Ramasandiran Somusundaram 'Skinny Woman' LP

Keeping their trawl through music's lesser tumbed pages both interesting and essential, Cinedelic treat us to the first ever reissue of the only solo album from Indian percussionist Ramasandiran Somusundaram, a former member of "Bambibanda E Melodie", "Maya" and "New Trolls Atomic System",  Produced and played alongside a large portion of New Trolls (the De Scalzi brothers, Gianni Belleno, and Giorgio Usai) "Skinny Woman" is a brilliantly anomalous album, one that mixes hard-funk and rock with the incisive and extraordinarily rhythmic side of Indian music, all wrapped in an exploito feel. The A-side opens with the party starting disco-funk-rock of the title track, but by "I Am Afraid of Loosing You", all takes a more experimental turn thanks to Clavinet, Hammond organ, lo-fi brass and a bizarre use of voices incredibly similar to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. The Zappa references continue in the next song, "Everybody", which starts with a distorted bass riff in a George Clinton style. Then you get to "Electronic Heart", a rhythmic bomb with a long and frankly insane flute solo (by the unmistakable Vittorio De Scalzi) in Roland Kirk / Ian Anderson style. The B-side is more psychedelic and meditative, mixing Oriental tinges and America's west coast to deliver a zen-like atmosphere (stick on "Shanghai” and sniff a little incense). Last but not least we get the immense pleasure of a bonus track “Contrabbando di fagioli”, a percussive flautal orgy, previously released only in a very rare single in 1973.