Today’s guest deejay is Kellen Perry, AKA Wife Signs.
Daniel Chamberlin turned me on to Wife Signs with his Cosmic Chambo mix for Soundwave. As is my want, I asked Daniel who he know that would want to share a mix on Soundwave and he suggested Kellen. Daniel was spot on, because Kellen’s mix is a delight.
Kellen Perry, AKA Wife Signs
I mentioned last month how Line Spectrum’s mix blended so seamlesslessly with the sounds of my environment that caused me no small amount of anxiety. Kellen’s mix also merged with the sounds around me, but it was so ephemeral that it was a soothing experience. It made the sound of clanking flatware musical. Some of the mixes heard on Soundwave are sublime, and some, like Kellen’s, make the mundane seem magical.
While you can stream Kellen’s new album, Beneath the Weight of Care, on Spotify, I encourage you to pushase his album on Bandcamp. You can also follow Kellen on Twitter.
I hope you have a Happy Halloween. I know I will, because I’m taking my grandkid on his first trick or treating he’ll remember. Talk about magical!
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be protoU.
Daniel and I met on Twitter over our shared appreciation of Paleowolf (listen to the Paleowolf mix on Soundwave here). I learned he is the host of Inter-Dimensional Music, a syndicated weekly community radio broadcast of “heavy mellow, kosmische slop, and void contemplation tactics.” After enjoying a couple of his shows, I invited Daniel to guest deejay on Soundwave.
What I love about Daniel’s mix is that his segues are so seamless that I often am unaware that he’s transitioned into another track. Granted, the music featured on Soundwave lends itself to those kinds of segues, but Daniel is particularly deft at it.
The other remarkable thing about Daniel’s mix, for me at least, is that he selected songs that feel very familiar to me. Except that I’ve never heard them before. They feel intimate and worn in.
Finally, Daniel’s mix took me on a sonic and emotional journey. I’d get lost in his mix. When it ended, I was satisfied but would have been just as happy to have it continue indefinitely.
Before I wrap up today’s show notes, there a couple of things I want to mention.
My second Moderna vaccination.
Monday I got my second dose of the Moderna vaccination. I was prepared for the worst: a very sore arm, chills, fevers, body aches, etc. I experienced none of that. I did sleep for over 24 hours, though.
Hans-Joachim Roedelis
Michael Donaldson was inspired by mix from Krautrock legend Hans-Joachim Roedelius to write a post on Roedelius’s musical career on his blog. It’s a good overview of Roedelius, so please read it if you’d like to learn more about the man.
Back to Beyond and Cycle
Guest deejay protoU has released a new album, Back to Beyond with Alphaxone. Listen to protoU’s mix for Soundwave here. Rhucle, who has also guest deejayed on Soundwave, has released his new album, Cycle. Both albums are fantastic and unique to each artist.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Mauricio Sotelo, AKA Haiteku.
See you then!
Daniel Chamberlin
Here’s an hour of heavy mellow meditation.
Cosmic Chambo presents a heavy mellow ritual soundtrack for meditation, yoga, and other mindfulness practices in the service of transcending false binaries and dismantling white supremacy. Listen for hypnotic choral music, metal-informed jazz drone, heavyweight ambient dub, and organic industrial rhythms.
Some months ago, Jason Engling was a guest deejay on SOUNDWAVE (you can hear his mix here). After Jason’s show I asked who he thought might be interested in contributing to SOUNDWAVE, and he recommended Steve.
I’ve been a fan of Jason’s music since discovering him through my electronic music show, solipsistic NATION. If Jason recommended Steve, then as far as I was concerned, it was a done deal. I’m not disappointed with Steve’s mix, and neither will you. It’s a thing of beauty. It’s also a perfect way to wind down four years of a corrupt and inept presidency and an attempted coup. Whew!
Steve has some words about his mix below.
I want to note that Steve included a lovely track from Brian Eno. That’s not anything remarkable, given that Eno practically invented the ambient genre. What is impressive is that Eno pitch-shifted his voice, creating a vocoder-like effect. I usually hate that sort of thing, but Eno being Eno, the song gave me goosebumps. And when I looked over Steve’s playlist and saw that the track was by Eno, I thought to m myself, “That makes sense.”I thank Steve for introducing me to an Eno track I had not heard before.
W. David Oliphant’s Remote Listening: Rag Dun vs Life Garden album
Before we get to Steve, I want to share with you the latest release from W. David Oliphant, who guest deejayed on SOUNDWAVE in September. The album is called Remote Listening: Rag Dun vs Life Garden. Oliphant describes remote listening as “the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target, purportedly ‘sensing’ with the mind.” Like everything else I’ve heard from Oliphant, his music is stepping into someone’s fever dream.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Ishmael Cormack.
See you then!
Steve Swartz
I don’t know anyone who escaped the intense gravity of 2020. In addition to a pandemic, this year also saw the unexpected passing of my father. A loss I’m still trying to process. I’ve spent a great deal of time contemplating death, disease, and division over the last several months. Music has always been my primary outlet of expression. As a result, I made a lot of music in 2020. (Four releases!) But as I land on the other side of them, I find myself increasingly feeling lost and out of place. I am often daydreaming about being somewhere else and unreachable. This sense has carried over into my music listening habits as well. I’ve desired quieter sounds that feel less tethered to a place or time. Fewer words. More feeling. To, perhaps, communicate something words cannot yet find. And that is what I have found in these songs over the last several months. To me, each of these pieces feels like rivers that drift or breeze stirring trees in a geography I would prefer to dwell. So I sit in these songs and let them fill my house throughout the days and evenings until, hopefully, I embody the spirit of their imagined origins.
Sadly Supercontext is now defunct although Christian and co-host Charlie Bennet still release a monthly podcast for Patreon supporters where they chat about the media they’ve been consuming. I highly recommend you go through their archives and listen to shows you think might strike your fancy.
I respect Christian and Charlie’s taste in music and invited them to guest deejay on SOUNDWAVE. Christian has delivered a mix that ranges from prog to math to dirge rock with a dollop of hip hop. Not your usual SOUNDWAVE fare but for me, at least, it was the perfect soundtrack to this week. 300,000+ dead from COIVD-19 and a President and his supporters who seemingly want to upend democracy. Christian’s mix is the blast of sound and fury I needed to propel me though the week.
Special thanks go out to Taylor Shechet for sequencing this week’s mix. Christian didn’t have the original tracks and when I offered to assemble the mix GarageBand refused to import the audio files. Taylor did me a solid by putting the mix together. And if you love today’s show then you’re definitely going to love Taylor’s mix for SOUNDWAVE that I’ll release in the next month or so.
CORRIDOR Magazine
Before I go, I want to mention that Christian and David Moore are launching a project called CORRIDOR Magazine, a new horror magazine bringing the weird worlds of short fiction, art, comics, and essays together under one roof. I’m helping fund it and so should you if this sort of thing is your bag.
Jonathan Ammon’s American Splendor album
I also wanted to share Jonathan Ammons’s new release, “Living Proof,” from his forthcoming album, American Splendor. I’m looking forward to the album. If you want to hear more music from Jonathan, listen to his mix for SOUNDWAVE here.
Harold Budd
Lastly, some sad news. Ambient composer Harold Budd died December 7. Just the day before I was listening to The Pearl, an album he recorded with Brian Eno, the day before he passed and was thinking how much I enjoyed his music. Harold was a pioneer in ambient music. He will be missed and my condolences go out to his family and friends.
And on that somber note, it’s time for me to say goodbye.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Harrold Roeland.
During the first few weeks of lockdown under COVID-19 it became clear that previous entertainments and enjoyments no longer obtained.
Pre-COVID-19 I would be reading five books at once. I’d read a chapter or section from each book before moving on to the next. Post-COVID-19 and I’m lucky if I can muster up the concentration to read for 10 or 15 minutes. I hear this is a common phenomenon.
Likewise, television failed to provide distraction. Aside from the usual hurdle of deciding what to watch came the realization that none of the shows being promoted by Apple, Amazon, Hulu, etc spoke to me and even when they did, such as Contagion, I’d wonder why no one was wearing face masks or not standing at least six feet apart sooner.
Like books, I could barely pay attention to the podcasts I used to like so much. And music, like television, seemed irrelevant to the world I now lived in. Everything seemed inane. Except for music that fell under the categories of ambient, classical, experimental and instrumental. There were no lyrics to be frustrated by and the music I was listening to was the perfect soundtrack to my perosnal experience of the pandemic. Surely there were other people who’d appreciate it and maybe get some solace from the mjsic so I launched this show.
This week’s show comes courtesy of Frank Riggio. I’m particularly excited about today’s because I’ve asked Frank to come on solipsistic NATION several times to talk about his music but Frank politely declined every single time. Frank is one of those artists who believes his music speaks for him. Fair enough. But if Frank wouldn’t do an interview maybe he’d do a mix for SOUNDWAVE. And lucky for us, he did. Frank selected some fantastic music that I know you’re going to love. I additional to great tunes, Frank also helps push the experimental aspects that I want SOUNDWAVE to explore.
Frank will talk about today’s music below. If you want to heat more of Franks’ music you’ll be happy to know that Frank recently released a new album under the name Aqka Torr and the album is called Fascina. It’s different from what you’ll hear on today’s mix and it’s very sexy and it’s mysterious.
Join us again next week when our guest deejay will be ambient musician Robert Rich.
See you then!
Frank Riggio
This mix was a great opportunity for me to put together some of the songs that I’m currently listening alongside new unreleased Frank Riggio tracks.
You’ll find here smooth transitions and cool mashups, especially the last one, this final 4 tracks mashup around that amazing LORN song with Hecq, Syl Kougaï and Amon Tobin.
I’m fascinated by all of these musicians featured in this mix, they’re consistently in my playlist, for years.
Music has always given me great recomfort in shitty moments in my life, even more in this crazy times. Being isolated that way with my daughter is not really something I expected experiencing in my life.
I truly believe humanity will never be the same after this pandemic, it’s the end of a cycle. I don’t want to sound defeatist but I’m definitely not enthusiastic for what’s coming next.
In a world where everything; every humans, every objects became “prohibited” to touch, the senses and feelings are really broken.
Music isn’t palpable, it’s odorless and invisible, it doesn’t really exist… so hearing, listening music is possibly the greatest thing you can do now, especially for your mental health.
Hope you enjoy this mix, be safe an take care of you and yours.
Hello to all of you in Berlin who tuned in for today’s show.
In the early eighties there was a punk band called MDC and they frequently changed their name to a different acronym with every new record released. Some of the names included Millions of Dead Cops, More Dead Cops, Millions of Dead Children, Multi Death Corporations, Millions of Damn Christians and Missile Destroyed Civilization. The woman I was dating at the time and her friend would come up with their own acronyms for MDC and one them that struck me was Master of Dead Contortions. If there was ever a more appropriate name for today’s mix then Master of Dead Contortions is it.
I’ve noticed that a lot of electronic music podcasts are usually 30 minutes in length while my shows usually clock in an hour. Even without the interviews that sometimes occur on Solipsistic Nation I feel that I need an hour to really take you on a journey.
So here’s the question: would you prefer 30 minute installments of solipsistic NATION or do you think the show should continue to run for an hour? You can post your answer at solipsisticnation.com or email me at solipsisticnation@gmail.com.
