Tonight in the Explorers Room: Water Planet - Amazonia - Space Trip

Tonight in the Explorers Room, we'll have a lazy day show of kalimba garden music, synthi library jungles, hot world jams, and psychedelic jazz.  Tune in, get zen and then turn that zen onto a funky trip.

See ya later, A L L I G A T O R

Tonight in the Explorers Room: Five Hour Show(!), Cluster / Moebius & Roedelius 1971-1983

Tonight in the Explorers Room, I'll be going from 7-Midnight as I fill in for The Cool Blue Flame with Little Danny.  To best make use of all that extra time, I'll be doing something I've wanted to do for some time now, but always felt I needed more than three hours to accomplish (as well as performing a follow-up to a the Neu!-themed show of a few weeks back): tackling the impressive, sprawling ouvre of Moebius and Roedelius, the duo that makes up Cluster, is 2/3 of Kluster and Harmonia, collaborated with Eno, split off into seemingly infinite, mind-blowing solo projects and collaborations, and worked extensively with supergenius Conny Plank.  In order to be able to cover any of these albums (a dizzying number of which qualify for greatest albums of their kind – or any kind, really), I've constrained myself to the period from 1971-1983.  We'll hear motorik odysseys, post-war avant garde, synthi candies, monastery garden meditations, agressively experimental noise, singularly unusual reggae appropriations, lullabies, drones, and sounds for which there are no satisfying descriptive words, all hammered out into a timeline structure that's not too far off the mark, I think. 

Tune in for the Cluster marathon, join the conversation there, keep me going through a five-hour endurance session of some of the greatest krautrock material ever made, ever. 

ZUCKERZEITGEIST TONIGHTGEIST

Cover Art: Visions Congo, Mulago Sound Studio (Discrepant)

Very pleased once again to say that I have another cover coming out for the Discrepant label, this time for a record by the Discrepant jefe, under the moniker Visions Congo.  Two sprawling sides of field recordings and synth, playing games with authenticity and immersion.  Here's the official blurb, which sums it up fairly well:

Visions Congo is yet another moniker from Discrepant’s head honcho, Gonçalo F Cardoso, taking Africa as a starting point to evoke the memories and re-imagined experiences of his 6-month stay in the region back in 2015.
Most of the recordings and compositions were done in the great lakes of Africa region of Uganda, Congo (DRC), Tanzania as well as the island of Zanzibar. Meshing impromptu in situ compositions with old dusty samples and his own field recordings is the go to modus operandi of Gonçalo F Cardoso's various monikers (ie Gonzo, Papillon), creating deep layered 'exotic/alien' soundscapes of various moods and feels. Here’s another series of surreal and augmented field recordings that try to brace the listener with fresh alien authenticity before toying very pointedly with antiquated constructs by mixing avant-garde dustbin synth music with concrete field recordings and humorous, tongue in cheek intersections - not to ‘ever’ be taken too seriously.
With a brand new art collage by US artist Evan Crankshaw. 

Check it out, man!  It's good stuff!

And also: for album art or related art&design needs, email me. 

Tonight in the Explorers Room: Loops, Oneness, Soul Repetitions

Tonight in the Explorers Room we'll have a sort of laid back show as I prepare for next week, which will be a 5-hour program (likely to be focused on Cluster, Moebius & Roedelius - don't miss it).  But tonight won't be a slouch by any stretch: we'll hear from the new Antropoloops EP, some more top-notch Italian minimalism (more straightforward and less exotic than the last time around, but just as good if not better), some funky selections from Oneness of Juju (which developed out of the band Juju, is just as awesome if less militant), and a set of repetitions on a "soul" theme. And more. A very groovy night. Tune in, explore with me.

O N E N E S S

Tonight in the Explorers Room: The Laughing String, A Science Experiment

Tonight's Explorers Room, in observance of the Fine Art of Goofing Off, will explore the weird world of the incredible Laughing String.  The Laughing String can bring joy and mirth into your home; this has been proven true, with the scientific realities of our day, in this time.  Those of you who are in analysis I think will understand the function of this object: lace the string around the group, or gang of cats, or around the periphery of your body, and wind it up tight. The laughter will come, at about mid-ships.

Please join tonight in this laughing experiment, and keep in mind that it is recommended to store the string in a little plastic container when not in use.  It has a kind of radioactive electronic thing about it which gets completely dissipated.  It's a sort of in-group thing. Make it swing while you go and try to hear all the sounds while you fall out.

A Large, Discrete Number of Windows, 

With A Woman's Face in Every One

Tonight in the Explorers Room: 100th Episode! White Goddess – King Kong

On this historic evening, the 100th night of the Explorers Room, we'll once again embark on exotic and surreal exploration: in search of the glorious monster, the king of all beasts, the great and powerful Kong; through the strange echoes and lost plateaus of Frank Hunter's classic Ondioline-exotica album, White Goddess; and feverishly revisiting some especially salient favorites from the very first show.

K  O  N  G 

Tonight in the Explorers Room: Avant-Alohas, Italian Minimalist Jungles, Inflatable Arcadias

Tonight in the Explorers Room, we return from last week's absence to traipse feverishly through disorienting jungles devised by exotica concrète and other strategies, including a lengthy sojourn to those of Italian minimalist/fourth world/ethnosurrealist outfit Futuro Antico, and some of the various offshoots of that collective scene.  We'll also spend some weird time in various visions of Hawaii, from indigenous Hawaiian avant-garde music, to bizarre conceptions of Hawaii in psych and outsider music, with some other stuff that's hard to classify filling in the gaps.  Should be a jungly one, sailors.

A L O H A

Tonight in the Explorers Room: M O T O R I K

Tonight's Explorers Room will be spent in perpetual motion, an exploration of the motorik sound – also referred to as lange gerade (long straight), endlose gerade (endless straight), or the Apache beat – mainly as practiced by its sort-of originators, Michael Rother & Klaus Dinger of the legendary krautrock duo, Neu!  We'll hear manifestations of motorik in Neu!'s various recordings, and its continuing evolution & influence in a variety of Dinger/Rother solo/side projects and collaborations with other krautrock luminaries.  Two lines, only occasionally converging, barrelling straight ahead at a constant speed, indefinitely.  No destination necessary.

GO GO GO

Tonight in the Explorers Room: MARATHON MAN Week 2! Support WFMU!

Tune in tonight to the Explorers Room for WEEK TWO of the WFMU FUNDRAISING MARATHON.  I'll be playing awesome sounds from the various albums that are my lot to award as prizes, to you, provided you have the means, revolutionary fervor, love of music, passion for emancipated & emancipatory programming, and goodness of heart to donate to the cause, the righteous cause of keeping WFMU afloat and a-broadcasting, beaming via radiowaves and pneumatic internet tubes a multivalent, multi-platform, neverending supply of sonic sustenance for an otherwise sorely alienated world that isn't sure it feels like itself anymore.  Help, please, help. 

Help!

A pledge of $20 or more during my show will make you eligible for prizes (see above); a pledge of $75 or more will also guarantee you this years Explorers Room Premium (see below): Madness – The Feast of the Drum.  A collection of percussive ritual sorcery, imitation voodoo, bongo fetishisms, ethnographic hallucinations, the rare authentic, and throbbing mysteries from exotica's jungle night imaginary.  African drumming packaged as exotica, exotica packaged as ethnographic document, and all the ambiguities and fever dreams in between.

See the pledge widget below:

TONIGHT: Each at the forge must do their duty! Strike while the iron is hot!

Tonight in the Explorers Room: MARATHON MAN, Week 1

Tune in tonight to the Explorers Room and dig my small part of the 2017 WFMU annual fundraising marathon.  Pledge to support a revolutionary organization that challenges the tyranny of sonic hegemony and consistently advances the cause of liberated music programming, all without underwriting or blood money to muddy the mission.  A world without WFMU is a worse world, so let's keep it around.  The only way that happens, and somehow this seems to work, is through contributions from listeners and human beings like yourself.

A pledge of $20 or more during my show will make you eligible for prizes (see above); a pledge of $75 or more will also guarantee you this years Explorers Room Premium (see below): Madness – The Feast of the Drum.  A collection of percussive ritual sorcery, imitation voodoo, bongo fetishisms, ethnographic hallucinations, the rare authentic, and throbbing mysteries from exotica's jungle night imaginary.  African drumming packaged as exotica, exotica packaged as ethnographic document, and all the ambiguities and fever dreams in between.

See the pledge widget below:

TONIGHT: TAKE THE PLUNGE, MAKE A PLEDGE