Sofia Nystrand introduced me to several fantastic musicians after sharing her Vargkvint mix on Soundwave (you can listen to it here). Jakob was one of those musicians, and after I listened to some of his releases, I invited him to guest deejay.
Jakob is an award-winning film composer based in Stockholm, Sweden. His most recent soundtrack is Ziba, a movie about an Afghan woman living in Sweden, struggling with the realisation that she has developed romantic feelings for another woman, and the consequences that will have for her marriage and family. Jakob’s soundtrack for Ziba will be released Thursday, May 12. You can listen to a single from the soundtrack here. It’s a beautiful, moving piece.
Speaking of soundtracks, I listened to Jakob’s mix while playing the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game on Roll20. It lent atmosphere to the game and heightened the experience.
Jakob has some words about his mix below.
Before I leave you, Soundwave guest deejay Alex Haas has released his new album, STRING OF PIECES. His album has become part of my mourning routine as I start my workday. Listen to Alex’s mix for Soundwave here.
I’ve always found the duo constellation very interesting, as it’s so intimate. Whereas the solo work is the reflection of one vision, and a band can be everything from a fair democracy to a dictatorship, the duo is such a fascinating reflection of two combined minds, often resulting in a synergy effect. The mix contains some of the most inspiring duos I know (of), as well as a couple of examples where I myself have felt elevated by my collaborator.
Harrold was our guest deejay back in December 2020. His mix spanned the gamut from Biosphere to John Coltrane. It was so gorgeous that I asked him if he would be so kind to grace us with another one. Today’s show is equally breath taking and the range is just as broad and unexpected yet some somehow manages to be cohesive.
Harrold is a trained composer, a poet, sound designer and performing musician, specializing in the use of environmental sounds and long attention spans. His works try to invoke the timelessness of the world and its landscapes. He sings medieval and renaissance music with Ensemble Vlechtwerk, and hosts the radio show Sensenta, a musical serial, at the Concertzender every Sunday evening that explores many of these themes.
Oh, and Harrold also shares his daily haiku+picture on Instagram, which you can experience here.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Robert Koch.
See you then.
Harrold Roeland
A slightly moody mix. I couldn’t help but point to the current affairs in Afghanistan, which are much on my mind, as is the death of Raymond Murray Schafer. Such an admirable composer and thinker, such a loss for the music world. So there’s a reference to today in the description. I don’t mind if that has lost its urgency by the time this mix sees the light of day, but just so you know it’s there. The soundscape weeps today.
Toby Wren is an Australian guitarist who has an album called The Carnatic Jazz Experiment. As the title implies, it heavily uses Southern Indian Carnatic Rhythms. I think he’s a genius and this album deserves to be much more widely heard than it is now. The album is strictly acoustic, so the electronic echoes added in the end are my own, better to segue into the next track.
Lotto are from Poland, a band playing very minimalistic Post-Rock. Drones with drums. Once, for Sensenta, my weekly radio show at the Concertzender, I needed a variation on one of their tracks we played the week before. That’s the one you hear, the original but with little echo’s and delays added. I think it makes the track more hypnotic than it already is, and hope they will forgive me for messing around with their work. Both the original and this version appeared on Sensenta, and you can find their original version on their excellent album Elite Feline. If you like this music, check out their album VV too. It’s a gem.
To add some depth, Lull fades into the background around the 18 minute mark. Low frequencies galore. Though used for effect and drowned out here, Mick Harris’s album, Like A Slow River, is a beauty when it comes to dark, noisy ambient. Music like a haunted transistor radio.
Kloob hails from Spain. Synthesizer-based ambient is what he’s good at, and he seems to be getting better at it each year. This is an oldie, from his album Deep Emotional Phases, a remix found on the album as a bonus track.
Martin Stürtzer is next. I ran into his work through the Concertzender. A synthesizer wizard from Germany, he knows just how to twiddle those knobs and connect those modules to make splendid colourful textures. This is one of his more minimalist works, taken from, at the time of writing, a brand new album.
Martin Stültzer’s track turns out to combine well with another new work: Loscil’s “Lux”, from the album Clara. I mixed the two together on the radio the day prior to making this mix, and thought that move deserved repeating here. Loscil joins the mix from Canada. Pure blissful ambient.
The time of writing is 15 august 2021. In the wonderful country of Afghanistan the situation seems to be going completely down the drain. The news is worrying and hard to drive out of one’s mind. Thinking about what could happen to innocent people, especially girls and women, is enough to give you a knot in your stomach. Anouar Brahem’s work Improbable Day feels right. He is a famous Ud player from Tunesia. During the Arab Spring, he was home and couldn’t believe what was happening around him. He then wrote a full album about that. His opening track is our closing track for this mix. Yes, the context is much different than that of Afghanistan, but the music is fit for an Improbable Day.
Christoph is a composer and musician living and working in Berlin, focusing on chamber music and music for film. Besides releasing music on various imprints, Christoph runs his own record label Monochrome Editions. He also releases electroacoustic music as Field Rotation.
That’s all verbiage I copied and pasted from Discogs. I could use words like minimal, haunted, and mournful to describe it but you really, you need to experience Christoph’s music for yourself.
Christoph Berg
While writing this, I can tell you that I was listening to his Tape Anthology Vol. 1 album over my AirPods. My wife is asleep next to me, and I don’t want to disturb her. I was caught up in the emotions that Christoph was stirring in me when I began to be aware of the sounds of my stomach gurgling. But then it dawned on me that it wasn’t my stomach. It was gentle rumbling sounds within Christoph’s music. I’m sure that wasn’t Christoph’s intent, but for me, it gave an intimate and organic feel to his music. The experience endeared me to Christoph in an unexpected way.
Christoph’s mix, on the other hand, seems to capture the desolate spirit of our pandemic winter of 2022.
Everyone I know seems to have COVID. I have a dry, slight cough. It could be from the booster shot I received last week, a common cold I picked up, or the virus. And so, as part of my now monthly routine, I need to schedule yet another COVID test. But this is the shape of our lives now, so I square my shoulders and get on with it.
Christoph’s mix provides the soundtrack to what feels like it will be a very long winter.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Kazuya Nagaya.
daniel’s mix is important to me for several reasons.
One reason is that I meant daniel through Soundwave guest deejay Michael Donaldson (listen to Michael’s mix here) when he posted an interview with daniel on his Micro.blog. Initially, I read the interview simply because it was on Micro.blog, a cool social media network I am a member of. But what hooked me was the interview itself and daniel’s exploration of sound through this music.
The other reason today’s show is important to me is that while I love all the mixes on Soundwave, and I mean that, daniel’s mix hit me in all the right places. He included some familiar and precious tracks from the likes of Miles Davis, This Mortal Coil and Skinny Puppy. This is stuff I immersed myself in the 80s and 90s, so it felt like putting on a well-worn sweater. But daniel’s mix included a lot of stuff I had never heard of before, like Oliver Coates, Besombes & Rizet, and Angelo Badalamenti. It was a perfect blend of the familiar and unfamiliar that his mix provided just under an hour’s with of dopamine hits.
The final reason is that I listened to daniel’s mix many places (while working, walking my dog, doing the dishes, etc.), but the place that had the most significance was in my car while driving my grandkid to day school. The experience is already special because I enjoy watching all the adults delivering their most precious of cargos and seeing the love and concern on their faces. daniel’s mix heightened and already tender experience.
daniel has words of his own regarding today’s mix below.
Join us next weekend when our guest deejay will be Sean Slight.
See you then!
danielfuzztone
Like much of the ambient-drone music I produce, this mix was born from a live performance and then manipulated in the digital domain via Audacity. Nothing beats the hardware-software hybrid.
While I’ve DJed for three decades years — including two long stretches of college radio — my skills were a bit rusty, to say the least. I wanted to showcase some of my long-time favorite artists — Brian Eno, Boards of Canada, Spacemen 3, Jean-Michel Jarre — along with several newer ones (and maybe even a few you wouldn’t necessarily think of in the ambient realm).
I performed the set in real time using two MacBooks as playback decks, connected to a cheapo RadioShack DJ mixer from the ’90s.* Recorded in Audacity. Numerous field recordings and samples were also added at this stage — including a mix-long drone of processed shortwave static.
The result is a dark, noisy vibe with bursts of melody, strands of light, and even occasional beats. It’s mysterious and romantic, a droning, pulsing soundtrack from the past 50 years. Enjoy and #DroneOn
— danielfuzztone
POST-SCRIPT: Look for several back-to-back releases in early 2022 via Bandcamp, as well as a live performance in January.
*Due to the lo-fi-meets-hi-fi nature of the recording, you’ll occasionally hear pops and ticks from some of the aging gear. Relax. It’s all part of the ride.
I met José through Mauricio Sotelo, AKA Haiteku, who I met through Axel Arturo Barceló, who guest deejayed on Soundwave here and here. Soundwave has been around just long enough that it is beginning to form a rhizome-like network. I like that.
I also like José’s mix. I’m never quite sure where one song ends, and the next begins. The only boundary is the start and end of his mix. It exists in some liminal space that is akin to being awake and being asleep. I’m doing my best to describe José’s mix, but really, you need to let it wash over you and take you where it may.
José is a self-taught composer and recordist based in Mexico. His compositions explore the balance between electronics and environmental sounds, chaining narratives, context, and movement, all based on the felt of direct presence.
Because Soundwave was borne out of the isolation and stress of the pandemic, I feel obligated to mention it on the show. But what is there to say? The pandemic has become part of our lives, and we’ve come to expect the peaks and valleys of infections and deaths. We go about our days trying to maintain some semblance of normality while at the same time incorporating the disruption across the world as part of our new routine. We simultaneously desire to return to our lives before the pandemic while re-evaluating what’s important in our lives and where we want to go next. What will happen?
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Alisú.
See you then!
José Sobranes
Thanks to Joseph for the invitation, Mauricio Sotelo for trusting in my project, and all my listeners and artists friends who encourage me every day to keep going. Thanks to my girlfriend Brenda for inspiring me every day to keep going ahead on this path.
Today’s guest deejays are PCM, who are Francesco Perra (P), Matteo Cantaluppi (C), Matteo Milea (M).
n5MD founder Mike Cadoo put me in touch with PCM when I asked him after guest deejayed on Soundwave who he thought would want to share a mix on the show. PCM has crafted a mix that I adore. There’s so much to love.
One of the things I find exciting about Soundwave is that our guest deejays introduce me to music and artists I’m unfamiliar with. On the other hand, some musicians that I’ve been surprised have made an appearance on Soundwave nearly two years into the show. PCM remedy that with today’s mix. I’m talking about talent like Fennesz, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Coil (I’m surprised Coil aren’t on every show), and Morton Subotnick.
PCM: Francesco Perra (P), Matteo Cantaluppi (C), Matteo Milea (M)
PCM themselves make an appearance at the end of today’s show. You’ll want to hear more of their music. You can listen to their latest album, Macro, which came out earlier this year. Macro is equal parts expansive and constrained, and the magic happens between those two extremes.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Wife Signs.
I discovered Lecu a few months ago when Soundwave guest deejay Ishmael Cormack asked folks on Twitter for musical recommendations. Lecu suggested Sebastian Mullaert and Erland Cooper. Those were both great recommendations. Who was this Lecu? I checked out how Twitter profile, which led me to his Bandcamp page and listened to his albums. I extend an invitation to join us on Soundwave, and here we are today.
It was a breath of fresh air after last week’s mix from Line Spectrum. Don’t get me wrong, last week’s show was great, but listening to it on my AIrPod Pro with transparency mode felt more like an auditory hallucination than a mix. Lecu’s mix feels whimsical by comparison but no less fantastic than Line Spectrum’s mix.
If you’d like to hear more music from Lecu, check out show on 1020 Radio, every first Thursday of every month from 10 PM – 11 PM Pacific.
Lecu has some brief words about his mix below.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Inner Travels.
Leo, AKA Lecu
I’m happy to share my mix with you today. Lots of nice textures, both abstract and familiar, with some lush tracks along the way — one of which is a new one from me, which feels like the start of a new record and a new direction for me as an artist.
It was really fun to make, and I’m so honoured to be in very good company with your other guests
Much love from Plymouth, England, and wishing you all the very best.
Gert appeared on Soundwave last year, and I enjoyed his mix so much I invited him back. Today’s show is equally fantastic. Gert can expect another invitation from me in 2022.
Gert says today’s show features a perfect mixture of tracks that have influenced him and tracks that currently influence him. He said they’re all such beautiful tracks, and what’s best, you can find them all on Bandcamp, some of them entirely for free.
Today’s mix also includes a track form Gert’s project, Distant Fires Burning. You’re gong to love today’s mix and you’ll want to hear more music from Gert. Good news! You can find his latest album, Inperspectycon Vol.1, here.
Gert De Meester
One thing that’s interesting about the 21st century is music is so freely available, and it’s nearly endless. Consequently, I don’t think most music gets the attention due, and I’m not wagging my finger. I’m just as guilty. It’s exceedingly rare that I will listen to a song or an album repeatedly. There’s so much I want to listen to, and I’m often impatient to listen to the next song, even while I’m listening to something that very moment.
Take today’s show. It’s spectacular. But you’ll listen to it once. Some of you might even listen to it twice. And then you’re on to the next show. Or the next song. Or the next video.
As the producer of Soundwave, however, I have a very different relationship with the music you hear.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I receive these mixes months before I publish them on Soundwave. I live with these mixes. I marinate in these mixes.
I’ve become very familiar with Gert’s mix. It’s a gorgeous experience. But after repeated listening, I’ve come to appreciate just how dense the songs that appear in today’s show are. I’ve become intimately acquainted with every snap, crackle, and pop. I lose myself in the swooshes, the sizzle, and grit.
Gert’s mix is made for repeated listening. I encourage you to do so.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Michael Southard of Triplicate Records.
Today’s guest deejay is Robert Farrugia, co-founder of Complex Holiday, an itinerant label for inside-out ambient and sound art tomfoolery.
I’m usually fastidious about tracking how I come to know guest deejays on Soundwave. Unfortunately, my initial conversation with Robert began on Facebook Messenger and that chat is lost to the ether. Well, really, Facebook has that conversation stored somewhere. But it’s as good as gone for me.
Whatever lead me to Robert, I’m glad I invited him to join us.
What you may or may not know is that I get the mixes you hear months in advance. I usually enjoy it for a week or two before I move on to listen to the next guest deejay’s mix. I’ll also re-listen to the mix a few weeks before their show is released. I listen to the mixes a lot.
Robert Farrugia, Photograph by Chris Vella / Storbju
Robert’s mix was a welcome companion for the last week. Nationally, the U.S. is caught between wildfires and hurricanes. Internationally, the U.S. has left Afghanistan. And on a personal note, the was my kid’s first week at high school. While our area is 75% vaccinated, I’m still anxious about how this will work out. Within the first week there’s already been a report of a student with COVID-19. Robert’s mix felt like an echo of how I’ve been feeling about all of it.
There’s a tension that builds up early in Robert’s mix that unravels nearly halfway through before exploring different sonic territory. The mix ends hauntingly and somberly.
Today’s guest deejay is Sofia Nystrand, AKA Vargkvint.
For months, Sofia’s music kept appearing on my Spotify Discover Weekly playlists. If I didn’t find Sofia’s music there, she’d pop up on someone else’s playlist. Or I’d find her music on Bandcamp. In fact, Brueder Selke (CEEYS), played Sofia’s “Utåt” on their mix for Soundwave a few weeks ago.
There’s a reason for this, of course. Sofia has that magical ability to trasnport you to a world that is uniquely hers yet utterly familiar though her songs. Sofia deftly weaves folk, contemporary classical, pop, experimental music, and ambient. It’s a gorgeous thing to experience and I’m delighted to share her mix with you on today’s show.
If you’d like to hear more music from Sofia, she is featured on the Realismo Mágico compilation album from piano and coffee records. Some of the artists you’ll find on Sofia’s mix can also be found on the album (Klangriket, Sjors Mans, Jakob Lindhagen, Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres, Simeon Walker, Ceeys). Sofia has also just released a rework of the first track, “Pomegranate,” by Sergio Diaz de Rojas.
Sofia has some words about her mix below.
Before I get out of Dodge, I’m happy to report that this weekend I briefly had my wife and kids in the same house. It was short lived, though. My wife headed back to work Sunday evening, and the kids will be visiting their dad next week. But after months and months of being apart, it was a small blessing.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Jonathan Ammons.
See you then!
Sofia Nyland, AKA Vargkvint
When I was working on this mixtape, I wanted it to be centered around collaboration and how music can change when being transformed by another person’s creativity. I’ve just released a rework album where people have reimagined my songs from the album Hav (I have two of them included in the mixtape), and it made me inspired to find other remixes or reworks to include. One of my favorite songs of this year is the rework that Alexandra Hamilton-Ayes have made of Frances Shelley’s ”Evening Star”. Apart from the amazing reworks, I have included a few newly released songs, and a couple of my personal favorites from artists who I really admire.
