Tag: ambient dub

SOUNDWAVE : 138 : GLYN BUSH

Today’s guest deejay is Glyn Bush.

Last month I shared a retrospective mix from the Ambient Dub compilation series. It was a fantastic experience revisiting those albums, which also served as a touchstone to some beautiful times. Inspired, I reached out to as many of the musicians on the compilation album as possible, leading me to Glyn, whom I’ve always known as one-half of Original Rockers.

Glyn’s mix re-introduced me to gems from Durutti Column and Faust and introduced me to new favorites such as Chassol and Khotin. And Glyn’s mix is chock full of his music projects, such as Biggabush.

Glyn has some words about his mix below.

Join us next weekend when our guest deejay will be Rubén Tamayo.

See you then.

 

Glyn Bush
Glyn Bush

It was really nice to be asked to do an ambient mix as it’s a genre I always enjoy even if I don’t normally listen to it that much.

With Original Rockers/Rockers Hi-Fi, we were asked to do an “ambient dub” track by Mike Barnet from Beyond Records around 1992. We just went with our gut and very quickly produced “Sexy Selector.” I suppose we defined ambient dub as being quite lush, with deep chords, lots of space, sequences, and odd bits of vocal. At the time I was listening to The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld and going to a club called Oscillate in Birmingham and hearing quite a bit of what you might call ambient electronica, seeing people like Autechre play live, Alex Paterson on the decks and of course the Higher Intelligence Agency who ran the night.

So I’ve delved back into that era a bit in my mix and checked out some more contemporary stuff with tips from my daughter, re:ni, plus an ambient track we made together a couple of years ago using the sounds of glaciers crumbling, rainfall, and suchlike.

The opener by Richie Hawtin alias F.U.S.E. is one of my all-time fave tracks, just a slowly unfurling 303 looping over and over in its inimitable way.

I dropped a couple of bits from Chassol who makes really beautiful music, not necessarily defined as “ambient” but lush and interesting and full of surprises. He does incredible stuff with recordings of voices where he literally turns all the inflections of speech into musical notes. Check out his Barack Obama track too.

I included a track from my Sunken Foal Stories album, possibly my favourite release and unlike anything I’ve done before or since, with lots of random juxtapositions and happy accidents.

re:ni recommended a lovely track by MLO called ”Sleeper”, which didn’t make the cut, but I used a nice Wagon Christ remix of one of his tracks which I’d not heard before. I’m always happy to crowbar a Luke Vibert track into any mix.

Ghost Power is a collab between Tim Gane of Stereolab and Jeremy Novak of Dymaxion who do some really interesting stuff, mostly nothing like the track I used but all good.

Neotropic is Riz Maslen, who made lovely stuff in the early 90s. This was a fave on cassette back in the day.

Beak> is a Geoff Barrow from Portishead side project, doing a mix of krautrock-ish, motorik beats, plus some excellent synth work, quite soundtrack-y vibes.

Durutti Column was making ambient guitar stuff in the early 80s, of which this is a fine example and always makes me think of sunshine.

PLO Man and C3D-E are on the coveted Acting Press label, which I’d not heard of before re:ni gave me a tip, but it’s high-quality stuff. Likewise, Khotin – is a Canadian producer doing some lovely things on Bandcamp.

Faust was a bunch of crazy German guys who lived in their studio, recorded shedloads of improvisations, and wrote some beautiful songs. The two Faust tracks are from the The Faust Tapes, another all-time fave album of mine compiled from their unreleased tapes from the early 70s.

A couple of Bigga Bush tracks, one called “The Bells,” written in the mid-90s, and the collab mentioned above with re:ni, which was written for a DJs for Climate Action campaign using natural found sounds.

We close with the last ambient dub track recorded by Rockers Hi-Fi for the Ambient Dub Volume 3 (Aqua) album on Beyond, named ”Mecca of Space” after a FireballXL5 comic strip.

Cheers,

Glyn

  1. F.U.S.E. “Theychx (extract)”
  2. Chassol “I lôôôôve usometimes (extract)”
  3. Glyn Bigga Bush “Now There’s Pain”
  4. MLO “Spike (Wagon Christ Mix)”
  5. Edgar Broughton Band “The Dawn Crept Away (extract)”
  6. Ghost Power “Astral Melancholy Suite (extract)”
  7. Neotropic “Neotropic”
  8. Durutti Column “Conduct (edit)”
  9. PLO Man & C3D-E “100 Pt. II – Pt. III”
  10. Faust “Untitled (Arnulf on Drums 2)”
  11. Chassol “Les Oursses”
  12. Khotin “Dialogue 6”
  13. Faust “Rudolf der Pianist”
  14. BiggaBush “The Bells”
  15. BiggaBush & re:ni “Dub Plate Tectonics”
  16. Original Rockers “Mecca of Space”

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SOUNDWAVE : 134 : protoU

Today’s guest deejay is Sasha Puzan, AKA protoU.

Sasha is the closest thing Soundwave has to an in-house deejay. I was introduced to her through Dronny Darko (listen to his mix for Soundwave here). Sasha’s first mix was elemental and cosmic. Her second mix was cozy and intimate. Sasha, as Robocat, shared anthemic bangers to celebrate Pride on her third mix for Soundwave.

 

Sasha Puzan, AKA protoU
Sasha Puzan, AKA protoU

Sasha returns with a mix that is, for the most part, a compilation of select tracks from Tehnofonika Records. It’s been my soundtrack as San Diego transitions from summer to fall. It’s dark, rhythmic, atmospheric, and sexy.

Sasha’s new album, Untitledcloud, will be released next month on her birthday, November 10th, through ECOUL SND. If you enjoy Sasha’s music and mixes, consider purchasing her album as a gift to her and yourself. More importantly, she asks that you support Ukraine.

Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Peter van Cooten.

See you then.

  1. protoU “Lost Here”
  2. Gate X-138 “120 Km To Chalna”
  3. Dt-90 “Alone Man (G.R.I.T. Remix)”
  4. Echo Box “The Thaw”
  5. Faidel and Alex Humann “Alaska Preserve”
  6. Goran Geto “Silent Places”
  7. Murkok “Inconsistency”
  8. Untitledcloud “Abstractions”
  9. Solar Noise “Horizon”
  10. Lumini Trio “Last Summer”
  11. Dronny Darko & protoU “Riparian Forest [ 300 million years ago ]”

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Logo by Rik Oostenbroek

SOUNDWAVE : 131 : AMBIENT DUB

Today’s show features a retrospective mix of the Ambient Dub compilation albums from the ’90s.

A couple of months ago, I realized I had an open slot in the Soundwave schedule. I could have quickly filled that slot, but since I rarely get to deejay on my own show, I save those available slots for myself. As it happens, I had just finished a mix featuring music from the Ambient Dub compilation albums.

If you’re unfamiliar with Ambient Dub, they were a series of compilation albums released through the Beyond label. Electronic music was mutating at a furious pace, and it was only a matter of time before ambient and dub would intertwine and become its own genre.

As I recall, I first came across the Ambient Dub Volume 3: Aqua album while digging through the racks at Newbury Comics in Harvard Square. The album cover caught my imagination. It was a minimalist take on the techno/rave flyer album covers at the time.

I was already a devotee of dub since the ‘80s when I discovered ROIR’s 21st Century Dub, a release of Pecker Power’s cosmic dubs. Beyond captured that alchemical synthesis of ambient and dub, turning me on to musicians like Banco De Gaia, Higher Intelligence Agency and Space Time Continuum.

For the next few years, I worked my way backward through the series, finding Ambient Dub Volume 2: Earthjuice and Ambient Dub Volume 1: The Big Chill and finally catching up with Ambient Dub Volume 4: Jellyfish.

I’ve had these albums on rotation for decades. I’ve included songs from these cherished albums when I was a deejay at WMFO, often winding down 5 am set with Insanity Sect’s “Choctaw Ridge.” This mix came together from muscle memory. It was effortless. It was so much fun that whenever a slot opens up in the next few months, I’ll showcase retrospective mixes featuring music from the Excursions in Ambience and From Here to Tranquility compilation series.

Join us next week when our guest deejay will be returning guest deejay Pierre Laplace.

See you then.

  1. Original Rockers “Sexy Selector”
  2. Groove Corporation “Roots Controller”
  3. Sandoz “White Darkness [Electronic Eye Remix]”
  4. Sounds from the Ground “Triangle”
  5. Banco De Gaia “Sheesha”
  6. Gol “No Bounds”
  7. Digital Jesus “Menali Encounter”
  8. 21st Century Aura “Disorientation”
  9. Deep Space Network “Callacop”
  10. Space Time Continuum “Oracle”
  11. Higher Intelligence Agency “Delta”
  12. A.P.L. “Hypnosystem”
  13. Mimoid “Strawberry”
  14. Alphanex “Planet Hoskins”
  15. Insanity Sect “Choctaw Ridge”
  16. Coldcut “Sign”
  17. Starseeds “Regina from the Future”

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Logo by Rik Oostenbroek