SOUNDWAVE : 56 : JOHN SHANAHAN

Today’s guest deejay is John Shanahan, host of the Hypnagogue Podcast.

I follow all the guest deejays on Twitter (check my SOUNDWAVE list here), and the Hypnagogue Podcast kept turning up on Kirk Markarian’s Twitter feed. I trust Kirk’s taste in music, so I listened to a few episodes of Hypnagoge. I loved everything I heard and invited John to guest deejay on SOUNDWAVE.

John’s mix is everything you’d expect in a SOUNDWAVE mix, but what especially delighted mas his selected dub￼ tracks.

I’ve been a fan of dub since last century.

I first became aware of dub when I read William Gibson’s cyberpunk classic, Neuromancer. In the novel, Case, our protagonist, finds himself in a Jamaican space colony called Zion.

Case gradually became aware of the music that pulsed constantly through the cluster. It was called dub, a sensuous mosaic cooked from vast libraries of digitalized pop; it was worship, Molly said, and a sense of community.

I was intrigued by that mysterious description. Shortly afterwards I came across the 21st Century Dub album on ROIR. I was hooked and became a dub devotee. I even adopted the persona of a character called King Dub. I’d speak with an Jamaican patois, and combined with some echo and pitch-shifting, I became a deejay from the deepest realm of dub spinning tracks from everyone from Ras Michael and The Sons of Negus to The Orb.

When I launched SOUNDWAVE I assumed there would be a lot of dub. The genre is a natural fit for the format of those show. I’ve been disappointed that dub has been a blind spot and I’m relieved that John is the first guest deejay to include dub tracks in the mix. Hopefully he won’t be the last.

John has some words about his mix below.

Frank Riggio’s Empreinte Initiale EP

Before I wrap things up I want to let you know that guest deejay Frank Riggio has released his new single, Empreinte Initiale

Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Roedelius. Check out his livestream concert here.

John Shanahan

The Hypnagogue Podcast began over a decade ago as an offshoot of the Hypnagogue Reviews site, which I ran from 2003 until 2017, when I decided I didn’t have anything worth saying anymore. Now the music does the eclectic talking for me every two weeks, built from the amazing range of music sent my way.

I laid down this Soundwave mix as I do my own show—picking an interesting place to start and following a stream of semi-conscsiousness through my library to see what associations arise. So we kick off with haunting sound-sculptor Joe Frawley and move with the piano into the sparse, emotional spaces of Memory Bell. The Detroit76, a Matt Borghi side project, shifts us smoothly into beat-driven groove territory, segueing into tasty licks from Austin funk-dub duo Canartic, which melts neatly into into vintage Cyberchump. Forest Robots offer a bridge by way of plucked-string tones in a wash of electronica, and Corciolli & Emmanuele Baldini use it to escort us further intro electro-acoustic territory. That put me in mind of the modern chamber music of Domingues and Kane, after which we flick the switch to Tim Story’s brand of electronic chamber music. At the end, the ride finishes courtesy of the person who brought my show to Joseph’s attention in the first place, Neuro…No Neuro, aka Kirk Markarian.

Thank you, Kirk!

Joe Frawley “Sunday (Recurrences)”

Memory Bell “Entropy, Obsolete”

Matt Borghi and The Detroit76 “Space Telescope”

Canartic “Aux 1”

Cyberchump “Interstellar Dub Station Freakout”

Forest Robots “On A Desolate Shore Under A Full Moon”

Corciolli & Emmanuele Baldini “Glacier”

Domingues & Kane “Lament No 7”

Tim Story “The Woman Singing”

Neuro…No Neuro “Much-needed Recharge”

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