Buffer (#128)

Source file found here. Originally broadcast on October 1st, 1998.

"Buffer" because the number 128 reminded me of old computer systems? An aural dumping ground, the shows built up around whatever got picked up, following patterns and relationships not discernible to the distant listener. Some pieces are wholly random and unrelated, lying clumsily against each other like discarded cutouts and leftovers. This could be some run-up-to-Halloween material resting awkwardly between editing experiments, random loops, and effects overloading. Tape manipulations, reversals, and forced-skipping records figure largely in this episode.

1. Water drips on piano keys
2. Pressure release valve
3. Mob scene, Haunted Village, 1952
4. Hot cats and wobbly bolero
5. Lecture and gunfire in drainpipe
6. Yule fawn
7. DO NOT CONCERN YOURSELF
8. Atari Teenage Blabbermouth
9. Jody is losing reality
10. Self-destroying suspicion
11. Windy city loop
12. Out-of-range 80s electro
13. Windchimes & PVC bass

No Theme (#127)

Source found here. Originally broadcast on September 24, 1998.

I just found an old flyer for a house party that happened two days after this show was originally broadcast. It claims a start time of "about 10 P.M." Knowing laughs all around from the aging peanut gallery.

This show is another improvisation without a net. I like improvisation, and this one is Zen-like in its minimalism. It might have been well used in another show, laid gently on top of another minimal doodle, and then again with another layer, until the combined time-shifted meditations created a rich, loamy, compost of Zen-like waves of aimless sound-drawings.

1. Thwipping fade out
2. Ovalesque dreamtime
3. Little person on really high stilts
4. Shimmy shimmy down
5. Strumming in traffic
6. The Perhaps Shuffle
7. Weepy thin violin-tone
8. All your accordion are belong to us
9. Disruptive, insistent guitar
10. Enjoy shildriln!
11. Spritzbeat and Real Satan
12. Schpritschbeat and shlurr
13. Terminal amoebae

Trickle-down Publishing

I have not pushed shows out with frequency lately, but there are only a handful left to share with you, honestly. Jason has magnificently done 99.9% of the tape conversion work to be done, and I have been reviewing shows even more slowly since my work life came back this summer.

Bear with me, and you will be rewarded with more Ouija, more Halloween, more cinema, more Christmas, and a phone call from the Mojave Desert. Cheers and thanks for tuning in.

Untitled (#126)

Source found here. Originally broadcast on September 17, 1998.

An energetic workout of the unthemed genus. Featuring crackly records, French whispers, zany whirling, violent spoken word poetry courtesy Attaboy, rushing digital effects, melodic polyrhythms, tinny cheesy tunes, unprepped tape warble, a blind walking tour, xylophonic studies, overblown guitar wringing, and a macro-sense of balance between the chaotic and the orderly.

1. Crumbly whispering
2. The French hang around
3. An unhinging progression
4. [...download complete...]
5. Ranting obscured by synesthesia
6. The mess dissipates outdoors
7. Phased reggae French gurgles
8. The sighted person
9. Dreams losing color
10. Hypnotic vocal chime
11. Metallismo
12. Resonance in cavernous tubes
13. Led Zep on the shortwave

Panic Movement (#122)

Source file found here. Originally broadcast on August, 20, 1998.

I'm not sure how we came up with this variant on the "scored" shows, but I think the idea was build slowly from a calm passage with more and more "panicked" outbursts at opportune times. Kind of the sonic equivalent of climbing an inclined plane of intensity for the length of the show. This resulting show feels like a creepier, dirtier Halloween show imitation. We peak early, but it does end with a large quantity of loud banging. Some of the sources--e.g. Naked City's Absinthe, F.M. Einheit & Caspar Brotzmann's Merry Christmas--also fit well in a playlist of psychological horror and violence soundtracks. Maybe not gradual panic so much as gradual alienation!

1. Whispers and heartbeats
2. Soothing sounds of nature
3. Down in the speech lab
4. Horrible, nameless dread emerges
5. Tension strings and children amok
6. Ask them to be quiet sir
7. A promise of cannibalism
8. Hall running, analysis and static
9. Various sirens, but a balmy ambience
10. Irradiating the beachgoers
11. Oh God it's eating my EYES
12. We've gotten good at "bludgeoning", haven't we?
13. That city-sized vacuum cleaner is back

Ob-strats (#118)

Source file here. Originally broadcast on July 23rd, 1998.

Being music geeks—not music nerds, who hold their special knowledge over others to feel powerful—we here at TKDF want everyone who doesn't already know about Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies to hear the good word.

Traditionally the Strategies take the form of a deck of cards, and they are intended as tools for when one gets stuck while doing creative work. They are used to challenge preconceptions and allow one to see things suddenly from a perspective where the problem doesn't exist or doesn't matter. Being fans of Eno in general, we decided to approach the problem of the show with the Strategies in hand. This tells you two things: 1, we sometimes felt doing the show was a "problem", and 2, we like using tools.

If we didn't tell you what Oblique Strategies were, could you tell that this show was produced in a different way? Probably not. It has an appealing, shuddering shimmer of a heartbeat for much of its length, but the component sounds and overall show-shape are within the usual range of loopitude, non-sequiturism, uneasicity, dynamicision, and intentional cruftage. Which is not to still wholeheartedly recommend the Strategies for any and all problems that may arise. As one of my favorite cards exclaims, "Try faking it!"

1. Responding to pulses
2. Crackly backward-chanting doctors
3. Tense, endless Italian New-Wave
4. Metallic abrasions
5. Whistling from behind the curtain
6. Almost-dub The Letter
7. Frothing and boiling over onto the mixing console
8. Cavernous, sappy, soulful, pouncing
9. Boomerang yodel
10. Endless-er 'cause it's slower
11. Toads and diseases while channel-surfing
12. An existential question
13. The strategies call for an Ambient 4 coda

TKDF Vampires (#114)

Source file here. Originally broadcast on June 25th, 1998.

Ah, vampires. They get a lot of attention, as ghouls go. Why did we never do a show about yeti or Frankenstein's monster? They don't generate the raw material in media that vampires do. Also, zombies.

Among the movies heard here are the dryly humorous Nadja, Tony Scott's chilly The Hunger, Polanski's goofball Fearless Vampire Killers, Abel Ferrara's academic and brutal The Addiction, and the ones everyone knows. The dialogue heavy movies like Nadja and The Addiction make the show somewhat philosophical and Nietzschean, while others variably add creepy dread, campy horror, and short spurts of bloody gore—or at least the sounds of it. All in all, a rather verbose, thinking-vampire's production.

1. Europe is a village
2. Aspects of determinism
3. How old am I?
4. I have lost a day
5. Like this, in one go
6. Why all these garlic flowers?
7. Vampire Rules
8. I'm not bleeding all over myself
9. They fall like flies, don't they
10. Demons suffer Hell
11. All these years running uphill
12. Face it Jim, she's a zombie
13. Why all these people dead?

1, 2, Free, Form (#112)

A happy Earth Day to our audience. This week's show source file found here. Originally broadcast on June 11th, 1998.

A grubby and unthemed little show. It starts off vocal and voice-based, gets progressively harsher and muddier, ends abruptly, and then starts again. It is well-worn, and thick with dense, chewy layers.

My cohort of helpers always preferred to have a thematic guide for the shows, but I tended to not plan very far in advance, so more often than not, this kind of thing is what we got. In my opinion, this is a good example of when it worked.

I also can't tell if the two sides of the tape got swapped, or this is a combination recording of a couple of different shows. The break near the middle where our show ends and the hip-hop deejay is baffled by the wall of noise he is following comes at exactly the right time. But that's free form college radio for you—a kind of audio whiplash that is an acquired taste, but can be oh-so-tasty.

1. WHANH WHANH!/Wash ray
2. Abracadabra to you, boss
3. Bells and frothing
4. Epic kung fu battle in crystal bamboo forest
5. Wailing and foam
6. A trick ending
7. Appliance-percussion jazz
8. One big fat hoax
9. Machine breathing/feeling so good
10. Wake up now, the satellite's singing
11. A glitch-beat with tacky synth
12. Japanese Vader
13. Mandarin disco Strauss/abrupt end

Gradual Brightening, pt 3 (#56)

Source can be found here. Originally broadcast on May 18, 1997. This is Part 3 of a four-part, six-and-a-half hour show that we performed one morning during a gap in the programming between spring and summer schedules at the radio station.

Part 1, Part 2

This segment of this show features a lot of vocalization—mumbled, hollered, gasped, giggled, foamed, and belted. If you've ever pulled a marathon shift, you know that things get loopy after a certain stretch, and hours four and five here are sure showing it. But that was the point, I guess, to go beyond our normal endurance for mixing and test the limits.

It does get tired and fallback upon some late-ninties IDM for a bit, but then there's a great bit where we say "Hello to the universe". The walls of noise and newborn baby reference also play along with the early morning theme, I suppose.

1. Ode to Dinah Shore
2. Extended sleep episode
3. Braying and chimes
4. whatisitwhatisitwhatisitunclecleottototo
5. Round and round-dnuor dna dnuor
6. What's so funny about power electronics?
7. Foul-mouthed open letter
8. They're so cute when they start reading poetry
9. The martial art of jazz-golf
10. Screamix
11. Melodic moans of damned doors
12. Bombast and cheese
13. Yes, records ARE fantastic

Gradual Brightening, pt 2 (#56)

Source can be found here. Originally broadcast on May 18, 1997. This is Part 2 of a four-part, six-and-a-half hour show that we performed one morning during a gap in the programming between spring and summer schedules at the radio station.

Part 1

This one is getting going with full-force (already? Save it up, you still have pts 3-4!) raucousness and mayhem. Featuring a cruise-band record from my parents' Bermuda honeymoon, Lewis Carroll poems, the trusty HAL-9000, and some serious out-there skronk and noise, scattered amongst the drone.

1. On a ship: Lounge act, engine drone
2. A Wonderland revue
3. Anime exclaims with light industrial ditty
4. Primitive scree, rawk overclocked
5. Wait. Who started the self-destruct sequence?
6. This is it. We're going to die.
7. Your life flashes before your eyes—oddly with singing chipmunks
8. Limbo = electronique opera overture
9. Getting the saxophone started on a cold morning
10. Airplane mimicry in shop class
11. The Avant-garde vs. the Vienna Philharmonic
12. Absurd getting ugly, draws in John Williams
13. Twinkling beats. Get it? Beats?

Gradual Brightening, pt 1 (#56)

Source file found here. Originally broadcast on May 18, 1997. This is Part 1 of a four-part, six-and-a-half hour show that we performed one morning during a gap in the programming between spring and summer schedules at the radio station.

The idea was to begin quietly in the dark of early morning and very gradually increase the energy and mixing as the sun rose and morning progressed. Six plus hours is not a recommended amount of time to do anything non-stop with any consistency or high amount of success, but there are some notable bits here and there once we got into the mode.

Part 1 here starts with the station ID "looping" on the phone delay, and we move into a start-stop section until we work it out with some terrible organ music. From the 30 minute mark onward things are solid in a extended drone and animal-sounds way. Definitely worth taking a listen to, especially on a weekend morning on the couch.

1. ID...ID...ID...ID...
2. Is it funny already?
3. Rather Aphex-y so far
4. Anton plays an extended etude
5. Pretty annoying: calliope/R2D2 impression/tinnitus
6. Practicing my squiggles
7. Circular breathing through drainpipes
8. Forest empties of fauna in advance of an approaching menace
9. Fauna return to bliss out
10. Thick pulses surfacing
11. Dulcimer and prepared piano solos
12. Interesting loops, half-musical
13. A crumbly accordion

OUIJATKDF (#98)

Source file is here. Originally broadcast on March 5, 1998.

This was my favorite show score we came up with. Supposedly, the idea came to us that we could give up decision-making during show's performance. Who would decide for us? The spirit world, of course.

There are two production studios involved and each one has its own "map". When an active Ouija board at the station points to the letter "E", for example, TKDF staffer #1 cuts out everything they are doing and plays the first track on turntable one repeatedly, and TKDF staffer #2 turns all active channels up all the way and turns on the FX module. Each letter and number on the board is accounted for this way, and the collage show progresses smoothly and without hiccup or over-thinking.

Actually, in practice this show's plan created unexpected problems as well as some pretty great moments of sound. There was not room in the cramped station to have the Ouija operators in easy "reach" of the Staff, and so there had to be a relay team who took turns running the messages upstairs to the studios. Occasionally this creates awkward pauses and sometimes letters pile up and staff execute commands in quick succession or all at once. Despite making the show difficult in new and interesting ways, the great thing the Ouija board did was create some dynamic events or accidents that we never would have done if left to ourselves.

1. Modems, oscillators, and Einstein, oh my
2. Sudden counting
3. Do you think the spirit likes prog?
4. Indigestion Robot
5. Disco Irv and balky outboard motor
6. All largely propaganda
7. Let me just weld this door shut
8. Theatrical entrances
9. Breakbeat Chinese dog party
10. Push it into the red, don't stop
11. A robot is running the show now
12. And the robot likes Negativland
13. Drums, samples, and quit followin me

Note from Ian F-R: Actually, the tape ends with some personal recordings that were not broadcast. The robot voice, the Negativland tracks, and the drum patterns are my recordings, added after the show. Whoops.

A Fate That Must Come To Us All (Death) (#76)

Source is in two files, here and here. Originally broadcast on October 2, 1997.

Perhaps the oldest topic we could have dealt with. Like previously posted shows, the subject is treated less philosophically and more in the juvenile, macabre sense of DEAD BODIES and the grisly details. We are addressing physical death here directly, and there isn't much about grief, mourning, or the afterlife.

Music strewn throughout this killing field varies from jazz and Korean children singing, to Throbbing Gristle and Diamanda Galas. Texts referenced are computer-read horror stories, Monty Python sketches, Princess Diana news coverage, and the two Williams (Shakespeare and Burroughs).

1. Imagine the hell
2. Faint death choirs
3. Crumbling in decay
4. Those are condemned
5. Smooth jazz sacrifice
6. Falling down a well
7. Burier, burner, dumper
8. Mort aux vaches
9. Hypnotic Plague Mass
10. Prospero and Westminster
11. Death needs time
12. Unfair court proceedings
13. Including unfortunate wretches

May Flowers May Day (#53)

Source is found here. Originally broadcast on May 1, 1997.

This is another fun show I remember listening to repeatedly. I think the title here is purely nominal and doesn't relate to any springtime or labor-related content. The energy level starts pretty high and active. There is a prevalance of spastic burbling and garbled chatter, bobbing back and forth between music fragments and blasts of verbal nonsense, and feedback—ranging from a hollow, ringing sheet to a rolling bass shudder—recurs throughout the show.

Featured largely throughout is Atavistic Records' 1996 "State of the Union" compliation, a two-disc set of 146 one-minute tracks of avant musics, spoken word, and collage bits. I am also happy to hear Protoblast's "Ex-Neurosurgeon" again at about the 1 hour 23 minute mark, a great, compact song from the great NC comp "Cognitive Mapping Vol 2" from Friction Media. I will need to pull that CD out again.

1. Saxophone overtakes tape deck
2. Backwards sucking vampire guitar
3. Meta-radio instructions
4. Let's turn on
5. You're the earth
6. The singing stone
7. I know you can
8. Record player won't turn, it's stuck
9. Sounds of being the sky
10. Mr. Price is amused
11. Thriller loop, screams, and static
12. Body bomb with background turntablism
13. Trash can party

Wax Snd Trk (#42)

Source to be found here. Originally broadcast on February 13, 1997.

This show features decorative and distracting sounds surrounding the audio from David Blair's feature-length film Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees. Wax is a surreal allegory involving a beekeeper who skips across time and space to interact with Cain and Abel in the Garden of Eden, meet giant intelligent bees in the New Mexico desert, and become a high-tech weapons system in the 1991 Gulf War. It was the first motion picture to be available via HTTP in 1993.

I purchased a VHS copy of Wax from Blair after seeing a fragment of it in video studio at undergrad art school. Its unstuck-in-time story and the juxtaposition of disparate elements appealed to my new sense of Digital and The Internet, as well as fondness for the really strange. Using early non-linear editing, it exploits that technology's advantages, crafting archival, stock, and original video footage with early computer graphic animation into a disorienting but compelling visual epic.

Soundwise, Wax is simply narrated in the first person by Blair with ambient music and sound effects, so our audio contributions attempt to enhance it in the absence of the film's imagery. Mostly, they add another inscrutable layer, consisting of guitar scrapes, clangs, screeching hand-turned records, samples from Negativland's A Big 10-8 Place, and, finally, some good old drum-and-bass.

1. The first plutonium bomb
2. A message was waiting for me in my grandfather's diary
3. 'O' for the operator
4. The Tower of Babel
5. The language of Cain
6. Out of the dark machinery
7. I was Zoltan Abbasid
8. Priests and military planners
9. A machine large enough to scan an entire mourner
10. In the air over Basra, southern Iraq
11. We're genetic researchers
12. We've come for what's ours

Potluck Dinner (#106) (Ian and Jason)

Source here. Originally recorded on April 30th, 1998.

This was supposed to be a sort of potluck of a show, giving each of the current members a chance to explore a theme in a smaller space of time but a larger sphere of influence (either unencumbered by or freed from other members' wills).

What transpires is three very different pieces.  However, we only have two right now.  Lisa's may be lost to time, I fear. I need to dig through the remaining recordings to determine if it's still here.

Also note incidental Mac sounds.....

1. Announcement and Explanation
2. Densely populated concert halls
3. Engraved Television Weapon
4. Lightsaber Battle
5. Cardboard box saw
6. Reverse attackarama
7. Fake space sonar test
8. BittersweetBittersweetBittersweetBittersweet
9. Slavetothemoneythenslavetothemoneythenslavetothemoney
10. BittersweetPublicEnemyNoNoNoNoNo
11. PowerhouseSymphony
12. YouKnowThePusherThatTakesYou
13. TheOtherPusherICantChangeMyModeGoodLeader

Guitar (#104)

Source here. Originally recorded on April 16th, 1998.

If you look at the absurdly brief history of rock music, you'll notice that it both starts and ends with the acquisition and abandonment of the electric guitar. Barely an eyeblink in our cultural history, and yet it commandeers an exalted location in our minds.

Preposterous.

This show is made up mostly entirely of guitar samples. The sounds are occasionally processed.

1. Completely Attack-Free
2. Like an amplified spring doorstop.
3. Suddenly, Bass!
4. String Scraping
5. Tradition creeps in
6. Smooth meets Rough
7. Not strictly "Rock", per se
8. Drone Tuning with King Crimson
9. More careful instruction
10. Less practice more flailing
11. Distortion is an instrument unto itself
12. Crunch and Grind
13. Hammer no more the strings

Untitled (#96)

Source here. Originally recorded on February 20th, 1998.

I kind of like the unlabeled ones. There's a complete lack of setup, and so it makes for a kind of choose your own adventure listening. It's also clearly a choose your own adventure creation, as the lack of an overarching theme allows for anything to be explored.

1. Buzzing of various kinds
2. Gentle guitar, ungentle background
3. Violins and Turntablism
4. "You're Lumpiest"
5. Grinding voices
6. Orbital mechanics
7. "So Upset"
8. Sonic Chisel
9. At some point, we dropped a beat
10. Television, Movies, Comics
11. Ambient Chill Out Kinko's
12. Scraping out the crates
13. Surf guitar AI

Added by Ian F-R: This show includes a record, "Sleepy Eyes" by Simeon, near the beginning (the "gentle guitar" as well as crunchy guitar soon after). I knew Simeon from my job at the time screen-printing t-shirts.

It also sounds like we did that thing I like a lot, where I transfer an older show to a tape reel and then we send it through FX. I enjoy the swooping crunches near the center of the show's timeline.

XmasShowXDU (#87)

Source here. Original Airdate December 18, 1997.

We did a number of Christmas shows in 1997, mostly because we got lots more time to fiddle around during the holiday break due to many people being simply gone. This seems like a practice run for the longer show a week later.

That said, the source material spans a good century of popular Christmas cheer (although a mid-century version of "Let It Snow" shows up time and again). Shows like this require an astonishing catalog of sonic stuff. Nowadays, something like this would be easier to assemble; what with keeping everything as digital files and tagging and whatnot. Alternately, the various formats (vinyl, tape, CD, computer) lend their own sonic overtones to the mix, and the process of searching through deep, dusty boxes leads to much serendipity.

Ultimately, there's no one right way to do this.

1. Can it beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
2. Bad idea, Beck
3. Too many competing fanfares
4. A shockingly ahistorical account of Christmas in early America
5. Sonic Youth, Back from the North Pole
6. Let it snow let it snow letitsnowletitsnowletitsnow l e t i t ssssssnnnnnnnooooowwwww
7. Santa might be feeling a little unwell
8. Keeping the Christ in Christmas
9. Rescue Santa!
10. The Rocket has failed
11. Turn that racket off!
12. Kittens of sugarplums.
13. Did we ever manage to rescue Santa?
    

Computer Error! / Sick Technology (#85)

Source here. Originally recorded on December 12, 1997.

This one is all about those blasted computers and how they're always either completely taking over the world or breaking down and leaving us stranded in the median of the Information Superhighway. Lots of talk in this one. Talk about computers and talk from computers. Music about computers and music made by computers.

HAL 9000 samples figure heavily.

Overload warnings abound, for you as well as in the audio itself. It is possible to listen to too much of this all at once. Care should be taken. You may have to unplug completely at the end and take a little break from anything electronic.

1. Virus Warning!
2. It's over 9000!
3. Fire the Torpedos
4. I am putting myself to the fullest possible use
   
5. You've got mail!
6. I know it's a bit silly.
7. Zero Gravity Toilet Instructions
8. Computer Aquarium
9. Drills and Doors
10. Still testing the AE-35 unit
11. Passing Tube Train Pods
12. A contemplative moment inside the engine room
13. It's always been human error.