unitedstates – Synecdoche

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.

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.

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”

Subscribe to SOUNDWAVE on iTunes, Overcast, Castro and Pocketcasts.

Logo by Rik Oostenbroek

SOUNDWAVE : 52 : ROBIN RIMBAUD

Today’s guest deejay is Robin Rimbaud, AKA Scanner.

I discovered Robin last century on a compilation album. At the time, Robin was snatching phone conversations from the ether and incorporating them into his music. It was at once intimate and troubling because the very act of listening to Robin’s music made you complicit in his eavesdropping.

Those tracks, however, are just one area he explores in his music. If you delved into his work, you’d find that it is not incongruous to find him straddling minimalism, classical music, soundtracks and more.

When I showcased Robin’s music and featured one of his performances on solipsistic NATION I was as giddy as a fanboy. I had been listening to his releases since the ‘90s, and I was thrilled to have him on my show. It was only natural that I invited him to be a guest deejay on SOUNDWAVE, and I’m just excited about today’s show as when he was my guest on solipsistic NATION many years ago.

Robin has some words about his mix, which you can read below.

In pandemic news, California, like the rest of the U.S., has stepped up vaccinations. I know people who have been highly diligent regarding COVID-19 safety protocol and were still waylaid by the virus. I’m currently staying in Sacramento, and anecdotally, I can tell you that a lot of people here have stopped giving a fuck. I don’t want to catch the virus when we’re this close to the finish line, so I hope to be vaccinated within the next week or two.

Hopefully, this summer, I will be able to hug some of you who listen to SOUNDWAVE. Who knows, maybe I’ll throw a SOUNDWAVE festival. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?

Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Peter van Cooten, host of Ambientblog.net and DreamScenes on Concertzender.

See you then!

I always find it challenging to know how to begin to choose music from literally hundreds of thousands of pieces of music that I own. Music lives with me from the moment I wake up early in the morning until I go to bed at night (at a very reasonable time). So, I thought it might be of interest to simply make a collage of a few of the many pieces of music that have accompanied me in the last seven days. These are playing as I work on emails, administration, accounts, and so on through my day. A brief picture of a moment in a day for my ears.

Ø “Otava”
Roméo Poirier “Thalassocratie”
Stephen Vitiello “Light Readings”
Nurse with Wound “Echo Poeme Sequence N° 2”
Blank Gloss “Of a Vessel”
Brian Eno “Top Boy”
Disjecta “Are You an Echo”
Benjamin Britten “Variations On A Theme Of Frank Bridge, Op. 10 – Chant”
John Cage “Dream”
strië “Hallilaul”
Mark Pritchard “Beautiful People (feat. Thom Yorke)”
Bersarin Quartett “Oktober”

Subscribe to SOUNDWAVE on iTunes, Overcast, Castro and Pocketcasts.

Logo by Rik Oostenbroek

SOUNDWAVE : 43 : STEVE SWARTZ

Today’s guest deejay is Steve Swartz.

Some months ago, Jason Engling was a guest deejay on SOUNDWAVE (you can hear his mix here). After Jason’s show I asked who he thought might be interested in contributing to SOUNDWAVE, and he recommended Steve.

I’ve been a fan of Jason’s music since discovering him through my electronic music show, solipsistic NATION. If Jason recommended Steve, then as far as I was concerned, it was a done deal. I’m not disappointed with Steve’s mix, and neither will you. It’s a thing of beauty. It’s also a perfect way to wind down four years of a corrupt and inept presidency and an attempted coup. Whew!

Steve has some words about his mix below.

I want to note that Steve included a lovely track from Brian Eno. That’s not anything remarkable, given that Eno practically invented the ambient genre. What is impressive is that Eno pitch-shifted his voice, creating a vocoder-like effect. I usually hate that sort of thing, but Eno being Eno, the song gave me goosebumps. And when I looked over Steve’s playlist and saw that the track was by Eno, I thought to m myself, “That makes sense.”I thank Steve for introducing me to an Eno track I had not heard before.

W. David Oliphant’s *Remote Listening: Rag Dun vs Life Garden* album

Before we get to Steve, I want to share with you the latest release from W. David Oliphant, who guest deejayed on SOUNDWAVE in September. The album is called Remote Listening: Rag Dun vs Life Garden. Oliphant describes remote listening as “the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target, purportedly ‘sensing’ with the mind.” Like everything else I’ve heard from Oliphant, his music is stepping into someone’s fever dream.

Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Ishmael Cormack.

See you then!

I don’t know anyone who escaped the intense gravity of 2020. In addition to a pandemic, this year also saw the unexpected passing of my father. A loss I’m still trying to process. I’ve spent a great deal of time contemplating death, disease, and division over the last several months. Music has always been my primary outlet of expression. As a result, I made a lot of music in 2020. (Four releases!) But as I land on the other side of them, I find myself increasingly feeling lost and out of place. I am often daydreaming about being somewhere else and unreachable. This sense has carried over into my music listening habits as well. I’ve desired quieter sounds that feel less tethered to a place or time. Fewer words. More feeling. To, perhaps, communicate something words cannot yet find. And that is what I have found in these songs over the last several months. To me, each of these pieces feels like rivers that drift or breeze stirring trees in a geography I would prefer to dwell. So I sit in these songs and let them fill my house throughout the days and evenings until, hopefully, I embody the spirit of their imagined origins.

John Carroll Kirby “Canyon (Waiting Alive In A Canyon)”
Brian Eno “And Then So Clear”
3617 “Orphans of The Sky”
Dedekind Cut “Tahoe”
Warmth “The Creek”
Toshifumi Hinata “Misldsummer Night”
Johnny Nash & Suzanne Kraft “Time, Being”
The Blue Nile “From A Late Night Train”
Gigi Masin “The Word Love (Original Mix)”
Windy & Carl “Forest Trails”
Arve Henriksen “Sorrow and Its Opposite”

Subscribe to SOUNDWAVE on iTunes, Overcast, Castro and Pocketcasts.

Logo by Rik Oostenbroek

SOUNDWAVE : 38 : HARROLD ROELAND

Today’s guest deejay is Harrold Roeland. 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.

From the beginning, whenever I’ve had a guest deejay on SOUNDWAVE I’ve asked them who they know personally that they think would be interested in participating in the show with a mix of their own. I do this for several reasons. For one, I like the intimacy of the invitation. While I have no problem contacting people I don't know to be on SOUNDWAVE I prefer this more personal touch. It’s a network built up of likeminded people who actually know each other. Secondly, having guest deejay’s on the show introduces me to wider scope of music. I’d like to think my knowledge of music is fairly deep but I know its really shallow. The guest deejays on SOUNDWAVE open me up to having so much more music in my life. And so many surprises! Today’s show features both Yusef Lateef and John Coltrane.

Harrold’s mix has been my soundtrack to many a late night and I'm thrilled to share it with you. Harrold’s will take you by the hand down darkened paths. It’s the kind of mix I love that seamlessly blends each song into the next and takes me on an emotional journey. I recently had the opportunity to listen to Harrold’s mix while driving through a sun-blasted Arizona highway and all it did was make the shadows cast from Harrold’s mix longer

Special thanks to Kirk Markarian of Neuro… No Neuro who introduced us to Harrold (listen to Kirk’s mix for SOUNDWAVE here). I’m curious to know who Harrold will introduce us to.

Harrold has some word about his mix which you can read below. But first, a few items I wanted to discuss.

As I’ve mentioned many times before, I launched SOUNDWAVE to help me cope with the stress and isolation of being stuck in my house due to the stay at home orders brought about by COVID-19. It was a very lonely time in my life: my wife was away at work and our kids were with their dad’s. It was just me, my dog and my music. Here we are in the second wave of the virus and once my wife has been sent out of town and yesterday I dropped off the kids to be with their dad. The difference this time is that instead of waiting months to be with my wife I’m going to see her today's and work remotely for the next few days. As a bonus, I’m going to spend the eight or so hours in my car listening to mixes for upcoming editions of SOUNDWAVE.

Finally, last week we lost Harold Budd and this week we lost pioneering blind composer and synthesist Pauline Anne Strom. Pauline released music in the 1980s under the name Trans-Mellenia Consort and explored the ambient and new age. Pauline’s last album, Angel Tears in Sunlight, is her first new album in 30 years and is scheduled to be released in January 2021.

Join me next week when our guest deejay will be Applefish.

See you then!

This mix starts with jazz, an album by Yusuf Lateef which has a nicely worn out sound. Biosphere’s wonderful impression of breaking ice quickly enters the scene. As far as worn out and slightly off key sounds go, Denmark’s Øjerum is an expert on that. His works are often soothing and slightly disturbing at the same time, as are Roly Porter’s, entering the mix around the 7 minute mark. We take a step back then for the second third of the mix, combining IA’s “Mater Lacrimosa” with, again, the percussive side of Biosphere. The last third of the mix is a piling of works, as often happens in my radioshow Sensenta on the Dutch Concertzender. IA meets John Coltrane meets Markus Guentner meets the genius of Kaija Saariaho. And finally, since it’s polite to introduce oneself, the last notes of “Glacier Looming,” is an impression of the weight of the Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand, a work using birdsong and semi-modular synthesis.

Yusef Lateef “Purple Flower”
Biosphere “Skålbrekka”
Øjerum “The Forest Is Sleeping With The Trees, Part 1”
Roly Porter “Inflation Field”
IA “Mater Lacrimosa”
Biosphere “Bergsbotn III”
John Coltrane “The Drum Thing”
Markus Guentner “Magnetar”
Kaija Saariaho “Six Japanese Gardens IV”
Harrold Roeland “Glacier Looming”

Subscribe to SOUNDWAVE on iTunes, Overcast, Castro and Pocketcasts.

Logo by Rik Oostenbroek

SOUNDWAVE : 36 : JOEL SHEARER

This week our guest deejay is Joel Shearer, an international and highly regarded session and touring musician, composer and producer based in Los Angeles, CA.

I met Joel through Carmen Rizzo when he was our guest deejay back back in July (check out Carmen’s mix here). Carmen’s mix was beautiful and as is my wont I asked Carmen who he knew personally that would be interested in participating in the show and he recommended Joel. I can’t thank Carmen enough for introducing me to Joel because we very much need to hear Joel’s mix.

If you’re new to SOUNDWAVE then you should know that I launched the show to help cope with the isolation of stress of COVID-19 and the stay at home orders back in March. The only thing that gave me solace was ambient, classical, instrumental and experimental music and I decided to share what I was listening to whoever else might need to hear it as well.

Here we are nine months later in the second wave of COVID-19 infections and deaths. It's going entirely as predicted. What I don’t think think anyone could have predicted is the absolute magnitude of our current administrations ineptness at handling the pandemic. Several vaccines to combat the virus have been developed at astounding speed. That's breathtaking. Equally breathtaking is that instead of the 300 million doses the administration had promised before the end of the year the plan is now to only distribute 35 to 40 million doses. We’re at the beginning of a second wave with over 288,000 deaths and there’s finally a light at the end of the tunnel except that light is being blocked by an administration that seems to go out if its way to bungle the distribution of the vaccines.

When I began SOUNDWAVE there is no way I could have predicted these infuriating and crazy making responses to the pandemic by our current administration, which is why I, and maybe you, need to take comfort in Joel’s mix. It's exactly the kind of succor we need. I’m Listening to Joel’s mix as I write this and I find myself wrapping it around me like a cherished and well worn coat to keep me warm in the winter.

Joel has some words to share about today’s mix below but before we get to that I wanted let you know that guest deejay Robert Rich has released his new album, Neurogenesis, earlier this week.

Robert Rich's Neurogenesis album — Robert Rich’s *Neurogenesis* album

I’ve been listening to Robert’s music since last century when I heard I discovered him on the From Here To Tranquility Volume 2 compilation album. I later interviewed him and when I featured his live set on solipsistic NATION. I had the pleasure of finally meeting Robert face-to-face (at a safe and respectable six foot distance, of course) this summer while I was in Northern California and Robert was kind enough to play me a few tracks from Neurogenesis in his studio.

Robert started recording Neurogenesis in Spring of 2019 inspired by a lucid dream. Robert says Neurogenesis expresses optimism about the potential for human consciousness. At the start of pandemic lockdown in March he stopped working on Neurogenesis to record Offering to the Morning Fog because listeners were asking for something calm. He got back to work on Neurogenesis in June, and finished in late October. I’ve been listening to Neurogenesis all week and I’m glad Robert is able to share his album with the world.

You can hear more music from Robert in his mix for SOUNDWAVE here.

Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Christian Sager.

See you then!

Let’s hear from Joel about today's mix.

This playlist is intended to turn folks onto new music from known and unknown ambient artists.

Joseph August is new artist out of Los Angeles and a frequent guest for Secular Sabbath with Rhye, Diplo, Flume.

Clarice Jenson is best known for being the cellist for Max Richter’s Sleep amongst many others and an incredible solo artist in her own right.

“March” comes from my second release from my latest album, Hours, available on all digital outlets.

Orpheo McCord is the founding member of Ed Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, this song is off Orpheo’s first solo release. Epic ambient marimba beauty.

Naneum is an ambient artist out of New York, who’s played for many artists including Angus and Julia Stone and Passenger.

Jónsi is a member of Sigur Rós and composer and “Boy” is from Alex Somers’ second release.

Joseph August “A Soft Reflect”
Clarice Jensen “Final”
Joel Shearer “March”
Orpheo McCord “As Within”
Naneum “Accretion”
Jónsi and Alex “Boy”

Subscribe to SOUNDWAVE on iTunes, Overcast, Castro and Pocketcasts.

Logo by Rik Oostenbroek