Ten Minute Bursts (#129)

Source file found here. Originally broadcast on this day 16 years ago(!), October 8th, 1998.

I can only faintly remember the idea for this show--to parcel out the show into 10-minute chunks, trying to cut ourselves off in mid-stride once the timer goes off, to keep from getting stuck into long periods of repetition. Without minutely analyzing the recording to see if that worked, this show doesn't stand out from others that I've heard in any dramatic way. The same tropes and tactics seem to be in effect here: digital FX, forced hypnotic loops, vinyl record manipulation, and non-sequitur text-and-background arrangements.

If anything, the overall show seems less violently disruptive of its own grooves--it gets into a new track and digs on it for a bit, then moves to a different one and tries that for a bit. There are some really great textural sections here, from sharp, cutting distortion to soft, crackly prickles like an aural wool sweater. Recognized sources: Star Wars OST, Led Zep, OOIOO, Melt Banana, Medicine, NIN.

1. Continuous Sandpeople
2. Rubbery-go-round
3. "Die yr roots"
4. Short-circuiting telegraph
5. Tap tap tap--whatisit?
6. Communication freakout
7. Electrified chicken coop
8. Metaphysical tagalongs
9. Train trestle becomes fast drums
10. Funky break, falling horns
11. Resonant whisper
12. Wolf-the-frank
13. Thrum pulse sunrise

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

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 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

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

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

Another video for you.

Angie Dickinson does not take any crap.

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
    

Acoustic Sound (#92)

Source here. Originally recorded on January 22, 1998.

This one is mislabeled as (#22). Since I pulled these off of tapes in more or less random order, the inconsistencies didn't stick out as much as they do when I'm parsing through them in chronological order. I make changes where I can, but I haven't re-uploaded the changes, so you'll have to suffer through the occasional misstep. If you're reading this in the year 4000, I've probably made the changes before I died, or left instructions in my will about doing so.

My coffeemaker broke this morning, which isn't an issue for me so much as it is for my partner (who as near as I can tell simply doesn't exist before the first cup). I could link this to the show, which always served to perk me up, but the truth of the matter lies in the previous phrase. Collage is made of everything, and can be made into anything.

This anything features long long long stretches of record manipulation, medium to spare record layering, and nice looping. This compressed astonishingly well.

1. Psychedelic Punk Hayride
2. Queasy Hippie Merry Go Round
3. Metropolis Dub
4. Polyrhythmic Bhangra Dub
5. Squishy Analog Sound Effect Storytime
6. Transit Station for Headless Horsemen
7. Kitchen Tantrums of Distinction
8. Endless Disco Break
9. Not a Banjo Solo at All
10. I Meant Something Different When I Asked For "Electronic Music"
11. Let's Have Some Dope Beats
12. Ok, More Dope Beats
13. Sudden Silence
    

Back to ASCIIs (#86)

Source here. Originally recorded on December 11th, 1997.

I'm not sure why ASCII is pluralized here, but that's what was on the tape. I'm not sure what it means in this context (and I know I've said that many times before). There's nothing remotely computer related on this track, although there's a lot of interweaving vocal and speech parts. Tight loops, and crafty hooks. There's a certain constant throb to the thing that sort of oozes and jostles you all the way.

1. Honk and Clank
2. Churn Churn Churn Churn Churn
3. THX
4. Hiccup Carnival
5. Tuvan Hiccup
6. A moment to groove
7. Diving mask
8. For His Coming
9. One Long Raspberry
10. Sharpen
11. The tiniest whale
12. Bad horror and worse music
13. Hand-cranked piano

Added by IanF-R:

Okay, I give. I thought I was being clever by making a half-pun on "Basics", as in "Back-to-Basics", "Back-to-BASIC (computer language)", etc. Obviously, it was too far-fetched to translate beyond the day I wrote it down.
But really it doesn't make sense with that explanation, either. I had an infatuation in my early computer-years (circa 1984-1987) with ASCII art like you'd find on the BBS art galleries (didn't we all), and my ignorance of the details behind ASCII/ANSI/etc led me to mythologize its importance to everyday life to some extent, that well, still lurks in my memory, I suppose, being I can talk about it today. Grr. Here's the playlist

Much To Do / Mush TuTu (#71)

Source also here. Recorded on August 28th, 1997.

This one's a shorty, so I should have done long before this. Oh well.

There are fewer elements in a shorter time in this, so the descriptions while accurate, are a little repetitive (heh). I don't know why "Baby Driver" was so popular with us, I can only plead inebriation. I have two favorite loops in this track, and they should be pretty obvious. Some good points happen in the middle and near the end, with the school-house-rocky kind of loops.

1. Hello, this is Ricardo Montalban
2. Bumping the Electric Orchestra
3. Carsick Guitar Tuning
4. Low Rent Counterpoint
5. Ricardo Returns
6. Secret Arpeggio
7. One Car Traffic Jam
8. We might - in fact - take it, after all
9. A fine mess, indeed
10. Cartesian Duality Refuted
11. Ziddy Bop
12. Classic Computer Music Sound Collection
13. Everything we wanted to do crowded in at the end

Added by IanF-r:
Flowsheet? Here.

Tape Loop Marxist (#67)

Should be “Tape Loop Archaeologist”. What the hell were we doing here? It's as if the tape's been buried thirteen years in damp peat. There's certainly no Marxism present, except perhaps the reduction of all sounds to an equal level of recognizance, which is kind of the aural equivalent of blurry.

I vaguely remember attempting twice to make an entire show out of one long tape loop which was jury-rigged to stretch off of the station's reel-to-reel tape machine, and I think that's what this is. It's a shorter show, a mere 37-odd minutes of unintelligible swamp and blowing air. I've listed notes for imaginary sources, as I've no clue what was actually used to make these sounds.

Direct link to file here. Originally heaved into the airwaves on July 31, 1997. Unhelpful playlist sheet here.

1. Ross ice shelf cracking apart under the weight of tourists
2. Thousands of timbered trees floating past over slow rapids on their way to the port of Gdańsk
3. Static on an analog telephone line as you listen to the asthmatic breathing of a tubercular wooly mammoth
4. Dream you had once of an out-of-control party where the host unexpectedly turned into a werewolf
5. Rummaging in your pocket for the perfect styrofoam peanut
6. Hiccuping belt sander in its last few minutes of functional life
7. Dragging a small tree over twelve lattice fences piled flat on top of each other
8. World’s largest thunder sheet, 400 yards long but only 1/8 inch thick
9. Furious drum circle in a hurricane, heard from inside a quonset hut filled with chainsaw sculptures
10. Being hit in the face with a wave of mud on a riverbank in the Amazon
11. Riding inside a aluminum-sided bus being driven sideways in gale force winds
12. Killing flies on a hardwood floor with a pennyloafer while vacuuming the drapes
13. 5-minute re-enactment of The Matrix on an enormous moving walkway which is slipping its bearings

Moods of TKDF (#63)

Source available here, and the show was originally broadcast on July 3rd, 1997 (thirteen years ago today).

Mood music? Aside from the Space Invaders disco near the beginning of the show, most of the sounds in this episode fall on a mood scale between "Zen-like/Lethargic/Asleep" and "Spacey/Dreamy/Artificially Stimulated". A quiet, or at least sitting/lying down show, for most.

An orchestral record of the smooth, mood music type seems to linger throughout the show in various echo and flange-effect chambers, which to me gives the whole show a happy-sappy feel. Other recognizable sounds are yours truly trying in vain to put a caller on the air, clipped phone messages, and a recording of fireworks mailed to us from another radio show in Minnesota of *their* Fourth of July show.

1. Kosmische Orkester
2. Vague Difficulties
3. Sardonic Warfare
4. Crumbly Snow
5. Blue Flowers
6. Limping Acid
7. Swooping Absence
8. Speedtape Burbles
9. Reverbed Cowbell
10. Misirlou Jazz
11. Gymnasium Pianos
12. Kosmische Kindergarten
13. Churchill's Funeral

Added by Ian F-r:
This show's flowsheet.

Loopy Lupi Loops (#22) Alcohol May Have Been A Factor

Original source here. Recorded October 19, 1996.

Drinking is strictly verboten while on the air, but when I'm going over a show that's been recorded in the past, it might happen. I blame brunch, and yes I know it's almost eight in the evening.

This particular show was all about the looping; something which we were able to achieve in a billion different ways: One could put tape on a record, causing the needle to skip. An audio tape could be looped on a reel-to-reel or even inside of a cassette. We had a 10 second delay that was used more than once as a really really long loop. Eventually, there were these computers that came in and did all of it. Always, though, the loop (whether beat-matched funk or simply repetitive non-groove) reigned supreme.

1. 1812 Ukelele Overture
2. Vague Led Zeppelin Wannabee
3. Alien Flyby
4. Orchestral Maneuvers, etc.
5. Swoopy Groove Thing
6. Incessant Ringing
7. Statics and Sermons
8. Koo Koo Koo Koo
9. Hidden Metal Ghost
10. Prog Rock with Mallets
11. Meet the Folkers
12. Attack of the Funk Lords
13. Mmm Bop, except not (It's just a thriller)
    

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

This show is quite a murky one, owing probably to poor tape handling during recording process. I think it adds nicely to the atmospheric miasma-tone.
Update:
Actually, I think this was a show where we utilized the reel-to-reel tape loop (see purple/orange photo in sidebar), and (some of) the grain comes from the oxide being slowly ground off the loop of tape as it gets played and recorded and played over and over again.

A brief interlude.

We used to stuff like this all the time on the show, on purpose. You'll hear some of it, once in a while.