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