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.