Saturn in the Summertime

1. Aires - The Zodiac
2. Twenty Feet Behind - Mary Hansen
3. Der Computer Nr. 3 - France Gall
4. Five Separate Wooshes - Imitation Electric Piano
5. Black Noise / Memory Band - Rotary Connection
6. Saturn in the Summertime - Barry Adamson
7. Triggers - April March
8. Beat! - The Karminsky Experience
9. Joyful Grass and Grape - Dorothy Ashby
10. Sexopolis - Jean-Pierre Mirouze
11. Echolalia - Cavern of Anti-Matter
12. Mon P'tit Homme Spatial - Christine Pilzer
13. Firebird - White Noise
14. Pling! - Shuggie Otis
15. All My Life - Ralph Carmichael
16. Destination Omega 3 - Sven Libaek
17. Carousel of the Planets - Perrey-Kingsley
18. Exo-Orbit - Gemma Ray
19. Cache Coeur Naif - Mouse on Mars

I rather like this one. No particular theme.  A 'mood' perhaps.  A bit more...'upbeat' than some recent ones?  Fight off the seasonal effective disorder.  Some very kind person called one of my ye olde mixes (seriously, I've been on mixcloud a long time!) 'one of the best on Mixcloud.'  Subjective, sure, but incredibly flattering; I think this mixtape maybe harkens back to that kind of mix, but with six years of somewhat widened tastes and musical discoveries (seriously, I'm enjoying the new Karminsky album a hell of a lot).

I hope you enjoy the mix.  You can download it here.

Building a Better Way

When I was a kid I came across a strange record called Go Fly A Kite, which had tantalizing song titles such as "Atom is Evil" and "Heaven Out of Hell."  It was also credited to General Electric as the artist, which I knew as a company that made appliances and got made fun of by Letterman on Late Night when I'd sneak out to watch TV in my insomniac childhood.  The consignment shop in my hometown (not called a thrift store - I wouldn't encounter those until I was able to venture into larger towns) had an upstairs loft where they kept sundry items that hadn't made it on to the shelves in the main part of the store, and when I was a kid, as long as I tucked in my t-shirt, they'd let me go up there and rummage through boxes of things.  It was often just garbage - often religious stuff, gospel or Sunday school lessons - though I did find John Rydgren's Silhouette LP in there (which is religious but also amazing and insane).  But every once in a while something truly magical would turn up.  I immediately bought Go Fly A Kite for a pretty meager sum (I'm absolutely certain it was less than a dollar) and my affinity for industrial musicals was born.  I held on to that record - I still have it in storage.  (I will have to dig it out and post it eventually - it s fabulous.)  Once I was a little older I was able I cane across a couple other industrial musicals/ad music, and have a few.  (I have many digital copies of ones I haven't been able to get physical copies of, which is generally good enough for me.)

One day I came across a copy of an album credited to Chevrolet called Music From Building A Better Way.  Believe it or not, I actually had a 45 put out by Chevrolet - who had their own label - featuring The Cyrkle (the band that brought you this madness) and Paul Revere and the Raiders - it's worth f**k-all; you can get a copy for under $5 USD.  (Don't - get it for free, it's out there.)

Apparently there was a promotional film Chevrolet released around 1974 called Building a Better Way which showcased the things you'd expect it would, and Chevrolet's label released the soundtrack to it, which is largely wordless.  (Voices appear, but only as a musical instrument for the most part.)  And I think it is a pretty fantastic album.  The music is surprisingly good.  Especially "Designing" and "Building."  "Building" is amazing, with tonal and mood shifts (it's very nearly a song suite) and Moog and an almost Beach Boys-esque vocal harmony segment, etc.  Put this album on divorced from the fact that it is a Chevrolet promotional item for hawking their cars and it's a pretty decent funk rock album.  I suppose it's cheese - especially in parts.  I played "Building" on one of my Near Mint guest bits and more than one person asked me about it.  I thought I would upload and share it.  It does appear to be somewhat rare - Discogs has two copies for sale starting at $145.  I think it's quite good, and I hope you will agree.

Download here.

Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence

For Christmas, a mix of 15 different versions / interpretations of the song Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, from electronic to jazz to classical guitar to 8-bit to lounge to Italo Disco and more (including, of course, the original version by Ryuichi Sakamoto for the soundtrack of the film of the same name).

I know it's quite soon for another mix, but I wanted to get this one in before Christmas.  O come ye merry gentlemen and women.

Opus 3 14 16

Here's an interesting library release on the St Germain Des Pres label (sub-label of Editions Montparnasse 2000) titled Opus 3 14 16.  I was under the impression that it is somewhat rare (a couple of library music enthusiasts asked me for it), though Discogs has just now possibly disabused me of that idea as there appear to be copies available for reasonable enough prices.  St Germain is a favorite little library label of mine (I adore their sleeve design, and they have some incredible releases from Alessendroni, Jacques Siroul, Macchi, Iaccouci, etc. you can look it up and probably already know).  This release is an interesting one with a sound of its own, and quite good I think.  Credited to "Unknown Artist" on Discogs, the songs are composed by A Sainz and L Sainz (all of them but two credited to both of them) so I've just designated them as the artists.  It's a solid release that I enjoy quite a bit - I wanted to share it and I hope you find it as enjoyable - here's the link.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/m0ge6923le3tg43/A_%26_L_Sainz_-_Opus_3_14_16.zip

(If you're looking for a particular, hard to find library - or soundtrack, or whatever - album, feel free to get in touch and I'll see if I have it.)

The Explosive

Here's an interesting bit of pop psychedelia from 1969: A 45 by a band called The Explosive put out on the President Records label (who put out quite bit of great and interesting psychedelic / 60s/70s pop and, eventually, disco).  The A-side is "(Who Planted Thorns In) Miss Alice's Garden" with a B-side with the not exactly enticing title "I Get My Kicks From Living" (though it is a good song).  This particular 45 is notable to me because of how much the intro to "Miss Alice's Garden" is absolutely begging to be sampled.  It's a fantastic song all around, with a sort of almost reggae vibe, but that intro (which pops up as the intro to the verses throughout the song) needs to be sampled by someone; I could easily see a song built around it.  I'm sure these songs have ended up on one of the countless psych compilations at some point, but here it is for you to download from the 45.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/city0a7lnt74o01/The_Explosive_-_%28Who_Planted_Thorns_In%29_Miss_Alice%27s_Garden.zip

Phantom Frequencies

Ghostly transmissions, false memories, haunted electronics and hauntological communications.

1. A Breeze Through the Bedford Spur - Broadcast
2. And We Begin - Loose Capacitor
3. The Cursed Streets - Concretism
4. Polymer Dawn - The Pattern Forms
5. Queen of Puddings - Moon Wiring Club
6. Golden Green - ToiToiToi
7. Sleep Chamber - Pye Corner Audio
8. Jessica Finds the Beach - The Advisory Circle
9. Cycles - Patten
10. Inhale. Exhale. Love! - Roj
11. Manc - Curd Duca
12. Etheric Double Handshake - Diagonals
13. Rodney Imbues - Mordant Music
14. Frumious Numinous - The Focus Group
15. Hundreds, Tens & Units - The Twelve Hour Foundation
16. Summer Round - Belbury Poly
17. A Moment - Concretism
18. Electronic Hintermass - Hintermass
19. Quotidian Forgotten - Listening Center
20. Feline Ascension Time - Moon Wiring Club
21. Weekend Wildfire - Bibio
22. False Memory Syndrome - The Caretaker
23. Shortwave Fishtank - Howlround

Download

Switched On Santa

In the spirit of Christmas (and because I love these goofy old Moog records), here's a link to download this album.  Ho ho ho.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/qnhyr9bo47eq1eo/Switched_On_Santa%21.zip

The Mission

On my most recent mix, I included a song by the mysterious band The Mission, titled "Gailing Made It."



An absolutely batty bit of psych-prog from 1968, this group is only known to have released one 45, which I have been obsessed with for at least a decade.  It's made the rounds enough to have ended up on a couple of Pebbles-esque comps - Psychedelic Archaeology and Journey Into...Psychedelia, both of which are unofficial CD-R comps and as such I imagine perhaps not a great deal of research was likely put into the information about the music included.  (I do highly recommend seeking out these compilations.)  Discogs confirms these are the only two comps the songs have appeared on, for what that's worth.

Discogs also has the 45 for sale starting at $299.00.  According to the site, only a few people claim to have the 45, and it has only ever sold for $200.  (I've seen one or two floating around eBay over the years in that price range as well.)  45cat lists only one person as having the 45.  All of this is to say - it's a rarity.  "Gailing Made It" is actually the b-side; the a-side is the equally and wonderfully bonkers "Calmilly":




Again, I would absolutely call this psych-prog; it's ahead of its time in 1968, and I'd say I've not heard anything quite like it regardless.  And both are just nuts - "Gailing Made It" seems to be in its own language for a great deal of the song, with lyrics that are mostly incomprehensible, and amazing monk-chant vocals (there are really nearly no solo vocals on either song; they are either all chanted in unison or harmonized).  "Calmilly" - which is not a real word either but totally seems like it could be - is another fantastic monk-chant slice of bonkers progressive psychedelia, with more comprehensible though no less surreal vocals that seem to be about possibly a waitstaff getting ready to serve a couple who are perhaps jumpy as care must be taken not to scare them away.  Seriously, whatever these guys had, I'd like some.

Both songs contain some fantastic shifts, with "Calmilly" spanning a couple of different time signatures.  They have a bit of the frenetic sound of garage psych perhaps, but these songs are wonderfully constructed and complex.

Also, notice how the keyboards take center stage - besides the bass guitar, I don't think there is any electric guitar on these two tracks, or at most it takes second fiddle to keyboards; the breakdown in "Calmilly" sounds like a guitar solo, but I think it's a keyboard solo.  Keep that in mind - even if there's electric guitar on these two tracks, it's absorbed into the melange of keyboards/organs and chants.

Beyond the music itself, the label lists only the song title followed by the name of the group.  There are no name credits on the label.  The record label is identified as BET Records (with the fantastically banal slogan "you can bet it's the best in stereo!"), which, according to Discogs, only put out this 45 and one other release; looking at the other release, I'm not convinced it is the same label, but perhaps it is.  The catalog number on this 45 is 101, with each side identified as "A" or "B," indicating this is the first release by this label.  Other than that, there only remains "Draco Music Co." listed as the publishing company.  Draco is a very evocative name, and has always contributed to the slightly Gothic feel to the songs.  And that's it.

There's something beautiful about something like this; a band, maybe just a garage band, or some session musicians or maybe even - in the vein of something like The Jellies - some students, who wrote a couple of songs, scrounged up some studio time, and laid down a couple of tracks in an hour or two, then went on with their lives, perhaps in bands or perhaps not, with one incredible 45 left to the wind to be discovered later.  I imagine these guys not even being aware anyone has this 45 or that, to a handful of people, these two songs might be near-legendary.  Still, every once in a while, I'll do a Google search, or play the songs for music-collector friends, and I've never gotten closer to finding anything out.  I know I'm not the only one - I've seen comments on a few sites, and no new information seems to ever emerge.  (In fact, doing a search using the song title of "Gailing Made It" as a search term actually returns my most recent mix, which I posted less than 48 hours ago, as a result.)  In a bit of OCD-fueled boredom today, I decided to do a little searching, and it occurred to me that, as the group had gone to the trouble to publish their songs, maybe the songs had been submitted for copyright.  Any music submitted for copyright should be listed in a catalog of copyright entries - assuming these would have been submitted for copyright in 1968, I took to Google Books to search.  And sure enough, I hit upon a possibly fascinating result.

Sure enough, the songs are listed - along with two others, which carry the titles "JUNK WALK" and "LAS ZING NAIL US."  The latter sounds like more batshit language similar to the vocals/lyrics to "Gailing Made It."  How tantalizing to know that two other songs were perhaps at least demonstrated, if not pressed.  But the most fun tidbit here is the name the songs are copywritten under: Daryl Dragon.  

If that name isn't familiar to you:

Yeah, that's right.  Daryl Dragon is the real name of The Captain of Captain and Tennille fame.  

Doesn't make sense?  Sure - Dragon was born into a musical family, with his father a well known conductor, his siblings being involved in music in one form or another (his brother produced the Captain and Tennille albums), and Dragon - who, Fun Fact! was nicknamed Captain by Mike Love of The Beach Boys when Dragon was playing keyboards with them in the early-to-mid-70s - was primarily a keyboardist.  He'd been involved in bands in the 60s, and did join up with The Beach Boys in the early 70s, making what Wikipedia deems as significant contributions to their recorded works in addition to touring with them.  Keyboards are front and center in these songs by The Mission, and it would also perhaps explain why the 45 is a one-and-done affair - within a year or so Dragon would be on to bigger and (your mileage may vary here) better opportunities.  Certainly lucrative ones.  And lastly - Draco.  The publishing name chosen fits and makes sense - it would likely be a take on Dragon Co.  

So not only are there perhaps two other songs recorded by The Mission - including one with the most bug humping crazy title of all (Las Zing Nail Us!) - one of the forces behind these marvelously crazed slices of monk-chanted psych-prog might be The Captain - "Love Will Keep Us Together," "Muskrat Love" (if you want to question your very existence and the existence of the universe, look up the "music video" to "Muskrat Love"), "Do That To Me One More Time" - The Captain.  (He does have a doll made in his likeness, released by the ever-reliable Mego - and, to make it a double-honor, his head mold was later used for Mego's Paul Stanley doll - before melting, of course.)  

I actually think this makes me love these two songs even more.  I could, of course, be wrong - but how many guys are out there named Daryl Dragon who are keyboard players from musical families that were operating in the late 1960s and would go on to work with The Beach Boys (who were not completely out of their more psychedelic period - among others, Dragon would work on the Boys' album Surf's Up, playing pipe organ, Moog, vibraphone, etc.)...?  Now, if I could only get in touch with Mr Dragon, who is still with us (but sadly has been suffering some health issues, apparently)...

UPDATE: See part 2 of this story - it's a whopper. READ IT HERE. 

L’appel du Vide

The call of the void. Night thoughts, lucid dreams, cloudy skies and clouded mind.

1. Cloudy Night - We All Together
2. Prelude - Millennium
3. Kaleidoscope - Peter Pan and The Good Fairies
4. Thinking is the Best Way to Travel - The Moody Blues
5. Sit With the Guru - Strawberry Alarm Clock
6. Dream Magazine - Svensk
7. Fool on the Hill - Lisa Miller
8. Why Don't You Just Drop In - Giles, Giles & Fripp
9. Gailing Made It - The Mission
10. The World is a Circus - Fiona Richmond & Anthony Newley
11. If I Had a Ribbon Bow - Fairport Convention
12. You're Too Incomprehensible - Tages
13. Oleh Oleh Bandu Bandong - Kevin Ayers
14. The Owl - Silver Apples
15. Balloons - Peter Pan and The Good Fairies
16. The Telegraph is Calling - The Pawnshop
17. Dr Root's Garden - Chrysalis
18. Baby Lemonade - Syd Barrett
19. Don't Turn Around - Birmingham Sunday
20. Some Velvet Morning - Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra

Back to my "normal" mode - I think, excluding the stuff I did recently for Near Mint, the last three mixes (including this one) have been of a piece or a trio with a bit of a theme running through it that I've been getting out of my system perhaps.  

Speaking of my recent guest mixes for Near Mint, I was pleasantly surprised to listen to The OST Show - also on Resonance FM, of course - and hear the wonderful Karminsky Experience guys as the guests, who I haven't really thought about for years (their last album - besides a couple of absolutely wonderful compilations of fun easy listening music - was about a decade ago; I purchased it on CD at a bookstore that is within walking distance of my current apartment that no longer exists - it's a CVS Pharmacy now), who played a flawless bunch of music - including some stuff very adjacent to some things I put together for Near Mint, including a track from John Rydgren's Silhouette Segments and some fantastic old drug panic samples.  Near Mint got there first!  (Ha ha.)  I also managed to come up with some absolutely horrible puns. (I found the pun competition a bit more difficult this week and didn't really get a "hit" in, though the one that I was most proud of, and that got the lovely engineer - who educated me on British puddings - to laugh the most, didn't get read - but that's really due to my "esprit d'escalier" and only getting mine in near the last minute; Jonny did say "I do like that you really tried," which is rightfully damning with faint praise - I'll do better next time!)

But enough of that!  I hope this mix is met with the approval of whoever, and I imagine I'll have another one soon (I find that I end up unwinding after working on my own stuff by organizing my collection, which lately has led to me setting things aside and making mixes, for better or (and?) worse), and Fun Fact:  On the Kevin Ayers song included in this mix, the wonderfully and almost nightmarishly batty "Oleh Oleh Bandu Bandong" (off the 1969 album Joy Of a Toy, which has not a bad song on it - and this song is not indicative of the rest of the album whatsoever), the female vocals are provided by some Ladybirds from the Benny Hill show.  Now I've got Yakety Sax stuck in my head.  Off to find an acceptable earworm to clear that one out.

Love and Cannibalism

The eagerly anticipated - by me, anyway, certainly - new album from one of my favorite currently active bands, The New Lines, came out the other day.  It's called Love and Cannibalism and is absolutely sublime.  If you enjoy psychedelia, chamber pop, baroque rock, dream pop, etc. etc., they are well worth checking out and the new album is a perfect place to start.

Troisième (Near Mint "outtakes")

Songs that did not make my recent "guest DJ" stint on Near Mint, for one reason or another. I thought the closest runners-up might make an interesting mix in itself.  

It runs a little on the long side but my inner editor was not fully engaged - and, since being asked to guest DJ the show with the brief being "the weirder and more obscure, the better," it led me to pulling out some stuff I'd not dug up in a while (including some things I thought I'd lost along the way).  (I also found I could have gone far weirder but I didn't want to ruin someone else's show completely - just a little bit.)  Hopefully you'll enjoy this adjunct, parallel-universe bizzaro mix tape, put together with Mr Robin the Fog's blessing (and seriously, check out his website and the most excellent Howlround, and of course Resonance FM, which has more outstanding shows - ALL available as podcasts - than they should be allowed, really - one can't keep up with all of it!)

Tracklist:

Intro
2002: A Hit Song (The Free Design)
Highly Illogical (Mr. Spock)
UFO (Pink Lady)
Strong Electro-Magnetic Waves (Tomita)
Spaceport (Toomorrow)
Spaceman (Beast)
Interlude (Lord Buckley, "The Hip Einie" exerpt)
Electrocation of Fire-Ants (Turn On)
Machines (Lothar and The Hand People)
Building (Chevrolet)
Mr Freeze (N Hefti)
Love Today, Cry Tomorrow (C Stapleton)
I Love All the Love In You (B Crewe & C Fox)
Glowin' (Dr John)
Hippy Version of the 23rd Psalm (J Rydgren)
Light My Fire (B Auger & J Driscoll)
Program 10, Pt 6 (Dreamies)
Little Green Bag (Jerry Ross Symposium)
Waiting for the Gold (Supercasanova)
The LS Bumblebee (Cook & Moore)
The Riddler (F Gorshin)
Barnabas (Vampire State Building)
Moontown (Lucia Pamela)
The Transformed Man (W Shatner)
Twinkle Twinkle Little Earth (L Nimoy)

Near Mint mix part 2

The second part of my mix for my good friend Robin The Fog's radio show Near Mint on Resonance FM.  A big thanks once again for the honor of being asked to contribute.  Here's a tracklist if you're interested:

1. Intro (The Beach Pick-Up - Eric Weber)

2. You Never Come Closer - Doris

3. Speech Exercises: Trees and Flowers - The Children of the Italia Conte School

4. Alibi Annie - Trifle

5. Robot de Janeiro - Jean-Jacques Perrey and Daniel Longhein

6. A King Size Drag - Supercasanova

7. It's the Going Thing - Ford Motor Company

8. Puella! Puella! (Woman! Woman!) - Man

9. Sexy Mood - Daniel White

10. Weather Girl - Dr. Hooker

I remain ultra-flattered and hopefully Robin's show will recover from my abuse.  And please check out his website as he does nothing but wondrous things - too many, in fact.

Of Cities and Escapes

1. Of Cities and Escapes - The Poppy Family
2. Escape Lane - The Advisory Circle
3. It's Raining Today - Scott Walker
4. Hélicoptère - Mireille Darc
5. Citta Violenta - Ennio Morricone
6. House of Mirrors - David McCallum
7. Take Me With You - Lyn Christopher
8. The City Life - Piero Umiliani
9. Instant Night - The Luv'd Ones
10. Atlanta Inn - Janne Schatter
11. Young Freedom - Francis Lai
12. Gate City Savings and Loan - Thes One
13. Promenade Solitaire - Ennio Morricone
14. Dark World - Sven Libaek
15. April Grove - Chrysalis
16. Move With the Dawn - Mark Eric
17. I'm Not Living Here - The Ballroom
18. Frankly, Mr. Shankly - The High Llamas
19. Angels of Ashes - Scott Walker
20. A New Career In a New Town - David Bowie

(Download to come)

Inspiration - # 1

According to a few people I know, I need to "actually blog."  This blog has more or less just been a place I've put links to my Mixcloud page.  Which is, of course, a page that anyone can just directly go to.  My attempts to post about anything else have been awkward at best.  I have no intention of blogging nakedly about my personal life or my views on politics or what I've had for dinner.  The blog was set up because I do have a musical project in the works (which I expect will be completed in the Spring) and I was told that I needed to have "web presence."  (I have very helpful friends - many of whom are actual musicians, so I try to listen to their advice.)  In thinking about what I might blog about, I thought it perhaps appropriate, if obvious, to blog about inspiration.

My musical inspirations are laid bare pretty openly within the mixes that I make - something, if you look at my Mixcloud, I've actually been doing for quite some time.  (The first one I posted is six years old - holy cow.)  I'm sure I'll talk about those as I go, but obviously, anything from psychedelia to prog to sunshine pop to baroque rock to electronic music and radiophonics to library music to soundtracks, and everything in between, are musical inspirations.

I got started collecting music as a child at the end of the LP age (smack in the middle of the cassette age, really).  I grew up in the middle of nowhere - out in the country, the Bible Belt no less.  I was traumatized by Southern American religion by one person to the point of being left with what one doctor later surmised may have been some level of childhood PTSD; in the end, I ended up fascinated by all things occult and "pagan," as well as spirituality and religion - the one and only award I was given in all of high school was for the Old and New Testament Bible class (yes, that was an actual class I took in my senior year of high school, which was 1999). I grew up in the 80s and 90s, prior to the vinyl resurgence, and was lucky enough to snag quite a bit of vinyl from the public library when they sold off their collection and also "consignment shops" (what we called thrift stores in my hometown) where much vinyl could be had for as little as ten cents.  It's how I ended up with odd prog LPs like Second Hand (and utter crap like REO Speedwagon).  I eventually worked at that public library - it was my first job - and was given first look at a lot of great stuff being sold, including educational LPs, which began my love of older (and often experimental) teaching-aid albums.  I eventually moved out of my conservative small hometown to more urban pastures, and for a while, embarked on a successful career.  Luckily, some portion of my music collection remained with my folks, who are low-level hoarders.  Unhappily, a good amount of it got donated.  Somewhere out there I hope someone got enjoyment out of some pretty rare albums that I'd rather not think about considering what I've seen them going for on sites like Discogs in recent years.

When my career disappeared along with a sizable portion of the economy in 2008, I drifted a bit.  I eventually decided that escapism was where I belonged, and for better and for worse, my music collecting began again.  Eventually, my desire to "participate" kicked in.  I was in bands in my teens and into my very early 20s - I had no desire to try to get a band together, but surely I could pick up instruments again!  Playing an instrument is not just like riding a bike (also, riding a bike is not just like riding a bike - you absolutely do kind of forget just how to maintain equilibrium and I busted my ass getting on a bicycle for the first time in a decade - but, I digress; maybe that's just me).  It took me quite a long time and a lot of trial and error figuring out what shape my musical project would take; what I would use; and if it would even be something I would share with anyone else.  At first, I had no intention of letting anyone else hear anything I did.  (An idea that, once I'm done, may turn out to have been correct.) Some chance encounters with friends and musicians and some (possibly?) well-placed advice later, and I'm surrounded not only by LPs, but musical instruments and accouterments, with a project in progress that I intend to release when it is complete (though I do not intend to ask anything for it).  As I've watched many of my favorite, life-changing bands and artists fall by the wayside, and discovered new, amazing artists, it's not much of a question for me as to what form the actual music would likely take.  But what do I have to write about?

I would never spell everything out completely.  I'm not sure I could even if I wanted to.  But, I thought, if I was going to "blog," in a space meant somewhat as a place to talk about and post music, I would talk around some inspirations.  I don't have too many questions as to what inspired the actual music on some of my favorite albums; in some cases, especially with a few of my favorite artists, it's nearly too obvious what they were listening to.  (Here are some wonderful cases in point.)  But the chords chosen, the changes and the cryptic words, the emotions - or lack thereof - behind them - that's a conversation.  Perhaps I will get into a bit of that here.  (It's not like anyone is really reading this, is it?!)  Even before any of my actual written music is laid out before ears other than mine and my poor neighbors - what moves me and inspires me says a lot about what I love and why I love it.  I suppose this is as good a place as any to dump some word salad - as someone said to me the other day, "it is supposed to be a 'blog,' isn't it?"

For now:

The quickly and shoddily thrown together page header logo thingy - which is not at all what I envision any sort of design to be for any of my later-to-come original music - was lifted from this:

I'm sure I will write more soon.  (Even though just writing all that feels incredibly pretentious.)  For now, I have a new mix to put the finishing touches on and post.

Near Mint guest mix!

I was honored to be asked to "DJ" a two-part set for the wonderful Resonance FM radio show Near Mint hosted by my friend Robin the Fog - here is the first part!  (The second part will be on the radio - THE RADIO! - next Tuesday at 1pm EST / 6pm UK time - you can listen live on Resonance FM, but of course a podcast version will be posted afterward.)

A special thanks to Robin for inviting me to do this (with the brief of "make it weird," so hopefully I lived up to that within reason - I also tried to make it somewhat American-centric, if that makes sense; as an Anglophile, it would be very easy for me to make a mix of music from the UK or Europe, which is likely the majority of my record collection).  Please visit Robin's wonderful site and check out all of the wonderful things he does, of which there are many.

Disparaître

Fever dreams of escape.

1. Karmic Dream Sequence #1 - The Millennium
2. I Said Goodbye to Me - Harry Nillsson
3. I Will Be Absorbed - The Egg
4. Déshominisation - Alain Goraguer
5. Shadow of Death Hotel - Barry Adamson
6. La Horse - Serge Gainsbourg
7. L'enfant Au Royaume Des Mouches - Jean-Claude Vannier
8. Fire, Damp & Air - The Advisory Circle
9. Les Aimies des memes - Stereolab
10. My Soul Was Lost, My Soul Was Lost, And No One Saved Me - Jane Weaver
11. Dave's Dream - Broadcast
12. Braindead - Gloria
13. So Long Supernova - Comus
14. Come and Buy - The Crazy World of Arthur Brown
15. Le Chat du Café des Artistes - Jean-Pierre Ferland
16. Nautilus - Bob James

That's How the World is Made

Self-explanatory.

1. That's How the World is Made - BJ Ward
2. Rainy Day - Susan Christie
3. Lost in a Lost World - The Moody Blues
4. My Death - Scott Walker
5. It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl - Faust
6. A Famous Myth - The Groop
7. Man is Not a Bird - Broadcast
8. Where Do I Go - The Free Design
9. To Put Up With You - The Sunshine Company
10. Walk On By - The 18th Century Corporation
11. I'll See You There - The Poppy Family
12. I Just Wasn't Made For These Times - Peggy Lipton
13. It Might As Well Be Dumbo - The High Llamas
14. Sad is the Way that I Feel - Mark Eric
15. Five O'Clock in the Morning - Wendy & Bonnie
16. The Sign (Pt. III) - David Axelrod
17. I Start Counting - Basil Kirchin
18. Old Man Willow - Elephant's Memory
19. Spleen - The Sound of Feeling
20. On Your Own Again - Scott Walker

Ripples

Two mixes in two days?!  What, am I spending all of my free time laying in bed with synthesizers and my external drive with all of my music on it?  Yes, yes I am.

This one is a bit more coherent than the last.

Wistful melancholy; Oncoming rush of Autumnal emotion; Endings and beginnings

Library music of the 70s and 80s.

1 Birth of the Universe (A Baker/R Morgan/P Jackson)
2. Wind Surf Ballad (Dominique Guiot)
3. End of a Summerlove (Milan Pilar Group)
4. Eternity (A Hawkshaw)
5. Round (Yan Tregger & Pierre Devevey)
6. A New World (Brian Bennett)
7. Girl on a Bike (Brian Dee)
8. Rainy Road
9. Tomorrow's Dream (Geoff Bastow)
10. Tuned Waves (John Fiddy & Norman Chandler)
11. Station Farewell (Vic Flick)
12. Starlight (Francis Monkman)
13. Fathoms (Frank McDonald & Terry Devine-King)
14. Melancholy Moog (John Fiddy & Norman Chandler)
15. Lisbeth (Oscar Rocchi)
16. Ripples (Julian Nott)
17. Dusk (Jacky Giordano)
18. Bucolic (William Gum-Boot & Lawrence Wiffin)
19. Mistral (Astral Sounds)
20. Surrealism (Andrew Jackman)

It looks like I may have a new source for the downloading of the mix, but it's uploading extremely slow.  So, maybe a link eventually?  If you really must have a download, there are a number of ways to just rip the mix - but hopefully I can provide one for possible future peoples who may read this one day--certainly no one now is reading this!

How do you take an already transcendent piece of music and make it even more beautiful? Here's how.

God bless YouTube - of course someone would have uploaded chunks of MTV's show Amp, which I would watch in the middle of the night when I was 13; some of it is a bit dodgy now I suppose, but nostalgia. Also, that Ken Ishii song and video hold up.



One thing I always quite loved about the show was the way it almost felt stream of consciousness; in my memory, which these clips are proving to be mostly false, they didn't necessarily tell you right off when they were on to a different song.
Besides the Ishii video, the one I remember most was Future Sound of London's "Max," which is still a gorgeous piece of music that completely holds up. (Future Sound of London, in my opinion, are one of the great unsung acts; they get lumped in with "techno" from their first album, which was dance-y, but Lifeforms and Dead Cities are far beyond anything most other electronic acts were doing. They should be mentioned much more often.)

Lord have mercy.





(By the way, this comes from a wonderful show called The Beat, of which you can find several full shows uploaded on YouTube. Well worth checking out - it was a regional show, and have some wonderful performances, in addition to having possibly the greatest set design in the history of everything.)

From Way Out

I'm incredibly late here, but of course Jean-Jacques Perrey died recently. (The day he passed, I was in hospital, and the days immediately following weren't very good, so I blame that somewhat.) Obviously Perrey's influence in music, especially electronic music (and rock and pop groups incorporating electronics into their music), cannot be overstated. I was somehow Facebook friends with the man - just one of those automatic things I suppose - and he was, to the end, extremely vibrant and full of life and clearly loved what he did and what he got to do. A life very well lived. If James Brown is The Godfather of Soul, Jean-Jacques Perrey is The Godfather of Electronic. Some of my favorites - I still quite enjoy the wonderful oddity that is Mr. Ondioline:



I will always return to Perrey-Kingsley's The In Sound From Way Out, it's just utter perfection and madness:



I really love the library music he produced, and he actually did a good few, like Moog Sentations on the Editions Montparnasse 2000 label:



Or an album called Moog Mig Mag Moog, also for Montparnasse, which is delightfully bonkers:



And lastly, one that I don't think gets mentioned enough but that I quite thoroughly enjoy:



To bring a Broadcast connection into this, here's a lovely picture of Trish Keenan having a chat with Perrey:



Rest in pease, Mr Perrey. I know angels generally play harps; I hope an exception is made in this case and you get a Moog.

I Am Going to Set Myself on Fire

Here is an interesting bit of business posted by the wonderful Starving Daughter's Vinyl Impressions blog - the wonderfully named artist/group I Am Going to Set Myself On Fire (which is about how I and probably many other people are feeling right about now), with an album called The Challenge of the Salt, which, I don't know, but this song in particular is quite good:




He's generous enough to offer up the entire album for download - and there's many more where that came from; seriously good stuff on offer there, I highly recommend checking out that blog.  The album is one I'd never remotely heard of, and has an interesting pedigree which I'll leave it to you to click the link above and read it from that blog directly.  The album is a mixture of songs with vocals - which I don't particularly think work all that well, but it's not horrible - and then instrumental versions.  The track above it my favorite of the lot, but it's a nice oddity that's worth checking out - and then check out the other extremely generous offerings of that wonderful blog.  Now excuse me, I am going to set myself on fire.

Soundcloud

In addition to making mixes and collecting music, I am working on a musical project (which is starting to finally come along nicely).  I have a Soundcloud page which has very little on it at the moment, but eventually will continually be updated.  It does have a couple of instrumental pieces that may or may not be used as interstitials - but they are all done via tape (namely, my old Akai reel to reel that I rescued from a thrift store and my Echoplex EP-3).

I also have posted the wonderful song from Fiona Richmond and twenty minutes of choice game show music from the 70s, so there's that too.

Hysterie

No rhyme or reason - just a mix of library music from my collection that caught my fancy in the past few days.  Some of it is probably somewhat obscure.

I pulled a boner and neglected to write down the tracklist, so I'm going to have to figure it out.  I'll post as soon as I've got it sorted.  If a track catches your fancy, let me know and I'll figure out what it is.  (Said to no one.)

This is fun.



I've been obsessed with hidden messages in music since I was very little and my father scared me shitless by turning the motor off on his turntable and playing Revolution 9 backwards for me.

And just because I like Boards of Canada, though this has nothing to do with possible "secret messages" - it's very well done, especially the 1969 segment:





Happy Cycling.

Program Me!

Part 1.

A fever dream stream-of-consciousness audio of songs for or by children, from Film / TV, children's records, etc. from the 60's, 70's, and 80's.

I'm not even going to attempt a track listing here. If there is something you hear and would like to know what it is, let me know and I can tell you.

There will be a second part eventually.  

Why

Emotional; Bittersweet; Bemused; Existential


Scott Walker - Plastic Palace People
Bulbous Creation - End of the Page
Euphoria - There is Now
Susan Christie - No One Can Hear You Cry
Michel Legrand - Ask Yourself Why
Shuggie Otis - Aht Uh Mi Hed
The High Llamas - The Hot Revivalist
Broadcast - Hawk
The Association - Pandora's Golen Heebie Jeebies
50 Foot Hose - God Bless the Child
The Left Banke - Dark is the Bark
C.A. Quintet - Dr. of Philosophy
Roger Nichols and the Small Circle of Friends - Snow Queen
BJ Ward - That's How the World is Made
Stereolab - Galaxidion
Scott Walker - The Seventh Seal


I'm having trouble with the Mediafire account so I will have to find other means to provide download. (I do realize no one is reading this now - but perhaps in the future.)  

La Douleur Exquise

Tracklist:

"O Willow Waly" (Theme from The Innocents) - Isla Cameron
"Reflections on a Misty Morning" - Brian Bennett
"Summer's Bird" - Hong Kong in the 60s
"Arpeges D'April" - Verschu & Bougiouzis
"Profumo Della Notte" - Giuliano Sorgini
"Maldonne" - Vladimir Cosma
"Chanson d'O" - Francoise Hardy
"Setting Sun" - Peter Howell & John Ferdinand
"Ma Petite Maison a Moi" - Alessandro Alessandroni
"Tournis Perpetuel" - Caravelli
"La Strano Vizio" - Nora Orlandi
"La Deux Poissons" - Dominique Guiot
"Giocando Con le Note" - I Cantori Moderni
"Amore Come Dolore" - Ennio Morricone
"Longing for You" - Johnny Pearson
"Surrounding Seas" - Jean-Pierre Decerf
"Guitare Blessee" - Claude Perraudin
"Selvaggia" - Bixio, Frizzi & Tempera
"Marcel-Deborah" - Nora Orlandi
"Extase" - Alessandro Alessandroni
"She'll Never Come Back" - Stelvio Cipriani
"La Solitude" - Francis Lai
"Teresa, Lark of Ascension" - Broadcast
"My Autumn's Done Come" - Lee Hazelwood

This is my autumnal mix, or at least a start of Autumn mix.  The Autumn emotions are not necessarily literal emotions about seasonal change - but I'll get into that when I have more time to write.

Tomorrow Always Comes

Just posting a fun half hour of madness while I work on some other things that I'll hopefully post very soon.

Molecule Dance

Electronic library / ambient / "discoid funk" music from the 70s and early 80s

1. Mike Vickers - Central Office of Information
2. Brian Bennett - Discovery
3. Alan Hawkshaw - Heavy Industry
4. Chameleon (Simon Park) - Vapours
5. Sam Sklair & Gus Galbraith - Computer Talk
6. Reginald J Lewis - Programmadate
7. Mike Vickers - Surf Rider
8. Francis Monkman - The Achievements of Man
9. Unit Eight - Dose of Salts
10. Alan Hawkshaw - Technicolor
11. Bernard Fevre / Black Devil Disco Club - Molecule Dance
12. Les Hurdle & Frank Ricotti - Pacewaved
13. Tony Hymas - Final Inspection
14. Chameleon (Simon Park) - Pool
15. Keith Mansfield & Richard Elen - Energy Fields (a)
16. John Matthews - Power Source
17. Gaston Borreani - Jupiter
18. Brian Bennett - Solstice
19. Francis Monkman - The Achievements of Man (link)

Interabang

Varied moods; library, soundtrack; laid back, progressive, beautiful, anxious, bittersweet, tense, relaxed. 58min49sec

Tracklist:

1. Basil Kirchin - Sketch 1
2. Ennio Morricone - Svolta Definitiva
3. Daniele Patucchi - Susan Theme
4. Camille Sauvage - Declic
5. Giuliano Sorgini - Mad Town
6. The Polish Radio Orchestra - Anxiety
7. Giuseppe De Luca - Dorian Gray
8. Francesco di Masi - Tema di Londra
9. Magnetic SYstem (Bixio/Frizzi/Tempura) - Vai Gorilla (Original Single - Side A)
10. Berto Pisano - Interrabang
11. Stefano Torossi - Omicidio per Vocazione
12. Teisco - Tree to the Wind
13. Guglielmo Papararo / Vittorio Montis - Jonosfera
14. Bruno Nicolai - Psycho Meeting
15. Stefano Torossi - Dolce Shake
16. Stelvio Cipriani - Papaya
17. Giuliano Sorgini - Space & Freedom
18. Roland Kovac New Set - Eternal Dimension

Sun Ride

mix - upbeat; melancholy; dwindling summer

Tracklist:

1. John Leach: Sun Ride
2. Stelvio Cipriani: Wild Steel
3. Atmo (Amedeo Tomassi): Il Personaggio del Giorno
4: Thunderbird 6 Main Title: Barry Gray
5. Chameleon (Simon Park): Dahlia
6. Unknown
7. Luciano Bergonzi: Missoula
8. Giuliano Sorgini: Profumo Della Notte
9. Francoise de Roubaix: La Recherche
10. Chameleon: Crosstalk
11. Alessandro Alessondroni: Dream
12. Piero Piccioni: Richmond Bridge (Party Version)
13. Vic Flick: Gathering
14. Basil Kirchin: Broad Highway

Download to come!