The Nuclear Family (#82)

Source here. Originally aired on 11/13/1997.

Let me start by saying I totally love Ian's announcement at the beginning that WXDU is a peace-loving organization and does not condone the use of nuclear weaponry, despite the contents of the show. That totally makes my day each time I listen to it, because it's like the perfect combination of cheekiness and sincerity.

Just after this it almost seems like dead air. One might be inclined to skip the really quiet bits. It builds a little gradually.

This is all cold-war era stuff. So the music and whatnot will be familiar to a certain age (those people are probably not reading this, but whatever). This is more Nuclear, and less Family, but the actual explosions are easier to articulate than the metaphorical ones. There's an inexplicable amount of stuff from a multiracial acceptance album; and an antique one at that, because it uses the words "Negro" and "Mongolian" liberally and earnestly.

1. STRUM AND DRAG
2. A very quiet beginning
3. No atheists in foxholes
4. Nuclear tourism
5. Duck and Cover!
6. Shopping list
7. An antiquated digression on race while the bombs fall
8. "It's like Titanic, but with nuclear weapons."
9. It doesn't get much more majestic than this
10. That funny in-between look
11. What's the point of building it if you don't use it?
12. It can destroy any city (in Texas)
13. Stupidity has a habit of getting its way

TKDF Reports Live News (#77)

Source here. Originally broadcast on October 9, 1997.

80% of any blog is apologizing for infrequent posting, so I'll forgo that there and hope you have us in your automatic reader and this just pops up as a pleasant surprise. I'll try and knock out a few of these over the break, and send them out in measured fashion.

This is sample-heavy, and somewhat localized to the at-the-time North Carolina home of the show. These are not intrinsically bad things. Some of the less-local news is very newsworthy, and in particular snippits of Negativland's legal troubles feature occasionally. Percussive Morse Code compliments robotic telex.

1. To Protect and to Serve a Voice Synthesizer
2. A lack of crowd control
3. Absinthe of Malice (Nectar of the Goths)
   
4. News, Reported
5. This is Yhaoo News.
6. Everybody Quiet!
7. Dean Smith is Stepping Down
8. Unabombermultiplex.
9. The History of Howland Island
10. The Tape Fell Into the Wrong Hands
11. Students and Alumni
12. Junior Rodeo Storm Warning
13. We now return to our reporter in North Carolina.
    

Another Hiatus Heard From

Just to say I'll be posting a new show this weekend. Been busy job hunting, but look for another show post tomorrow. Sorry about the wait.

Surprise Visitor (Part 1) (#48)

Apologies for that long gap there in posting. This show was originally broadcast on March 27th, 1997. Show source found here.

Though it's called "Part One", this recording has two semi-distinct halves. It starts like a solo session, as taking a long time to get to spastic, hyperactive, or call-and-response-y stages. Shows took place pretty late at night, and you had to really be raring to go to pull off a full two-three hour shift of solid collage and manipulation that felt engaging and interested. My own tendencies, when left to myself, were towards droning, hypnotic fields and slabs of sound. As soon as a second person was involved and playing things alongside me, an interaction began to happen, and this often sounds either more disjointed, or, when it worked really well, like a conversation or give-and-take. This show's first half doesn't get very far past looped guitar buzzes, de-contextualized sound effects--motorboats, welding, trashcans--and way too much Clown Party.

Once the second side of the Part 1 tape begins around the 45 minute mark, things brighten up a little bit, with more vocal fragments, stop-and-start pacing, and twitchy turntable work. It jumps in and out of active and passive modes, ending quite ephemerally. "Surprise Visitor", in this case, could have meant someone who distracted me/us from starting the show off brightly, but I expect it refers to my starting the show alone, and then some collaborator appears to help out for a bit.

1. By "industrial" we mean heavy industry
2. Dry/unemotional funk breakdown
3. Hypnosis using effect pedals
4. I can't get my drum circle started
5. Clown Party with a knife fight, maybe
6. Where is the "bludgeoning" sample when we need it?
7. German murmurs, vocal deconstruction
8. Jud jud jud jud
9. Everyone leaves the room
10. Sinister roar and approaching guitar
11. It's Monk time
12. Confused computer jazz
13. Feathered shivering

Music and Noise, Pt. 2 (#20)

Originally broadcast on October 5, 1996, and show source found here.

I feel my role for these programs now is part historian and interpreter, and sometimes apologist. I recount the facts and details about the original show and how it was made, I provide context from the intents and environments at that time, and I also admit when the shows fail to live up to their potential. This one feels at times like it needs apologizing for, with dead-air minutes and interminable stretches of unpleasant scrapings.

This is, however, what this show is also fundamentally about: pointing out the subjectivity of sound appreciation and attempting to sow seeds in the extreme outer corners of the possible aural field. Music is sometimes differentiated from noise as being organized or desired sound. But putting Music and Noise on a linear axis varying in degrees of Organization or Desirability does not address the subjective nature of those factors. Repetitive factory sounds, clumsy guitar dismemberment, slap funk bass, scrambled tape feedback, reverberating vocal grumbles as found within this show are all equally organized/disorganized, or desirable/undesirable based wholly upon the listener's sensibilities.

As the second of a two-show theme, this recording captured myself, possibly alone at the controls, challenging my future self's definitions and acceptance of music versus noise, contrived versus accidental, and beautiful versus unlistenable in the context of radio programming. I won't bore you how I like it now, but I find it still makes me think, which I count as a kind of success.

1. Dot matrix guitar
2. Guitarpentry
3. 1959 guitar lessons with 3-minute break
4. Hi and lo white noise
5. Cave flautism
6. Caveman at open mic night
7. Actual beats and basslines
8. Jajouka versus breakaway tape machine
9. Fire engines in freefall
10. Weird noise club next door
11. Behemoth speaking slowly
12. More cave guitars with Anton LaVey
13. Relentless house paranoia

Beatleshow 2 (#73)

Show source here. Originally broadcast on September 11, 1997. This was the second of two successful-seeming shows dedicated to the Beatles and their celebrity.

Hopefully, this show can't be mistaken for a fully-earnest Beatlish tribute, due to the constant (mis)handling and sabotage of playing anything just as it is. This program presents a uniformly blended mishmash of confused and entertaining shreds from the Fab Four's commercial discography, press interviews, post-Beatle careers, and subsequent oddball or eccentric Beatles covers. As soon as a song appears recognizable, an unseen hand wrenches it into parody or dissonance.

I am reviewing this show without the benefit of the tape case or any notes, but I know that several tapes existed in the aftermath of the Beatle-shows, some of which were post-produced edits, and so this one may have been trimmed from raw broadcast for the most interesting bits. In this state, it feels pretty organically evolved.

Also, I note another brief appearance partway through of a call-in contribution, a friend playing tapes of more scrambled interviews over the phone lines. These calls happened more often without success than with it, so it feels like a small triumph to hear it working here.

1. Strawberry cellos forever
2. Long & winding bad trip
3. Sobbing, tearing hair
4. I'm pretty sure you didn't bury Paul
5. My funny birthday drums
6. Helter Skelter = Merzbow ÷ Melvins
7. Help, help, help
8. Persistent and annoying organ pulse
9. Ringo the dog presents the Rutles
10. How big are they?
11. All about the money
12. Emperor Lennon is insulted
13. Sha la la la la. La?

This show's playlist.

Tape Loop Bureaucrat (#68)

Source here. Originally recorded on August 7th, 1997.

Another short one and another skipped week. This summer is shaping up to not shape up at all. Still, I care about each one (both) of you and I'm putting in the time. The title implies an oppressive, "normalizing" regime holding court over an army of drones. This moves slowly, so titling was annoyingly hard.

1. Monster Moment
2. Don't go in the Master Control Room!
3. The bugs in the background are chewing on me
4. Slowly ground down
5. Spin Cycle
6. Gravel Driveway
7. Code Talker
8. Falling Apart
9. Scratching the Surface
10. Turning the Crank
11. The Yo-Yo Makes It Work
12. Elliptical Sander
13. Background Murmur Metal Recap

Added by IanF-R: Purely provenance side-note: this show is the next-generation descendent of the previously posted show "Tape Loop Marxist". Is it more distributed, less political, than its parent? Is it half-speed for half as long? I can hardly say. One listener's boredom is another's catharsis.

Drones (#66)

Source here. Originally recorded on July 24th, 1997.

I could say I've been on "Summer Hiatus" and to a certain extent (except for the summer part) that's true. The Big Lazies have gotten to me the past two weekends (in a ROW), and we've all suffered as a result.

Drone music does nothing to shake off the lazy feeling, even enhancing it if you play your cards right. Given that, it's amazing that this is such a short bit. With the abrupt start, it's probably one we started recording somewhere in the middle, or accidentally forgot to flip the tape, or something like that as the music overtook us. This is all muddy (in the good way) resonant ringing drone, and pretty fantastic at that.

1. Gurgle gurgle gurgle puke
2. The spins with a catchy beat
3. Interstellar Autobahn
4. Wrung out all wrong
5. Stop with the shouting!
6. It's thunderous, but it's not applause
7. The drill bottoms out
8. Jimmy Carter Noir
9. Flying away on a robot intermodulator
10. Reference tone manipulation
11. Quiet water-powered xylophone
12. Chewy reverb harmonium sound
13. Phone tone lone drone
    

Radio Radio (#64)

Source here. Originally recoded on July 10th, 1997.

This is all about making radio while making radio. There is all sorts of radio theater gaggery going on here, with lots of audio sound effects and wonky juxtaposition. It strikes me now that we may be in the last days of live radio, or that live radio is really the only kind of radio left worth listening to.

With MP3 players / Last FM / Pandora on your phone / Satellite radio providing all sorts of different ways to listen to what you want to hear while getting introduced to new stuff you might want to hear; live radio, and possibly talk radio, are the only reasons one might spin the tuner dial and check out what's coming over the airwaves.

I've flirted with the idea of doing this sort of show again, except over the Internet, but the problem is the temporally shared experience lends its own energy (and I'm using this in the non-scientific way) to a performance such as this. I'm not saying we could tell if people were listening or not. It was more subtle than that, and losing that ineffableness is one of the things that keeps me awake at night. You can't measure it, but you know when it's gone.

1. Steve Allen's large salami
2. Come in, North Pole
3. Let's go back to the year 1942
   
4. Mexican Radio
5. Echo Sonata
6. Never Enough Loop
7. Never Enough Loop (reprise)
8. 1000 Vices
9. Minor Mellow Moment
10. I'm only getting noise
11. ORIGINAL CREAM
12. The Eagle Has Landed, Man
13. End Transmission
    

ROBOT RADIO (#59)

Source here. Originally recorded on June 5th, 1997.

First off I must profusely apologize for the missed weekend. I spent the whole weekend (and I mean the whole weekend and almost every bit of it. I just finished languishing laundry. That is how busy it is) at a computer security / hacker conference. The weather was wonderful and I saw not a bit of it (except when it was dark out).

THIS IS OUR ROBOT SHOW. Meaning we stick with music and sounds that either directly or indirectly reference robots. Lots of computer noise, mechanical noise, synthesizers of voice and music. A few robot/robot inspired bands. NO ACTUAL ROBOTS WERE IN THE STUDIO. We did get out the aluminum foil and make little hats, though.

The first 26 minutes are filled with a ping-pong noise that gets annoying even to me, which might have been the initial point. There is stuff that goes on around it, but after a while THAT IS ALL YOU HEAR. Then there is real ping-pong for 20 minutes or so later on.

1. Every Robot Show Must Start With Kraftwerk
2. Ping Pong or Radar?
3. A Murmur of Droids
4. Desperately trying to drown out the pinging with early synthesizer music
5. Starting to count in German now
6. Real actual ping pong now.
7. Do not tell me this real ping pong lasts the rest of the show
8. INCOMING ROBOT DATA TRANSMISSION
9. The grandfather clock is reporting in
10. Wait, Circus?
11. Mellow Lounge Robot Time Interrupted
12. The Big Arpeggiated Reveal
13. Ending with Disque 9
    

What Will They Try Next? (#47)

Source here. Originally recorded on March 20, 1997.

The first 15 minutes or so end up featuring some really aggravating squeaky distorted murmuring. I'm not sure if this was us or some found recording, but please do speed past that part into much more interesting stuff. Not so many vocals in this one, but a good mix of hi and lo fi awaits the intrepid listener.

1. Hipster or Eastern European?
2. Transmission from the planet dorkwad
3. Bells and Peals
4. We're in my house goofing on the four track come on over
5. A Confusing Wall
6. A very very white dub
7. Overwrought Synthesizer Theme
8. The numbing isn't working
9. The cartoon orchestra performs the hits
10. Burroughs and Clavinova
11. Shoot the piano player, please
12. Today is going to be the day for saxophones
    
13. Hands on the home row
    

Negativbustoplexicon (#44)

Source here. Originally recorded on February 27, 1997.

While this doesn't have a definite theme, it's pretty clear here that we're trying to do more with less. It's low density layering, focusing on the juxtaposition of two or three elements. It's good stuff, with storytelling, instructional, and singing examples with plenty of ambient background.

1. Thunder's just a lot of noise
2. Why is there always accordion? It makes the dogs upset
3. Large Bees/Dirt Bikes used for travel
4. Twitchy mice flee dogs via jet plane
5. Naturalment
6. Bad News Horse
7. BLAM
8. Sew What?
9. Beating on the Strings
10. Worst. Ballad. Ever.
11. Everything's going to be just smooth
12. A spooky pronunciation guide
13. I devour metal guitarists
    

Excerpts (#38)

Source here. Originally recorded on January 16th, 1997.

Too much typing today. I wanted to write up a review of the Bad Plus show last night (link, you are under no obligation to follow) before moving on to having collage pollute my brain by shoving my recollections elsewhere. Done and done.

Much longer passages with less layering define this piece as ideas are allowed to develop and either work or fail over time. As a result, I listened to this in real time (dirty little secret, I sometimes skip ahead since it would make the third time I've listened to something like this). We had what seems to be an inordinate amount of fun with slowly hand-turning turntables. This is not a bad thing.

1. The Flavor of an Indeterminate Old Country
2. Moving Northward into Wolf Country
   
3. Hand cranked creature comforts
4. Drug/Drugs across the strings
5. Gulls and Dogs do not like Electronica
6. Cartoonish concepts of a nation state
7. Quick jazz break
8. Preaching to the disco choir
9. Urgent message from the front lines
10. Rotary Kalimba
11. Accordion to you
12. I am desperately trying to be spooky here
13. Post Show Post Rock
    

Love: A Straightforward Analysis (#28)

Source here. Originally recorded on November 16th, 1996.

A serious attempt at a theme show here. Remarkably, it's nowhere near Valentine's Day. Ironically, I'm posting this the day after a wedding announcement party, so synergy you know.

A major component of this show is a long, rambling, torturous answering machine message of the kind that would be handled these days with e-mail. The voice aspect makes it real and immediate (painful, funny, sad), and also allows for background music (there is background music on the answering machine message, yes). This is brought in at various points until just past the point of bearability and then faded out while something new is prepared.

1. The first of many overwrought poetry readings
2. Careless whispers and heavy metal
3. It's like group therapy without the group
   
4. Watching the submarine races
5. The inevitable appearance of that Joy Division song
6. Heart trouble
7. Possible wrong number
8. Industrious Reproduction
9. Fumbling around in the dark
10. Seeing the sailors off
    
11. It's a love affiar
12. Sometimes the jokes write themselves
13. 80's electro end credits to Cinemax sexy crime movie
    

Feedback is the Mother of all Illegitimate Children (#25)

Source here. Originally recorded on October 26th, 1996.

Yes yes yes. This is as dense as it gets. Here, we explore feedback in all its forms; meaning, feedback with various time dependencies. It's sort of amazing that all we vary (aside from the input) is the length of time before the output gets fed back into the input: from the almost immediate squeal to a chewy club sandwich of recursive 8 second delay, sometimes more than one at once.

To say this is "thick" is to diminish it somewhat. Moments of clear sound erupt suddenly out of a wash, only to descend back into an audio morass. One of my favorite tracks here.

1. Chipmunk Central Casting
2. Alien Spin Cycle
3. The roof leaks and the TV gets nothing
4. Like if Morse Code was a free-form jazz quartet
5. Quick post-punk interjections, as if there was any other kind
6. In which we abuse traditional Irish music
7. The call of the wild
8. Steamroller of justice
9. Legal IDs are my secret mantra
   
10. LEVELS ARE PEGGED (in the background)
11. The wolves at the door of hip-hop
12. "Audio Collage"
13. Lean radio station against amplifier, exeunt
    

Added by IanF-R:
Long one of my favorites, too. Before the three groups of tapes were reunited, I had this one in my possession, and I would play it once every few months when my better half was away; a soundtrack for my house project days.

Excerpts (#14)

Source here. Originally recorded on August 9th, 1996.

I watched a documentary on Brian Eno this past week (mumble mumble find it on bit-torrent mumble), which I was reminded of as I started the player on this particular file. 1996 was a very droney year in general, and this particular composition in a very long and methodical way. I'd say "shoegaze", but us folks were _always_ looking at our shoes, so it was hard to tell when we were doing it as part of a thing don't you know?

It drops into many other things later on, more typical of a non-themed show, but in general it looks like we're definitely trying not to do too much at once and be more methodical about our choices.

1. Cold, windswept open
2. Warmer, throbbing mechanics
3. a break between distortion for beginners and clean bright finger picking
4. A vague medieval flavour
5. Songs from our great leader's songbook
6. Possibly the worst cover ever
7. For best results, wipe the sandpaper over the CD
8. Mallets in Wonderland
9. A moment of radio scanning
10. Low Fi or "Low Fi"?
11. Instruction or Explanation about Milk and other Foods
    
12. Big Strong Hands and Arms
13. Zanzibar to Alcatraz!
    

Excerpts (#11)

Source here. Originally recorded on July 19, 1996.

Another one from the random file. This one starts in the deeply ridiculous and does a random walk from there. Much spoken word work here: poetry, chanting, documentary. Environmental, atmospheric, soundtracklike music fiercely backs it up. The second half is less wordy than the first, but more dense and layered.

1. PeePee McDooDoo? Seriously?
2. Drum and Bass and Film Noir
3. Drum Solo with Record Manipulation
4. Weatherman One
5. (muffled laughter)
6. Men have dreamed of landing on our moon
7. 80's Soap Music, Hey, What About Me?
   
8. We have placed everything under a layer of foam
9. Maybe it's just that it's AM radio and we're out in the country now like the KLF or something
10. Caw Caw Caw Kong
11. Monks and Frogs
12. Saxophone Busker in Alien Subway
13. Music Box Winds Down
    

Another video for you.

Angie Dickinson does not take any crap.

Excerpts (#8)

Source here. Originally recorded on June 28th, 1996.

SUPERBOWL SUNDAY. Accolades for the yearly American Football finals pop up in the strangest places, and this place is no exception. However, I simply don't care. I do this to annoy people, and not to profess a deep and abiding love for a "team" (an outmoded abstract concept as they come). Still, the bread and circuses (circii?) beckon; promising scantily clad women advertising disappointingly mundane Internet services, and burly drugged man-children pretending to avoid concussions. One must do as one does.

Enough about that. I should have a twofer this week, as there is a video I'd like to share with you in a later post (maybe around noon? Who knows?). This is another themeless show from the early period.

1. Flute at the moon
2. Bongos and birdsongs
3. Subtle Miami Vice Themes
4. SPLASH (and reprise of the first three)
   
5. Wood Shop Metal Shop
6. FBI Swing Instruction
7. Full Film Noir Treatment
8. I'm a train!
9. Chinese New Year Hovercraft Parade
10. Moderate Rabbit Dragon Roar
11. Meditation on lo-fi bass distortion
12. Movie chase scene with ragtime music
13. And we second line out...
    

Excerpts (#5) Frags of #5?

Source here. Originally recorded on June 7th, 1996.

And now we begin to loop around. I've managed to get a few new ones uploaded, but of course they're mixed in with all the others. This would be a problem except for the fact that I've got a spreadsheet (that I'm using as a database), that keeps track of all this.

Of course, I'll make a mistake and I'll be gratified if someone points it out, simply because that means that someone is paying attention.

1. Laugh more every day
2. Trip Hop Nerd Loop
3. Mormon Tabernacle Choir drops a phat beat
4. Too many priests spoil the choir
5. Electric critters with sitars
6. No static at all
7. Merry Go Round Black Hole
8. Laser Organ Attacks
9. That's What I Want
10. The Dutch Company
11. Gamelan Calliope Hurdy Gurdy
12. A moment of disco
13. The Deep House has Termites

Drum (#119)

Source here. Originally recorded on July 30, 1998.

The title should be a clear indication of the content, but just in case...

This one is all about drums. Looped, flanged, layered, distorted in various ways. It's in fact one of the most rhythmical shows I've come across. There are sections that are downright danceable, and plenty that is sort of a hypnotic throbbing.

1. Like a train on the ocean
2. A moment in a Buddhist temple during a funk concert
3. The native village gets its first washing machine and it is already unbalanced
4. My heart has been replaced with superior robot parts
5. Romanian hip-hop includes castinets
6. Steel drum band in the next warehouse
   
7. CLASH OF THE CARNIVALE AND CHINESE NEW YEAR PARADES
8. We were going to play basketball but the floor was made of awesome
9. Martin Denny joins in
10. Working industrial funk plant
11. Nothing like home-made toys
12. We are cleaning the paint off with hammers
13. A good sanding is what it really needed
    

Some More Stuff (You Know) (#116)

Source here. Originally recorded on July 9th. 1998.

This seems to be a long treatise on the effects processor box, which is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. The usual source material gets layered and chopped and screwed and distorted into a dense, fluffy stew. No central theme here except extreme density punctuated by quirky looping.

1. Metal on Springtime
2. Hut, two, hut, two.
3. You've gone through something
4. Kyoto, 2012, on the line
5. Cool feedback, Daddy-O
6. Unsteady Idle
7. Tennis for two
8. Overdrive as commentary on external limitations
9. caw caw caw caw
   
10. Right behind you music!
    
11. I see you soon
    
12. Spin Cycle
13. Retreating Birds and Bells
    

Poetry Slammer (#113)

Source here. Originally recorded June 18, 1998.

Whatever you call it: poetry, word salad, skat, sound poem, what have you; it's all here. An A Capella show of a different type. TKDF was my introduction to Ken Nordine, who is sort of awesome.

Lots of finger snapping recital going on here. The occasional double-bass and bongo makes an appearance. Most languages in a sort of English you might recognize. Coffee shop background effects take away from the reality rather than adding to it. Yodeling. Götterdämmerung.

1. Those with the nose for the news
2. Follow him with faith
3. Perfectly manicured to exclude the poor
4. The bookmarks, the numbers, the pages
5. (a Raymond Scott interlude)
6. They shot my man!
7. A haiku at 11pm
8. Performance mistaken for accolades
9. Layered Violence on the Radio
10. A sickly vein shot with possibilities
11. Thirteen, Right On
12. Get the pie pie pie pie pie pie pie pie
13. He'd get his ass kicked if he did it
    

Cineshow (#111)

Source here. Originally recorded on June 4th, 1998.

Careful observers of the main page for all the recordings will notice that we've almost come to the end of the list. There may be a short hiatus while the remainder of the shows are cataloged and uploaded, but I'll have to see exactly how it all rolls out.

Our Cinematic Wonderland show comes hot on the heels of the storybook wonderland show, at least in this world. A gathering of soundtracks from movies popular and otherwise was used to create this brooding, ethereal show. Where the previous show was a hyperactive fluff of dense sugar foam, this one comes across more like a thick vermouth of adult topics. There is some comedy as well, but the flavor is decidedly more mature.

1. Little child, on a postcard.
2. Nobody important, have you seen The Herald?
3. Transient or Resident?
4. I'm very sorry, sir, can you make us cry?
5. Somebody just complained, turn around
6. Rocky Horror Shortstop
7. I'll make it short, honk honk
8. Family Traditional Scream
9. Spirit in the Sky
10. Junkie Chase in Space
11. Just talking about a mine shaft
12. I am Iron Man
13. That dammed French computer again