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
    

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

Excerpts #13 HVD

Original source here. Recorded on August 2nd, 1996.

I just went back and corrected a mistake. It's not a serious one, but a minor detail only the dedicated will pick up. I'm not as rigorous about the process as I might lead you to believe, after all. For instance, some of these recordings outro with regular, unadulterated music. Sometimes I catch it, and trim the ends (as it were). Sometimes I miss it and leave it on. The amount of silence at the beginning and end, and in the space where I flip the tape, varies somewhat.

These might uncharitably be called "mistakes", or very charitably be described as "Honor thy error as a hidden intention" The truth is murky and in the interstitials.

1. The neverending riff
2. Someone's at the door, it's harmony robot
3. Not quite the slits, or maybe it is
4. Those darn monkeys
5. Quit messing with the printer
6. BLUES HAMMER
7. More Pounding
8. The crowd goes wild
9. Digesting an analog synthesizer
10. Rain
11. Can't stop the rock
12. Rock has been stopped
13. Inside the TKDF modem
    

Added by IanF-R:
Link the the flowsheet for this show. I have particularly enjoyed hearing this one again--it seems to flow and develop pretty well--and because the flowsheet says "FUN FUN FUN", I have to assume that I enjoyed it then, too.

Excerpts #12 Stuporbowl Funday

Original source here. Show was performed on July 26, 1996.

A few weeks I'd gotten the rest of the tapes and a big spreadsheet detailing all the audio mayhem that had gone on. This weekend I started bringing them into the computer. CDs are cool because you can pull one in in like 1/8th the time it tales to play it, but tapes and records are real time. It's meditative.

I'm still posting stuff I had little to no part in, but eventually we'll get to stuff with my voice on it, and that's always a shock, to hear me speaking from a decade in the past, trying to sound "cool" on the radio, much like I'm doing here. All is vanity!

1. Clang and Challenge
2. Momentary Latin Jazz Break
3. Wipe out the whole world five times over
4. Sample and Hold
5. Speedbilly
6. 1234123412341234
7. Watch out for the pavement
8. Encounter with space sickness
9. Man, do I hate Zydeco
10. Oonst Oonst Oonst Oonst
11. R2D2 is in the can
    
12. Chewbacca and Han vs. the noise monster
13. John Wms. vs Robt. Wms.
    

Added by IanF-R:
Link to this show's flowsheet

Excerpts #10 Snow Day

Original source here.

Up early on a snow day due to the exquisite quality of the sunlight. We don't get snow here often, and when we do the whole area shuts down. I realize that other places don't have the same experience, so their quality of snow is different; merely a muted version of the usual hustle and bustle. Here it is quiet. Very very quiet. Foot traffic only. Like all the cars got on the mothership and left.

Wildly unlike this track. All crunch and bombast.

1. Full Range Dynamic Sound.
2. Gothic Test Tones
3. We can learn to spell.
4. 240 Flapjacks.
5. Brief Industrial Interlude
6. Metal Metal Metal Metal Poof.
7. Broadcast from the Factory Floor.
8. We're now going live.
9. Can we be like the aliens?
10. On the fringe of our range.
11. We're not U2
12. Punch and Judy and Primus.
13. Deep Dub Outro.
    

Added by IanF-R:
Link to this show's flowsheet

Excerpts #9 - Striding a Hit.

Source accessible here.

This show took place in 1996 on July 5th or 6th. What's funny is that the spreadsheet-as-database I have of the tapes list different dates than are on the tapes themselves. Since the show took place usually at midnight to 2am, or eleven to 1am, or ten until midnight; most of the tapes are dated as if the show took place in the late evening. The info sheet is marked as if the show took place in the early morning. For a minute, I thought I had the wrong tapes, or sheet, or both.

This leaves the sound in a sort of liminal temporal no-space, and makes me wonder that if but for the artifacts that now for you only exist as bits - and therefore completely imaginary anyway - none of this ever really happened. Treat this, then, as an unexpected gift.

1. Skronk traffic jam. Garbage collection
2. Letter of Complaint
   
3. Unauthorized Pyrotechnic Displays
4. Celtic fiddle REAL ART
5. Strauss and Strauss and Strauss and Strauss
6. Mallets and Malice
7. (unintelligible)
8. We Love the Tuvans
9. WE ARE RIGHT INSIDE THE PIANO
10. R2D2 Tuvan Disco
11. Nothing Succeeds like Excess
12. Reverse Attack Percussion
13. Slow Groove Coda
    

Added by IanF-R:
Link to this show's flowsheet. And we still do love the Tuvans.

Excerpts #7

I just got the last stash of tapes this week. I've yet to sort through them, of course, but the latent archivist in me is pleased. I can catalog them all and store them away, maybe burn them all to DVD or store them on a spare hard drive? The possibilities are endless.

The winter season brings a regular heating and cooling cycle to my house, and the differences in air pressure that occur around 66 degrees (I am a cheap bastard), are enough to make a metal tin somewhere in my home office "ping" as the lid flexes back and forth. I don't know which tin, or where it is, mainly because I like the sound and the reason so much that I'm loathe to disturb it.

This tape was recorded in 1996 on June 21st. I only just now realized that I had thirteen description points in the last two entries (really, just now), so I may just keep going with that. Original source here, though the podcast seems to work so maybe that's redundant.

1. Jim was a great sportsman.
2. High speed metal bit. Japanese design.
   
3. A Western Tale.
4. No. Yeah. Whoa. Yes.
5. Push instead of Drag. Some Silence.
6. Space Grind. Space Throb.
7. A Real Country Song.
8. Disco Loop.
9. Electro-Swing with scattered indigestible crunchy bits.
10. Ding Dong.
11. Disassembly is the reverse of these steps.
12. Film Noir.
13. Techno outro.
    

Added by IanF-R:
Link to this show's flowsheet.

Excerpts #6

I just got through a three-day festival (festival? At what point does a series of days of music become a "festival", does it have to do with the number of bands, or days, or both? More research must be done on this) of bands covering other bands, so my perception is rather skewed at the moment. Also I'm tired.

Carry on! This tape was made on 6/14/1996. Also labeled "Excerpts", and while there is no clear theme, I do not consider that to be a detriment. Podcast appears to be working, original source also here.

1. Grateful Dead Industrial Deconstruction
2. Free Jazz with Turntable Manipulation
3. No, I really am a Truck
4. Alvin has trouble with obstinate cellists.
5. Lock groove groove.
6. Music from the ominous part.
7. 80's hip hop diversion.
8. Chuckles and Cowbells
9. Vincent Price: Poetry Fan
10. Swing, interrupted.
11. Wings, fixed and flapping.
12. We are not turntablists.
13. We can't stop the 80's; somebody help us.
    

Added by Ian F-R:
Link to this show's flowsheet. From this one you can get a sense of my musical tastes at the time: noisy, electronic, and varied (Murphy's Law? Shamen? Anthony Braxton?).

Happy New Ear.

It's a new year, but during the old year, I spent a little time with the back catalog of tapes from what seems like eons ago and my trusty antique computer and made these things all computery-file-like. Ian granted me blog access to post them (they are, after all, more than partly his work), so I'll be doing that once a week for the next year (and beyond, until I run out of tapes).

Chronological order, as this prevents discussions of quality, appropriateness, or any other pigeonholing words that occlude more than reveal. I decided on AAC since it's probably a "free enough" format. Uncompressed audio is available upon request.

This tape was made on 5/31/1996, quite possibly before I even became involved. Vague, unconvincing descriptions of possible cuepoints follow.

1. Words that are spoken
   
2. 80's cop show background music
3. More rolling clicks and non-tubular bells
4. Russian murmuring
5. Scottish shoegaze feedback
6. Roughly handled babbling
7. A strident loop
8. Sound affect
9. Rubber spaghetti western
10. Typewriters and bongos
11. Saxophone balloon art
12. Prepared monastery
    
13. Somewhat of a recap

Blog post should also be a podcast, but just in case you want something to press on, the track is also here. All tracks should be available on the Internet Archive here, if you're antsy for stuff before I post it.

Added by IanF-R:
Link to the flowsheet for this show.

Flowsheets were required by the programming department to track what songs, albums, and artists were played from the preferred playlists (weekly recommendations). But the value here may be to identify what sounds or songs were used in each show.

Some shows with stricter themes or more intense mix sessions unfortunately don't have much filled in--it was hard to keep track of what we played when we were constantly changing discs or starting and stopping things. Whereas when we took a break and played a straight musical interlude, it was easier to write that down. Nevertheless I'll add them a) when I have them and b) when they seem to me to add something to the listening experience.