Brainwashed Radio: The Podcast Edition

Dental trash heap in Saigon photo by Krisztian

We made it to 700 episodes.

While it's not a special episode per se—commemorating this milestone—you can pretty much assume that every episode is special. 

This one features Mark Spybey & Graham Lewis, Brian Gibson, Sote, Scanner and Neil Leonard, Susumu Yokota, Eleven Pond, Frédéric D. Oberland / Grégory Dargent / Tony Elieh / Wassim Halal, Yellow Swans, 
Skee Mask, and Midwife.

Dental waste in Saigon photo by Krisztian.

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Andrew Liles, "Where the Long Shadows Fall"

cover imageDedicated to David Tibet and made in celebration of Current 93’s 25th anniversary, this single captures the spectral heart of one of Current 93’s defining pieces. Here Andrew Liles reconstructs what was originally the opening volley of Tibet’s Inmost Light trilogy. "Where the Long Shadows Fall" was one of the key moments in Current 93's career. The combination of Tibet's lyrics, some achingly gorgeous music and, most significantly, that haunting loop of the last castrato, Alessandro Moreschi, made for one of the finest 20 minutes of music committed to tape. Only a madman would try and outdo the original but Liles proves he is more than capable on this single.

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Andrew Chalk & Tom James Scott, "Wild Flowers"

cover imageIn classic Andrew Chalk fashion, this wonderful new collaboration quietly surfaced last month on an extremely small label (Scott's own Skire imprint) and very nearly slipped by me entirely.  These pieces humbly originated as a few gently rippling, understated piano motifs that Scott composed while preparing for a performance at this year's F.O.N. Fest, but later evolved into something much more when the recordings were handed off to Chalk.  The resulting album is a pleasantly dreamlike, blurry, and spectral affair, approximating a very appealing middle ground somewhere between Harold Budd's liquid-y pastoralism and Morton Feldman's queasily dissonant pointillism.

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Kevin Drumm, "Earrach"

cover imageKevin Drumm’s incredible run of handmade CD-Rs continues this year despite the termination of his Recreational Panick blog. At the end of August, Drumm simultaneously announced the availability of his last few homemade discs and the existence of a new Bandcamp page, which he promptly filled with several digital reissues of limited cassette and CD-R editions from 2011 and 2012. Three new albums followed shortly thereafter, of which the tape-based two-disc Earrach—that’s Gaelic for "spring"—is one. Appropriately, Drumm has filled it with fleshy, muddy, physical music. It's sloppy, weird, and suggestive; and an absolutely killer recording that squirms and jumps with warped alien life.

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Land of Kush's Egyptian Light Orchestra, "Monogamy"

cover imageWhile it would be unfair to say that Monogamy is not as good as Land of Kush’s previous album, Against the Day, it is fair to say that this present album is not as forgiving as the last one. Sam Shalabi’s combination of Arabic traditional motifs and instruments with jazz, free improvisation and electronics has moved further out to truly stretch any notion of genre to breaking point. Add to that a sense of toilet humor and a deeper conceptual edge and this is an album that makes for an album that will no doubt surprise me every time I listen to it.

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RM74, "Reflex"

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A few months back, I sang the praises of Ural Umbo, a duo that Reto Mader is half of. After hearing this album, and one from his other project, Sum of R, I can definitely say that it is Mader who is largely responsible for all of these bands creating work that is awash in a multitude of grays, and here it only slightly obscures a variety of approaches that are not necessarily as dark or as heavy as his previous output may lead one to suspect.

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Kevin Drumm, "Necro Acoustic"

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Unlike the previous three box sets from the wonderful Pica Disk label, Necro Acoustic is not as much about surveying a career as it is showcasing the full repertoire of Drumm. Sure, there’s archival material dating back to 1996 that has never seen the light of day, but there are two discs of purely new material, as well as some recent (but extremely limited) tracks as well.

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Current 93, "Baalstorm, Sing Omega"

cover image This, the final part of David Tibet’s trilogy of revelations that began with Black Ships Ate the Sky, is his most dizzying and hallucinatory work yet. Stripping back the heavy guitars that have been creeping steadily into Current 93’s music, the songs here instead sound like they have been passed down through generations of Middle Eastern folk musicians. From the image of a young Tibet standing in front of Stonehenge on the back of the album to the lyrical themes of eternities, the weight of time hangs heavy around Baalstorm, Sing Omega. This is a surprising and rewarding change in tone for Current 93 that certainly ranks amongst Tibet's finest work yet.

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Jaga Jazzist, "One Armed Bandit"

cover image Billed by member Lars Horntveth and Ninja Tune as a Fela Kuti/Frank Zappa/progressive rock hybrid, Jaga Jazzist's latest is even more expansive and inclusive than that description suggests. Unpredictable smatterings of funky bass, over-driven guitar solos, synth jams, Steve Reich-ian hypno-patterns, pleasing stylistic jumps, and a much appreciated sense of humor are all present on One-Armed Bandit and without a single instance of forced splicing or embarrassing technical posturing.

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Isengrind, "Modlitewnik"

cover imageThe long-awaited (and almost instantly sold-out) vinyl debut from the less prolific half of Natural Snow Buildings continues Solange Gularte’s fine tradition of dreamlike, disquieting, and temporally dislocated ethno-ambience. While perhaps not as consistently graceful and brilliant as her solo contributions to 2008’s epic The Snowbringer Cult, Modlitewnik is nevertheless scattered with some of her most singular and otherworldly music yet.

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Fabio Orsi, "Random Shades of Day"

cover imagePainting a picturesque landscape using nothing but melody and ingenuity has long been at the epicenter of avant pursuits. Lustrous locks of tonal notes floating in the breeze as each counterpart unfurls, becoming sinewy strings of texture set against a golden background. It is among such a romantic setting that the works of Fabio Orsi glimmer, catching the sun’s rays and beaming it back to the world as beautifully constructed song paintings. On his latest, Random Shades of Day, Orsi continues to emerge as a master of transforming music into mood through four pieces of richly layered drone set against a dreamy landscape.

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