Tag: doom metal

SOUNDWAVE : 125 : SUNWARPER

Today’s guest deejay is Michael Jakucs, AKA Sunwarper.

After hearing Michael’s music in both Brian Sangmeister and Forest Robots’s mixes for Soundwave, I invited Michael to share a mix. Based on Michael’s music, I knew we were in good hands. But I did not anticipate the surprising directions he took his mix and yet felt utterly familiar.

Let me explain.

The focus of Soundwave is ambient, classical, experimental, and instrumental music, with an emphasis on the ambient. And that’s fine. I’m all about that ambient life. But for me, it’s always a delight when a guest shares a mix that leans into the show’s classical, experimental, and instrumental aspects. Christian Sager’s doom metal/math rock/hip hop mix comes to mind. As does Charles Hazlewood’s mimimalist/modern classical/free jazz mix.

What makes today’s show special, for me, is that it’s very much steeped in shoegaze and dream pop. So while I only know several of the artists in Michael’s mix, I already feel well acquainted with the music I’m unfamiliar with. It’s very déjà vu. I keep asking myself, “Isn’t this a 4AD release?”

 

Michael Jakucs, AKA Sunwarper
Michael Jakucs, AKA Sunwarper

Michael just released a track composed for the season finale of the webcomic The Eagle and the Snake called “Forever Becoming.” He also has a full-length album, Radiant Visage, that will be released on October 14 and available for pre-order on September 9.

Join us next week when our guest deejay will be n5MD founder Mike Cadoo.

See you then.

  1. Kh3rtis & Willebrant “Calm Complete”
  2. Frequency Control Centre “Ventral Tegmental”
  3. Sunwarper “Farther”
  4. jesu “We All Faulter”
  5. Maureen’s Friend “R.P.O.W.”
  6. Cloudkicker “We Were All Scared”
  7. Cities of Earth “Sundog”
  8. christ. “Pylonesque”
  9. Eonlake “Retcon”
  10. Boards of Canada “Constants Are Changing”

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Logo by Rik Oostenbroek

Weekly Mix 27: July 9, 2017

Last night my girlfriend watched I T2 Trainspotting. I haven’t seen Trainspotting since it was released back in 1996 and I thought it’d be fun to revisit those lovable junkies and hooligans from the first movie. And it was fun. The dialogue was whip-smart and the cinematography was was breathtaking and the actors were fantastic. But it was fun in a Trainspotting sort of way because it you remember the first movie it was about a bunch of Gen X kids who use heroin because they’re lives have been hallowed out by Thatcherism, consumerism and boredom. In T2 Trainspotting we get to revisit those characters except this time they’re older, a little thicker in the middle and they’re nostalgic while at the same time they’re considering they’re mortality.

I’m a Gen X kid. I’m older. I’m a little thicker in the middle. I think about my mortality. But I’m not nostalgic. The 90s were just another decade for me and then I moved on. Each decade had it’s peaks and valleys and some friends dropped out of my life but they were replaced by new friends. But the 90s were special, special to me, anyway, because I was a young man with a bright future ahead of me and my life was so vivid because I was experiencing everything for the first time. I got to fall in love as an adult for the first time. I also got to experience my first heartbreak as an adult. I got to meet friends for the first time that I’ll probably know until the day I die. Or until they die. Hopefully they go first.

And I was always listening to music and the first five songs you’ll hear on today’s show were part of the soundtrack to my life at that time. The stuff is heavy. As usual, I listened to a lot of different kinds of music back in the 90s, everything from hip hop to avant-garde jazz, but hardcore and industrial was the music that I really responded to. Can you blame me? America was fighting in the first Gulf War and it was clear that it was going to come back and bite us in the ass further down the road. The Republican and Democratic parties were just starting to become recalcitrant and hyper-consumerism was becoming a cultural value.

I’ll see you again next week. I promise it won’t be as heavy as today’s show. See you then!

  1. Godflesh “Love Is A Dog From Hell”
  2. Bastro “(I’ve) Ben Brown”
  3. Loving Six “U.S. World”
  4. Gore “Mean Man’s Dream”
  5. Head of David “Dog Day Sunrise”
  6. The Bug & Earth “Dog (feat. JK Flesh)”
  7. Pale Sketcher “Plans That Fade (Faded Dub)”

Illustration: GDBee ©2017