Yann guest deejayed on Soundwave last year, and it’s a delight to have him back on the show. And it’s not just because his mix is utterly fantastic, but because today’s show reminds me that I’ve known Yann since 2009 when I showcased his label, Dragon’s Eye Recordings, on solipsistic NATION.
Not that I know Yann besides what I see him post on social media. But when I launched Soundwave, I reached out to many people through solipsistic NATION, and Yann was one of them. I like his label, and I respect Yann’s thoughts about music. The mix he shared on Soundwave was beautiful and unexpected. Today’s show is no less lovely and surprising.
So, no, I don’t really know Yann. But it’s good to know people are creating, releasing, and sharing music because it needs to be heard.
Yann Novak
Yann included “A Trembling of Light” in his mix, which is from his recently released album, Reflections of a Gathering Storm. It sets the tone for today’s show. If you like it, you might consider giving his album a listen, maybe even spend a few bucks on it. Maybe play it loud enough that the neighbors can hear it, like I did.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Ishmael Cormack.
I know Raziel from way back. We’re talking about the days when people would send cassette singles to radio stations for airplay. My memory is hazy, but I think I was aware that Raziel was part of the Boston music scene with his band You Shriek in the late 80s. Crazy.
When I say know, I mean more win the sense I knew of Raziel. The circles we traveled overlapped. I even had You Shriek perform on my show on WMFO. But we never really knew each other.
But thanks to social media, I get glimpses into Raziel’s life through his Instagram account, usually in beautiful black and white photos.
I extended Raziel an invitation to guest deejay on Soundwave and I was curious what I’d hear. Raziel is know for goth and industrial music, but that of course doesn’t encompass all the music he listens enjoys. It’s no incongruous that his mix ranges from Arvo Pärt to Einstürzende Neubauten to Kitaro. Marvelous stuff. But still a surprise.
Raziel Panic
The You Shriek track Raziel included in his mix was never released on digital. Contact me if you’d like a download Raziel’s track.
Raziel has a digital release in the wings, and I’ll let you know when it’s available.
I still don’t know Raziel, but I hope to hang out with him next time I’m on the East Coast.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Yann Novak.
I discovered Monty when the Cryo Chamber label sent out an email announcing the release of Monty’s new album, Fifth Nature. Whenever Cryo Chamber drops an album I drop whatever I’m doing and listen to it because they never fail to deliver mind blowing. Fifth Nature was no exception.
Monty Adkins, Skrika
The “liner notes” explains that Fifth Nature is the first of a series of albums set in the far distant future on a dying Earth. I appreciate concept albums that created their own mythology, but you certainly need to be aware of the backstory of Fifth Nature. The album stands on its own and you will lose yourself in its richly textures of a soundtrack for a distant apocalypse. Enjoy!
Monty’s mix draws upon the roster of artists on Cryo Chamber. Think of it as a compilation album as distilled by Monty. His mix captures the spirit of the label as well as reflecting Monty’s own tastes.
You’re going to love today’s mix. I encourage you listen to other artists from Cryo Chamber that appear in Monty’s mix such as Dronny Darko and Tineidae who have guest deejayed on Soundwave
Join us next week for our 100th episode when our guest deejay will be Justin Broadrick.
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.
I’ve been a fan of Alex’s music since the last century. It feels strange to write that, but it’s true.
I discovered Alex on his Cypher 7 album, Decoder that he recorded with Jeff Bova. Decoder came in all all-back CD jewel case. Very mysterious and very sexy. Decoder was released on Strata, Bill Laswell’s sub-label of Subharmonic Records, and that was all I needed to know in my decision-making process to purchase the album. I was not disappointed. Decoder was as mysterious and sexy as its CD case. The music was minimal, sinuous, and entrancing.
Alex Haas
I’ve been listening to Alex’s music over the decades. When his album, The Woods, recorded with Michel Banabila and Bill Laswell, popped up on my Spotify Discover Weekly playlist, I immediately invited Alex to guest deejay on Soundwave.
Alex’s mix is exactly what I expected and delights with music from unexpected sources. You’re in for a treat.
Before I get out of here, I want to wish everyone happy holidays.
I also encourage you to followGenius and Soul on your favorite podcast app. Genius and Soul is a weekly show featuring jazz, Black classical music, and more, with mixes lovingly selected by our guest deejays. Our first guest deejay will be legendary composer, pianist, singer, and flautist Brian Jackson. Genius and Soul launches on January 1, 2022.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be iu takahashi.
Today’s guest deejay is Tom Moore, AKA Dead Melodies.
After listening to his latest album, Fabled Machines of Old, I invited Tom to guest deejay on Soundwave back in June. The album was released on Cryo Chamber, and it’s what I’ve come to expect from every release from the label: exquisitely crafted dark ambient music that takes you on an emotional journey. Sometimes harrowing, but always rewarding.
Today’s show has been a different experience for me than what I’ve become accustomed to. Usually, I receive mixes for Soundwave six months before I share them with you. I do this for practical reasons. I like to have the mixes well before the release date, so I don’t have to scramble to get shows out weekly. I listened to the mixes you repeatedly hear for months, a byproduct of this arrangement. I become intimately acquainted with the music. They become the soundtrack for my life.
Tom’s schedule did not permit him to send me his mix in advance. I only just got his mix for Soundwave two weeks ago. I didn’t think that would be time enough to allow Tom’s mix to “breather,” but fortunately, I was able to lose myself in the music, and Tom’s mix quickly became an old friend.
Tom has some words about today’s show below.
As always, the shadow of the pandemic looms over Soundwave.
Yesterday I spoke with a professional colleague, and he shared that his production partner had come down with COVID. He told me that he had contracted COVID some months ago, and as a result, his blood pressure is up by 20%; he has experienced liver damage, and his joints ache. I wished him a speedy recovery and that his partner would not suffer lasting effects from the virus. There but for the grace of God goes I, as they say. Except that I expect to catch the virus myself at some point. I don’t know where you listen to Soundwave, but here in the U.S., it seems we want the pandemic to last as long as possible.
But today, I’m still healthy. And I have a lovely show to share with you.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be danielfuzztone.
See you then!
Tom Moore, AKA Dead Melodies
Thanks for the invitation to put together a mix for the show. It was a fun challenge deciding what to do as I trawled through all my influences and favourite artists, but it wasn’t long before it dawned on me it was near impossible to capture even a fraction of the music that makes me tick in an hour-long cut. So I decided to look at my music, pick out some rarities and remixes, and see how best to present them. My output is pretty diverse, but these rarities seemed to tap into a dark-ambient meets post-rock style. I paired with a few popular tunes from my Cryo Chamber releases to keep on the theme and hopefully create a haunting yet soothing listening experience.
Honourable mentions to the collaborating artists named on the tracks – a remix is always much more than a reforming of stems, but a respectful collaboration with layers of new instruments added, paying homage to the original piece while expanding the sound. Thanks to; Everyday Dust, Zenjungle, Understated Theory (my side project/band), and Owsey. Thanks to Cryo Chamber and Sparkwood Records, who have published a few of the included tunes.
Today’s guest deejay is Ilya Fursov, AKA Textere Oris.
Ilya is yet another guest deejay that comes to us by way of the Cryo Chamber music label. I’m sometimes reluctant to feature musicians from Cryo Chamber because I showcase artists from their roster a lot. But that’s because the label’s releases are so good that why would I not invite them on Soundwave?
I was introduced to Ilya after listening to Reflections at the Sea, an album he released with Vladislav Sikach, AKA SiJ. Like most albums on Cryo Chamber, I was immersed in the world they unfolded through their music. I often listen to music while working or doing chores, but I often found myself pausing what I was doing as I got lost in Reflections. Ilya’s mix for today’s show is equally mysterious and magical.
Ilya Fursov, AKA Textere Oris
Here in the States, we celebrated Thanksgiving. As I write this, I’m in Boston. This is the first time my father, uncle, brother, and sister have been under the same roof in decades. It wasn’t without family drama, but I suspect that’s part of the Thanksgiving tradition. I also got to spend time with some of my oldest and dearest friends.
I admit to being reluctant to travel to Boston. Mingling with people at the airport and flying with more people in a metal tube with people for five hours was unsettling. I certainly don’t want to catch the virus, and I wouldn’t want to pass the virus on to my family. My father and uncle are in their seventies, and I’m all too aware that my time with them shortens each year.
Like most people, I was able to put the pandemic out of my mind for a while and enjoy myself. But the Coronavirus is not done with us, and now we have to Omicron variant to contend with. Soundwave is my way of coping with the pandemic, and each time I think the show has served its purpose, there is yet another reason to continue sharing mixes with you. And here we are.
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Dead Melodies.
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.
Oleg Puzan of Line Spectrum, AKA Dronny Darko (listen to Dronny’s mix here and his Line Spectrum mix here), recommended his partner guest deejay on the show last year, and Sasha’s mix was beautiful and sublime. I invited Sasha back on Soundwave, and she’s delivered another fantastic mix.
Sasha, AKA protoU
While Sasha’s first mix for Soundwave was elemental and cosmic, today’s mix feels cozy and intimate. I’m listening to it as I write today’s show notes, and I wish San Diego would not be so characteristically warm and sunny, and a chilly and overcast day seems more appropriate for Sasha’s mix.
I’ve also been listening to Sasha’s mix while I work at the office. It has been an interesting experience because I launched Soundwave to cope with the stress and isolation of the early days of the pandemic. I’ve been working remotely and listening to Soundwave mixes for nearly two years, and it feels unsettling to listen to the mixes at my office. I’m sure I’ll adjust, but presently it feels out of context.
Where do you listen to Soundwave?
Join us next week when our guest deejay will be José Sobranes.
