1909 and as late as 1960. The other new 78rpm collection Millis produced, The Crying Princess, is not focused on a single style. Even the softest notes leap out from under the scratchy surface noise of the 78s. The playing is often subdued and sparse, yet there's a fiery unpredictability to each performance. ![]() On Scattered Melodies, Millis collects Sanjo tracks from the 1920s up to the 1950s, and they're all oddly transfixing. The music he's referring to is known in Korea as Sanjo, an improvised style developed in the 1890s and played on a string instrument called the Kayagum. "Hearing this Korean music," he writes, "was the precise moment that I fell down the abyss of 78rpm record fascination that will be my doom." ![]() He admits as much in the liner notes to Scattered Melodies: Korean Kayagum Sanjo, one of two collections of music from 78s that he's recently compiled for Sublime Frequencies. Robert Millis is obsessed with 78rpm records. ![]()
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