shoegaze – Page 2 – Synecdoche

SOUNDWAVE : 8 : ROBERT RICH

Here we are in week whatever of the safe at home lockdown in California. I’m in really good spirits because I got to see my wifee for the first time in over two months. She’s in the military and her unit has been tasked to pack boxes for food banks. Being apart from her for so long was taking a toll and seeing her, if only for week, did me a world of good.

She was on bereavement leave for her grandmother’s funeral. It was a sad day but due to the Corona Virus I think everyone took extra solace being with family members. It was a little surreal seeing everyone wearing masks at the ceremony.

I’ve continued to find comfort and enjoyment in the mixes guest deejays have shared on SOUNDWAVE. Today’s show is significant to me because our guest deejay is musician and producer, Robert Rich. I’ve been a fan of Robert since first hearing his music on the From Here To Tranquility Volume 2 compilation album way back in 1993. I was excited to interview him for solipsistic NATION and share his performance at Fort Mason and the Morrison Planetarium and I’m equally excited to share Robert’s mix with you today! You can read Robert’s show notes below.

Join us again next week when our guest deejay will be Kirk Markarian, who composes music for video games, film, animation, stock music, and other projects.

See you then!

One thing that ties all of these together, is that I was involved in each of them. All but the first two are also unavailable to the public. I mixed and mastered Forrest’s Folklore album, and played a bit on it. I have also mastered almost all of his other albums, and I appear on his next one which I will also master soon.

Amoeba is a group I was in you that might know, then there’s the debut of my next album, and a live recordingof a Lou Harrison concert that I made in the dome of the observatory on top of Mt. Hamilton, as a favor to the gamelan group and to Lou. They debuted this composition at the concert, and it was the only time that piece was ever performed. This recording is the only one made. After Lou died I sent a spare copy to his archives in Joshua tree.

The last piece is one that I edited along with six others for the Mexican composer Arturo Salinas. I spent several weeks working with him in 1998, down in Tepoztlan, Mexico.He had a grant to complete the album, but then couldn’t find alabel to release it. It remains unreleased.

Forrest Fang “The Bridge of Chan-Chou III. Falling Stones (Kuan Yin)”
Amoeba “Origami”
Robert Rich “Cantus For Hospitality”
Lou Harrison with Gamelan Si Betty “Gending Max Beckman (Unreleased recording from Lick Observatory concert 17 July 1992)”
Arturo Salinas “Munamukami”

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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!

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

Weekly Mix 9: March 5, 2017

There’s a lot of tools I use to put these shows together and I thought I’d share one of them with you today. It’s called Pinboard. It’s a social bookmarking service that’s a lot like Delicious, if you happen to remember Delicious. It’s okay if you don’t because Yahoo pretty much killed Delicious when they purchased the service. Killing services is something that Yahoo seems to excel at.

Anyway, the way Pinboard works is that when you come across a website or article or blog post that you want to go back to later, you can bookmark it on Pinboard. You can also tag your bookmarks, include a summary of what your bookmarking and search all your bookmarks or any of the bookmarks others have saved to Pinboard.

Some people use Pocket or Instapaper or Evernote for bookmarking and I use those, too, but Pinboard is pretty much where I save everything.

So why am I talking about Pinboard on today’s show? Because I bookmark everything that I might want to reference on each episode of The Weekly Mix. If there’s anything that comes up on The Weekly Mix that you’re even remotely curious about, you can find it there. Bands, labels, interviews, videos, all of it is on Pinboard. You can click the link to my Pinboard account on today’s show notes or go directly to bit.ly/WEEKLYMIXPINBOARD

Thanks for indulging me in my nerdery.

Jim’s Big Ego “Feelin’ Groovy”
Francis and the Lights “It’s Alright to Cry”
Erik Blood “The Attic System”
El Michels Affair “Tearz (feat. Lee Fields & The Shacks)”
Bishop Briggs “River”
Kojey Radical “Gallons (feat. PW)”
Dawn of Midi “Io”

Weekly Mix 8: February 26, 2017

From time to time The Weekly Mix features interviews. In the past we’ve chatted with artist Geneva B, KAOS Radio Austin co-founder, Nick Dement and Bondfire Radio founder Keisha Dutes. On today’s show we’ll talk with the members of The Brevet, who I had the pleasure of chatting with before the performed at Lestat’s here in beautiful San Diego. There’s a bit of static that creeps into the interview here and there and I apologize for that. It’s the first time I’ve done an interview on live streaming video and I’m learning how to do it on the fly.

Today’s show has a lot of introductions. The most introductions ever, in fact. We’ll hear from Indian Handcrafts, All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors, Pulco, Ash Walker and Tangents.

Click the links below to download and purchase the songs you heard on today’s mix that you liked. Show the bands and musicians your love and support!

You can listen to The Weekly Mix every Sunday on KAOS Radio Austin at 6PM Central and every Friday on Bondfire Radio out of Brooklyn at 11:30 AM Eastern Standard Time.

Okay, I’m Audi 5000. See you next week!

The Brevet “Moving Mountains”
Interview with The Brevet
Indian Handcrafts “Bruce Lee”
All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors “Saturn Jig”
Nisennenmondai “#1”
Klara Lewis “Beaming”
Pulco “Oxbow Lake (feat. Adam Leonard)”
Ash Walker “Thunder (feat. Lord Saville)”
Tangents “Oberon”

Weekly Mix 6: February 12, 2017

So here’s how we play the game: everday I post a song to Twitter and Facebook (#songoftheday) that I think is so marvelous and so spectacular that I have to share them with you. At the end of the week I gather those songs into The Weekly Mix for your listening pleasure. When possible, I accompany each song with a brief intro by the featured band or musician.

For example, on today’s show we’re going to hear from Eightch and one of the members of Ersatz. Nice, right?

Speaking of Erstaz, we’re going to kick off today’s show with their song, “Regret,” from their album, Hints of… “Regret” comes from their fourth album, which feels like it was recorded in some snowy vale, and I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter listening to this song.

After “Regret” we’ll hear “Midnight” by Monster Rally. I’m not sure how to describe this song, but it’s what I imagine what would be played in someone’s Space-Age bachelor pad during some long midnight of the soul. “Midnight” comes from Monster Rally’s 2016 Pelicans album, available on Gold Robot Records.

From Islam Chipsy we’ll hear “Trinity 2” featuring EEK from Chipsy’s album, The Bullet. Special thanks to Sean Hockings from Metal Postcard Records for tuning me on to this gem.

Following Islam Chipsy we’ll hear “Acceptance, Side 1” from Eightch. James Watson is the man behind Eightch and when I invited him to join us on today’s show we ended up talking for nearly an hour about music, the industry, technology, and about intergity and life and art. Good guy and I’m looking forward to meeting James in person some day in the near future. Anyway, I first heard this track on a rainy drive to work and it was the perfect soundtrack for that morning’s commute.

From Deodato well hear his funky disco cover of Franz Listz’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra.” Deodato’s a prolific guy and has produced or arranged music for more than 500 albums. That’s just crazy. “Also Sprach Zarathustra” comes from Deodato’s 1973 Prelude album on CTI Records.

We’ll also hear “My Hood” by Ray BLK. Ray is recognized as a new and exciting voice in grime and garage but you’d never know it from this soulful tune about her hood. I’m looking forward to hearing more songs from Ray’s 2016 album, Durt.

We’ll close today’ show with “Star Roving” by Slowdive. I was never really a fan of this band back in the 90s. I thought if you wanted to listen to shoegaze the only band worth listening to were My Bloody Valentine. Boy, was I wrong. I’ve spent the last couple months catching up on all the great shoegaze bands I missed. “Star Roving” comes from Slowdive’s forthcoming album, their first in over 20 years, in fact, which will be released later in 2017.

You can listen to The Weekly Mix every Sunday on KAOS Radio Austin at 6PM Central, and every Friday on Bondfire Radio at 11:30 AM Eastern.

You can find me online on Twitter @josephaleo.

See you next week!

Ersatz “Regret”
Monster Rally “Midnight”
Islam Chipsy “Trinity (feat. Eek)”
Eightch “Acceptance Side 1”
Deodato “Also Sprach Zarathustra”
RAY BLK “My Hood”
Slowdive “Star Roving”