Thursday, December 25, 2014

Mind of Winter, Beard of Snow: An Interplanetary Christmas Special

Playlist

1. O Christmas Tree- Dungeon Broads
2. O Tannenbaum- Wooden Shjips
3. No More Christmas Blues- The Vacant Lots
4. Jingle Bells [edit]- The Ventures
5. White Christmas (Guitar Stooge Version)- Iggy Pop
5. Don't Eat the Yellow Snow/Nanook Rubs It- Frank Zappa
6. Black Santa- King Salami & the Cumberland 3
7. Santa Doesn't Cop Out on Dope- Sonic Youth
8. Santa's Magical Bag- Peppermint Candy Kids
9. Up on the Housetop- Paul Slocum
10. Jingle Bell Rock- Miss Pussycat & Quintron
11. Little Drum Machine Boy- Beck
12. Little Drummer Boy- The Movements
13. Harmelodic Christmas- Ronald Shannon Jackson
14. Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht- Ponderstone
15. Silent Night- The Poetics
16. Drifts/Willow- The OO Ray
16. The Secret of Immortality/This Strange Feeling/This Impossible World- The Flaming Lips
17. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen- Nadja

Download the Christmas Special!

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Interplanetary Halloween Special #3: Danse Macabre

Playlist

1. Season of the Witch- Donovan
2. The Witch- The Sonics
3. She's My Witch [Edit]- Kip Tyler
4. I'd Rather Be Burned as a Witch- Eartha Kitt
5. Werewolf- Frantics
6. Reality of Air-Fried Borsk- Driving Stupid
7. Scream- Ralph Nielsen & the Chancellors
8. Vampire Victim- Old Time Relijun
9. Beware- Bill Buchanan
10. Chain Saw- The Ramones
11. The Blob- Five Blobs

[Transmission from Saturn]

12. Atrocity Exhibition- Joy Division
13. Bela Lugosi's Dead- Bauhaus
14. Dub Housing- Pere Ubu
15. Owner's Lament- Scratch Acid
16. We Will Make You One of Us- The Paper Chase
17. Utrenja (Excerpt)- Krzystof Penderecki
18. Red Eyes, Noose, and Goad- Harappian Night Recordings
19. Musique Barbare- Karel Appel
20. Graveyard- Butthole Surfers
21. Six More Miles to the Graveyard- The Residents

[Transmission from Saturn]

22. Masked Ball- Jocelyn Pook
23. Black Mass (Electric Storm in Hell)- White Noise
24. My Wall- Sunn O))) & Julian Cope
25. The Conqueror Worm- Lou Reed & Willem Defoe
26. Witch Hunt Through Haunted Woods- Zombie Battle Axe
27. The Devil Rides Out- Fantomas
28. Night on Bald Mountain [Edit]- Modest Mussorgsky
29. Crepuscule- Kaada/Patton
30. Suspiria- Goblin
31. Danse Macabre- Celctic Frost
32. Final Flight- Michael Small

Download Danse Macabre!


Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Interplanetary Interlude #15: Music for an Unmade David Lynch Film

Playlist

1. The Lonely One [edit]- Duane Eddy
2. Lord Knows Best- Dirty Beaches
3. Pavane Pour Une Infante Defunte- Lee Rosevere
4. City of Sleeping Dreams- David Rose
5. Blue Velvet Blues- Acid Mothers Temple
6. Cold- oOoOO
7. Preaching for Total Mass Suicide- Damaar
8. Solitude- NON
9. St. Louis Blues- Joe Kirby & His Orchestra
10. Stalkin' [edit]- Duane Eddy
11. Lutsen I- Connor Waldman
12. Lonesome Hunter- Timber Timbre
13. Anitra's Dance- Georges Montalba
14. Bouncer See Bouncer- Scott Walker
15. I Only Have Eyes for You- The Flamingos
16. Hotel- Dirty Beaches
17. Untitled 10- Indignant Senility
18. Where the Mission Bells Are Chiming (Down by the Sea)- Julia Holter

Download Interlude #15!


David Lynch's 1997 film Lost Highway came to theaters in my freshman year of high school, the perfect time for me to appreciate Lynch's weird brand of darkness. Much more important, however, was the film's soundtrack, packed full of the alternative and industrial stars I was just beginning to get into: Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, Marylin Manson, et al. It also featured a stellar cover of the classic Doc Pomus-penned drifters song "This Magic Moment" by Lou Reed, which happened to be the first Lou Reed song my innocent ears had ever encountered. In fact it was my favorite song on the album, perfect for an adolescent raised on 1950's rock (Buddy Holly & Chuck Berry in particular) but recently attuned to the guitar-distortion paroxysms of Nirvana and the aforementioned Pumpkins. Just around the corner would be the day someone handed me a cassette copy of the Holy Grail, The Velvet Underground and Nico.





Ok, David Lynch. Not only does he have one of the most immediately identifiable visual styles as a director and his own cinematic idiom, but there also exists something we can call a Lynchian sensibility in music, similar to but more expansive than the music he has put out himself. It includes Lynch's own predilection for the 1950's, from ice-cream chord changes to reverb-drenched 12-bar blues, heard not through the filter of nostalgia but estrangement and perversion. Then you have the work of composer Angelo Badalamenti, an ambient brew of jazz, French impressionism, dream pop, and sudden unnerving dissonances. Finally there are heavy rock elements that crop up from time to time. As Lynch is an artist who loves the manichaean approach of the chiaroscuro style, these low chugging guitars provide the earthly violence that serves as a counterpoint to the ethereality that often serves as a clear Lynchian signifier. And just when you think Lynch's soundtracks are all retro-revisionism, they suddenly sound very contemporary. The Lost Highway Soundtrack is a case in point, though this may be the most strictly commercial of his soundtracks. You really can't get a better earshot of the 1997 moment in alternative rock than a listen to this album.





The rules for putting together this mix were simple: the song must have a distinctly Lynchian flavor without ever having been used in a Lynch film. I also avoided any of Lynch's go-to artists, so no Roy Orbison (alas). Duane Eddy, however, was fair game (even though "elements" of an Eddy tune were on Lost Highway). The low guitar strings and the reverb are the essence of the proto-Lynchian, but I really sealed the deal when I slowed "The Lonely One" down a bit and added even more echo, until it sounded pretty close to the Twin Peaks theme.





Dirty Beaches were a no-brainer, the whole Badlands album really, but I had to cut myself off at two songs. Lee Rosevere's synthy take on French composer Maurice Ravel's "Pavane for a Dead Princess" is as close to Badalamenti's scores as I could find without the Bad-man himself. David Rose's "City of Sleeping Dreams" is an oddity for sure, which is exactly why it's here. If you like it, you need to check out the Strange Interludes compilation at Music for Maniacs. I think AMT's "Blue Velvet Blues" requires no explanation. oOoOO's Witch-housery provides a bit of that contemporarity I was speaking of earlier. The blackened death metal of Damaar was intended as a bit of sudden violence that often characterizes Lynch films, or a WTF-moment if you prefer, but Lynch is also no stranger to extreme metal. Remember Rammstein on Lost Highway? Remember Powermad in Wild at Heart?





Boyd Rice's NON provides some ethereality immediately thereafter (if you're listening on headphones, dig the way the percussion move across the channels throughout the song). Then we get some big band from Joe Kirby, with one of my favorite performances of that oldie-but-goodie, "St. Louis Blues". Another slowed-down-and-echoed Eddy number follows, and doesn't it just make you want to slow dance at One-Eyed Jacks, then I don't know what will. Connor Waldman is an interesting ambient artist who is directly influenced by David Lynch. I owe this discovery to Weed Temple, for whom I will soon be writing some reviews. (Stay tuned!) Timber Timbre was the first artist recommended to me when I mentioned to a friend that I was doing this mix, and though I liked them I really didn't think they had anything suitable until I heard the stunning "Lonely Hunter." Georges Montalba's "Anitra's Dance" is another piece of retro-exotica from the  highly-recommended Strange Interludes. I felt that Scott Walker's beautiful creepiness exactly matched Lynch's, so I had to have him on here. "I Only Have Eyes for You" by the Flamingos is a sultry doo-wop number in the vein of "This Magic Moment." The untitled Indignant Senility piece comes from the excellent Indignant Senility plays Wagner, in which the Teutonic master is filtered through enough effects as to become unrecognizable, though still awesome.

El Fin: the moment I heard Julia Holter's "Where Mission Bells are Chiming," I knew it would be perfect to end this set, and so it does. 

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Interplanetary Interlude #14: The Round Dance of the Cross

The vision of Christ that thou dost see
Is my vision's greatest enemy.
-William Blake

May the baby Jesus shut your mouth and open your mind.
-Captain Beefheart


Playlist

1. Jesus Built My Hotrod- Ministry
2. He Has Risen- The Knights of the New Crusade
3. Plastic Jesus- King Earl Boogie Band
4. Chocolate Jesus- Tom Waits
5. Jesus Shootin' Heroin- The Flaming Lips
6. Walkin' With Jesus- Spacemen 3
7. Jesus Said- Art Boys Collection
8. Jesus- The Velvet Underground
9. Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam- The Vaselines
10. I am the Light of This World- Reverend Gary Davis
11. Jesus is Risen Today- John Fahey
12. Crucifixion- Jim & Jean

Download Interlude #14!

Monday, March 24, 2014

Episode #19: Transcendental Numbers

Playlist

1. Facelift- The Soft Machine
2. Meeting of the Spirits- Mahavishnu Orchestra
3. All You Need to Make Music- The Stark Reality
4. Hocus Pocus- Focus
5. I've Got My Car and My TV/Picnic on a Frozen River- Faust
6. Jail-House-Frog- Amon Duul II
7. All Green- Xhol Caravan
8. Six- Hampton Grease Band
9. Colours of Chloe- Gary Burton
10. Providence- King Crimson
11. O Ksenos Zitianos- Kastores
12. Arrow Head- Osage Tribe
13. In the Court of the Crimson King- King Crimson

Download Episode #19

Monday, March 17, 2014

Interplanetary Interlude #13: From Swerve of Shore to Bend of Bay


Playlist
1. White Trash Raga- Mermen
2. This is the Metal That Do Not Burn- Cul de Sac
3. The First 10 Minutes of Cocksucker Blues- Chris Forsyth
4. As In Life: Carlion Call/Prenatal/Sidewalk University/Can't- Nels Cline
5. Old Black- Earth
6. P- Labradford
7. Deep Waters- Dirty Three



While it's named from a line in the great Irish novel, Finnegans Wake, this interlude has nothing to do with Ireland. (Then again, St. Patrick's Day may have less to do with Ireland than you think.) I recommend listening to last year's Interlude to get yer Irish kicks.

Download Interlude #13!

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Experiment #5: Kali Yuga

THE KALI YUGA STILL has 200,000 or so years to play--good news for advocates & avatars of CHAOS, bad news for Brahmins, Yahwists, bureaucrat-gods & their runningdogs.- Hakim Bey, TAZ

Hindu philosophy sees history as a cycle of four ages or yugas, beginning with a golden age, the Satya Yuga. The process is one of decline, away from the gods, away from virtue. Even lifespans shorten, from an incredible 100,000 years down to 20. Each age is represented by the demon Kali (not to be confused with the goddess of similar name) cutting off one of the legs of the sacred cow. The final age is Kali Yuga, the demonic age of vice, in which there is one-quarter virtue and three-quarters sin.*

How appropriate, then, to characterize the contemporary age in the minds of the right-wing conspiracy theorists who are featured in this piece. The rants range from psuedo-scholarly predictions that there will be a full communist takeover of America by the 1970s (a Bircher-type conspiracy theory put out in 1973 by something called "Fact Records"), to the full blown schizophrenic ravings against the Communist Gangster Computer God by the notorious Francis E. Dec. Also included is the infamous evangelical interpretation of backwards recordings of Led Zeppelin and the Satanic/Nazi imagery of KISS (a version of this is also on the new Mogwai album, Rave Tapes). The soundtrack to all this decadence is provided by the seminal drone-metal album Earth 2.

The language on this recording is often offensive, always absurd.

Download Kali Yuga!

* According to most interpretations, the Kali Yuga began in the bronze age and still continues, and since whole civilizations have risen and fallen in that time, the Hindu cosmic-cycle schema is actually totally inapplicable to contemporary politics, except as a metaphor.  

Friday, February 14, 2014

Interplanetary Interlude #12: The Triumph of Perversity


Playlist

1. How Fucking Romantic- Magnetic Fields
2. Maria- Hampton Grease Band
3. Cum in My Mouth- Tobie Columbus
4. Shave 'em Dry- Lucille Bogan
5. Rated X- Loretta Lynn
6. Whips and Things- David Allan Coe
7. Oh Bondage Up Yours!- X-Ray Spex
8. Sex Bomb- Flipper [edit]
9. Lola- The Raincoats
10. Jet Boy Jet Girl- Elton Motello
11. The Hyperemiator- Tuli Kupferberg
12. Pornoshop- Sun City Girls
13. When I'm Fucking- The Poetics
14. Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite- The Fugs
15. Kiss of Flesh- The Residents

Download Interlude 12!

Another filthy set of songs about fucking for Valentine's Day. Check out last year's set of smut if you're the insatiable type.




Thursday, January 30, 2014

Interplanetary Interlude #11: The Owl in the Sarcophagus

Playlist

1. Kaneda- Geinoh Yamashirogumi
2. Death Rides a Horse- Ennio Morricone
3. Tetsuo- Geinoh Yamashirogumi
4. Chasmaeon- Ga'an
5. Doll's Polyphony- Geinoh Yamashirogumi
6. Still I'm Sad- The Yardbirds
7. Where is Yesterday?- The United States of America
8. Shohmyoh [edit]- Geinoh Yamashirogumi
9. Voice and Bowed Percussion- Arrington de Dionyso & Ravi Padmanabha
10. Mutation- Geinoh Yamashirogumi
11. Hymn of the Cherubim- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
12. Aguirre- Popol Vuh
13. Z Point- David Grubbs
14. Requiem- Geinoh Yamashirogumi

Download Interlude #11!

Most of this interlude comes from the soundtrack to the classic anime Akira. The rest was suggested by the polyphonic and choral elements of its great soundtrack. Ennio Morricone and Popul Vuh are also soundtrack masters, of Italian and German cinema respectively. David Grubbs was a member of one of the best post-rock acts of the 90's, Gastr del Sol. The episode's title is as usual pilfered from Wallace Stevens. Perhaps you could read while you listen.