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

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?
    

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
    

Night of the Vacuum Cleaners (#95)

Source here. Originally recorded on February 12, 1998.

This is one of my favorite episodes. Like, my most favorite of all, possibly.

We had a herd of vacuum cleaners, microphones of all sorts, and (of course) earplugs. We made a din that was never equaled. We tested the limits of sanity and the WXDU carpet. We alienated the last two people who listened on a regular basis.

God, it was fun. What's amazing (to me) is that it still sounds fun after over ten years.

This sounds like a solid hour of (prepared) vacuum cleaners, with incidental music.

1. Vacuumaquatsi
2. Howling Reverb
3. Stick the Microphone ALL THE WAY IN
4. The Layers Get Pretty Deep
5. Sort of a Solo
6. Not the Chamber Music I'd Imagined
7. We stop Sucking
8. More Air and Strings
9. Flowbee?
10. Analog Synth Counterpoint
11. Spin Down
12. Silence
13. Final Metal Action

Of course, you might as well just say:

1. Vacuum Cleaners
2. Vacuum Cleaners
3. Vacuum Cleaners
4. Vacuum Cleaners
5. Vacuum Cleaners
6. Vacuum Cleaners
7. Vacuum Cleaners
8. Vacuum Cleaners
9. Vacuum Cleaners
10. Vacuum Cleaners
11. Vacuum Cleaners
12. Vacuum Cleaners (reprise)
13. Vacuum Cleaners

added by IanF-r: FWIW, here's an image of the show's abbreviated playlist.

Microphone/Macronoise (#93)

Source here. Originally recorded January 29th, 1998.

I spent the last two weekends going to live shows, one of which was Moogfest. I beg your forgiveness.

More than once we had an actual theme, the theme being a limitation on the usual kind of no-holds-barred, free-form mayhem that often took place. This particular show was a show where we started everything with microphones and handheld recording equipment. A genuine din captured live. There are toilet noises, which might be all you need to know.

1. A Pennywhistle for your thoughts.
2. I Fail at Sitar Hero
3. We finally shut off the alarm
4. Background Murmurs and an Organ Recital
5. We built a hurdy gurdy in the junkyard
6. A trek in the parking lot
7. Stuck in the feedback closet
   
8. Distant Weather Report
9. Aetheric Carpentry
10. A slight relenting/recording
11. More Static et.al.
12. Toys and more toys
13. Steel Pot Cathedral

(Unnumbered) "Humor is Everywhere"

Source here. Originally recorded on December 6th, 1997.

Occasionally the intrepid actors in the show were called in to substitute for other specialty shows on our fair station. This was usually never done more than once, as we'd bring our disease to to their show. This sort of cross-pollination (or contamination) was a favorite thing (of ours) to do.

This was a show Ian subbed for the comedy show on Sunday. All comedic samples were used and no humor was harmed in the making of this show.

1. First in Flight
2. Whoops a profanity
3. Groucho tells a story
4. Banks and Opera
5. Who Governs This Country?
6. PDQ
7. A Lehrer Moment
8. His remarks will be translated into English
9. B.L.O.N.D.E.
10. Stump the Band
11. Three-Part Invention
12. Moog Tigers
13. We Saved All The Laughter to the End

Demonophone/Infernophone (#46)

Source here. Originally aired on March 13, 1997.

The title of this track gives us the sense of some possessed audio source, and further listening does not give us any reason to believe otherwise. My main question is (as always): "Is the spirit evil, or mischievous?" My vote stays with the latter (although the former shows up more and more as the show progresses) as this recording doesn't shy away from the silly, puerile, juvenile, and just plain fun mayhem.

1. Bronx Cheer Lullaby
2. Bronx Cheer Punk. Hook comes shortly
   
3. Remote Robot Races
4. Live Organ Recital
5. Gimme a Kiss
6. Funny Baby Transmission
7. Worst Lawrence Welk Episode Ever
8. Quiet Grooves Follows
9. Nauseous Gamelan
10. Tripping over Turntables
11. Electronic Singing Bowl
12. Cyberpunk Tropical Forest
13. More Dub Than We Know What To Do With
    

Added by IanF-R:
Flowsheet here.