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

P033: Cabeza de Vaca – Dadub special

“We think that music is a strong mirror of social structures and dynamics, so sometimes we have the perception that lots of underground music in general has the same structures of the things that the artists want to criticize...and it happens because of market rules and show biz.”

 

 

“A mirror of social structures and dynamics” is perhaps the best way to describe the music of Italian duo Dadub (Daniele Antezza and Giovanni Conti). There is certainly a heavy feeling of mechanics, of wheels and mechanisms that turn the great machine. The lack of colour also suggests industrial smoke over the city or emptiness. But then there is something cosmic too. Maybe it is the black, infinite void that recedes behind them? Perhaps it is tidal flow of their tracks, building and closing in like a flower budding forwards and backwards, or a pulsating mouth ready to consume? Why else call your album “You are eternity?”

 

Dadub is thus the focus of this weeks show on Cabeza de Vaca and Scanner FM.

 

There are two good interviews out there, one at Resident Advisor  dating from March 2012 which is focused more on the technical side of things, and from where the first quote comes from, and the second is over at Juno Plus and dates from February this year on the eve of the albums’ release so is much more focused in this direction.

 

I mention the politics of their music and also of Stroboscopic Artefacts in general which is an important issue for electronic music to deal with in general. The track “Truth” features a couple of samples discussing “free market economics” and their obvious failure.
 

 

Lucy’s 12” “Why don’t you change?”, the first release from the label and still one of the best, also featured a sample from the revered Indian writer and thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti dating from 1980.
 

 

 

Strangely the sample, or a smaller part of it, also turned up in another recent track, Tube and Berger’s “Imprint of pleasure” which has been charting well by DJs, but is a rather cringey quasi-Ballaeric feel good track.

 

 

In the later track, the emphasis is on pleasure rather than the contemplation of it and the desire to change as Lucy emphasises, two opposite stand points reflected in the music itself: ne tough and smart and the other mindless and in pursuit of pleasure.

The track "Ilya" that I play from the "Moand VIII" release is also a homage to another thinker, this time Russian-born, but nationalised Belgian Ilya Prigogine, who worked on atomic physics and a Nobel laureate.

 

 
 

Dadub had a couple of tracks out on the Killekill label recently as well, one on the "Killekill Megahits" compilation and more recently on the "Krake 001" festival compilation.





I forgot to mention that Lucy also remixes one of the tracks on the Oscar Mulero EP “Black Propaganda remixes part 1”, tackling the track “To Convince for the Untruth”. A second part has just been released too. Lucy's track is great, and the third is by Shifted he we already had a special on, so I thought I would play Developer this time to mix it up a bit.
 

 

 

Next week’s show is Udacha and Russia!

Number	Artist	Track	Label	Year
1	Valanx	Daughters Of The Everfire (Yves De Mey Remix)	SonuoS	2013
2	Nubian Mindz	Hacker Wacker	Disko404	2013
3	Dadub	Life	Stroboscopic Artefacts	2013
4	Dadub	Ilya	Stroboscopic Artefacts	2011
5	Dadub	Transfer	Stroboscopic Artefacts	2013
6	Dadub	Existence (Kanding Ray remix)	Stroboscopic Artefacts	2013
7	A Sagittarian	Funky Archer (Aubrey remix)	Elastic Dreams	2013
8	Oscar Mulero	Black Propaganda (Developer Hypnotic Reconstruction Remix)	Warm Up Recordings	2013
9	Mutant	AUM	Pareto Park	2013

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