Ambient mix - Road trip radio (Ken Kesey's insomnia mix)

Not much more that needs to be said except what the music has to say. This mix was the result of collecting tracks for about 6 months and trying to decide how to fit them together. Two themes stuck out: voices and sleep. To make the first fit it seemed best to go with a changing radio station approach, especially as many tracks where already cut up and splice-like. The second set of tracks come from a pool of albums and thereabouts based around sleep including Jeff Bridges' "Sleeping Tapes", Dasha Rush's exceptional "Sleep Step" album and Frank Rothkamm's "Wiener process" album on Baskaru that doesn't feature sadly as its 24 one hour CDs are a bit beyond my budget. In any case, I always find it interesting the subtle subthemes that seem to come to the surface in music. Synchronicity perhaps?

Maybe as well given the northern heat wave and my difficulty sleeping lately, being somewhere in-between sleep and awake at times it is easy to join the dots and make some conceptual link between unrelated tracks and form a narrative of sorts. The structure is intentionally up and down to near silence to simulate that falling away (expressed as well in such a lovely way by the beautiful Lucy track that did not fit in in full sadly). There is also the intentional repetition of small elements like dreams that repeat or that cut back in when least expected as if exerting their own consciousness.

As always, it was made with Adobe Audition with some cut and paste of tracks to make crude collage re-mixes where necessary. One track is actually one of my own field recordings made from the bedroom window of my good friend Frank Cadorna's house in Harlesden, london in 2003 (recorded on mini disc). It features a rather mythical and crude conversation between two locals early one Sunday morning. Thankfully my machine was ready at the time and I only had to hang the mic out the window to catch them mid row. Frightening and funny. It was also a pleasure to pit Flying Saucer Attack (and their wnderful return) with Jeff Mills, probably the first time ever in a mix I imagine, as well as realise that AMP, another Bristol (or ex-Bristol) group are still in business with new music soon.



Enjoy and above all get some good, clean, healthy sleep.

Number	Artist	Track	Label	Year
1	To Rococo Rot & I-Sound	A number of things	City Slang	2001
2	Anna Caragnano & Donato Dozzy	Introduzione	Spectrum Spools	2015
3	Felix K	Tragedy of the Commons	Blackest Ever Black	2015
4	The Jesus and Mary Chain	Supertramp	Creation	1998
5	The Jesus and Mary Chain	Black	Creation	1998
6	The Jesus and Mary Chain	Fizzy	Creation	1998
7	Ilitch	Voyage (Limit Speed Desintegration)	Oxygene / Fractal	1978 / 2000
8	Monolake	Inwards	Monolake / Imbalance Computer Music	2014
9	Lydia Lunch, Zahra Mani, Mia Zabelka	Bloodlust and oblivion	Monotype Records	2013
10	Biosphere	The Third planet (sample only)	Volume / Biophon	1994 / 2014
11	Pole	Lachen	Kiff SM	1998
12	Stephanie Sykes	Hypo	Fullpanda Records	2014
13	Loscil	Luna	Not On Label (Loscil Self-released)	2015
14	Jeff Bridges	Sleep. Dream. Wakeup	Not On Label (Jeff Bridges Self-released)	2015
15	Dasha Rush	Lumiere Avant Midi	Raster Noton	2015
16	恢复	2814	Dream Catalogue™	2015
17	Hexagon	Illuminated Atoms	Transcendent	2013
18	Light Sleepers	Side of the road flashback	Shimmering Moods	2015
19	Lucy	Falling (sample only)	Stroboscopic Artefcts	2014
20	Campbell Irvine	Terms Of Propaganda	Infrastructure New York	2015
21	Cabeza de Vaca	Field recording: Harlesden , London 2003 (Go to sleep crack head)	Dullsville Records	2003 / 2015
22	Flying Saucer Attack	Instrumental #6	Domino	2015
23	Jeff Mills	Us and them	Axis	2014
24	Anthony Child	Over Napoli	Downwards	2014
25	Lydia Lunch, Zahra Mani, Mia Zabelka	Medusa´s ghost	Monotype Records	2013
26	Leyland Kirby	Eventually, It Eats Your Lungs	History Always Favours The Winners	2011
27	Echo Grid	Damage	Shimmering Moods	2015
28	AMP	Sense	Ampbase.Net	2011
29	Yui Onodera	Sigure	Arctic Tone	2015
30	Biosphere	Cloudwalker II	Origo Sound / Biophon	1991 / 2015
31	Ilitch	Voyage (Limit Speed Desintegration)	Oxygene / Fractal	1978 / 2000
32	David Shea	#6	Room 40	2015

Coda: Sonar Part 4 – Sunday: Come down easy

Everything comes to an end. Parties, people, friendships, love, empires, time itself. At some stage you have to come down and clean up. Reality is always waiting somewhere. In Barcelona at least, it was awaiting in the streets, where it had been omnipresent lately. Sunday afternoon saw massive crowds gathered in the city centre to protest unemployment, austerity measures and in particular the Euro Pact  which many fear will pass on more economic problems to society. It should not be forgotten that the ironic advertising campaign of Sonar this year was that Sonar was for sale.

How poingnant that message seemed in the cold light of day: while many nursed hangovers and tiredness, the streets filled with protesters, angry people, the unemployed and the inevitable clashes with police arose. Another day and more resistance to control and poor governance and little change. Dismay at the lack of progress in the Magreb after the so-called Arab Spring  is also turning somewhat negative these days and one wonders, where to now?

But like the revolutions and the governments, Sonar wasn’t quite finished yet either. At night was a special and semi-independent concert held in conjunction with the annual Grec festival  in the Greek theatre on the side of Mont Juic. Last year had seen Ryoji Ikeda’s “Test Pattern” show, whereas this year was also Raster Noton artists Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto performing the celebrated collaboration to promote their new disc “Summvs”. If you have heard the discs, you know what to expect live: clusters of notes from Sakamoto plucked from the air and flicked into quivering tones and drones and embellished with sparks of white noise by Alva Noto. However, there is an extra air of virtuosity in the live performance that is sometimes missing from the controlled environment of the albums I have heard. Particularly towards the end of the show, Sakamoto’s playing became more untethered, while Alva Noto’s palette thickened and unwove itself from the need to think so heavily. Graphics wise, the two musicians were accompanied by a narrow band of digital display, much more restrained than Ikeda’s show the year before, and less distracting from the music while obviously accompanying it beautifully. One down side was the audience’s impatience to clap after each song, effectively drowning out the tonal decays at the end of each piece, but nonetheless, their enthusiasm did inspire several extended encores from the performers. Bravo indeed, and bravo once more to Sonar.