bowel growels - April 7

This week's show focused on passionate food admiration and my awesomely cool pal Mike Simon, concocting deliciousness at every opportunity, who came on to boil up a pot of sounds and food devotional words.

Not much really to say. Was a lot of fun. Also this was the first attempt at a live in studio performance, and by all accounts it seemed to work out really great. Mike was also kind enough to bring along some delicious leek soup and bake potato construction, both really tasty. We had a heck of a time just trying to roll with the challenges of live radio production spontaneously being problematic. It was a lot of fun though I think Mike will agree.

Tracklist:
Captain Beefheart - Safe as Milk (from Safe as Milk)
Litte Claw - Human Taste (from Human Taste)
Silver Apples - Oscillations (from Contact)
Caroliner Rainbow Strewed Angel  Skins - Wheat Delusion (from I'm Armed with Quarts of Blood)
Caroliner Rainbow Wire Thin Sheep Legs Baking Exhibit - Rainbows Made Meat (from Strike them Hard Strike them  to Church
Caroliner Rainbow Grace Blocks Used in the Placement of Personality - Red Roll Butter Shutters (from Rings of the Awkward Shadows)
(AND some original poems and jams by Mike Simon)

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DOWNLOAD THIS SHOW: cfmu.mcmaster.ca (programming page Wed. @ 10 p.m. New Directions) directly from rapidshare by clicking here.

Bodily Functions - March 31

Inspired by the various quirks and stories relating to the body and how it functions, this week show ended up being understandably pretty crude but also a lot of fun. Continuing in the tradition of using New Directions as a soapbox from which to talk about creative ideas in all the ways they manifest themselves out of our weird minds and through the microphone into your ears.

I was joined this week by Sarah Good, last week's guest Ceda Torma who asked to be invited back (probably cause Sarah and I are such wonderful company) and Dr. Sean Gadoury. We all learned a little something about each other in the process of relating some of our own personal body-related stories, and urged anyone to call in and tell us about their own bodily quirks or stories.

 It was kind of tough to avoid talking about sex and other crude aspects of the body/bodily functions. So to reign it in a bit, the discussion was momentarily redirected towards talking about Sartre's Nausea, which as well as any existentialist novel illustrates the sort of mental feeling of disconnection from our bodies that many people experience in their everyday lives. That feeling of being on auto-pilot and maybe not really being in your body in the moment. I argued that this kind of existential anxiety is perhaps what leads some to go to extremes with their bodies, either through reckless and dangerous thrill seeking that gets your adrenaline pumping or various kinds of pain and pleasure. Basically, a way to shock yourself back into your body. We touched on how this kind of relates to the creative process because making art/creating is our of the many ways that some people vent, and in the novel it is through a jazz recording that the hero is able to overcome the sensation and cope with existence. Definitely a book worth reading, especially the New Directions Publishing edition with the introduction by Hayden Carruth.


Finding music to fit the theme was a bit tougher than expected.  But I think we did okay thanks to some combined efforts.

Tracklistings:
Connie Francis - I Will Wait for You
Magik Markers - Body Rot (off of Boss)
Sonic Youth - Is It My Body? (off of Destroyed Room)
Charles Spearin - Vanessa (from the Happiness Project LP)
The Kinks - Funny Face (from Something Else)
Lamps - I Need a Chick (Devo Cover off of Songs of Sexual Frustration EP)

DOWNLOADS:

This week's show can be downloaded from CFMU's website by clicking on New Directions on the program guide page or from Rapidshare by clicking here.

The Creative Act - March 24

Local singer/songerwriter Ceda Torma joined my regular co-host/local music goddess Sarah Good  and I for this show to read some of his own poetry, which he often incorporates into his music as lyrics. We had a really great discussion about the process of writing poetry/lyrics.

An enlightening excerpt from a a lecture on the creative act by artist/icon Marcel Duchamps, who was a driving force in questioning/redefining art against a modern landscape of existence, was included for the spoken word portion of the show. It was taken from one of the most excellent web resources on art/music/writing www.ubu.com.  The section with more audio files on/by Duchamps (including a lot of great background info) can be found here. 


Playlist for this week:
Sylvester Anfang II - Salon Cassetten II (from the Commune Cassetten LP on Blackest Rainbow)
Dr. Sean Gadoury  - Floating Island  (from a local cdr release called Floating Island Punches off of his private release label)
Ufomammut -  UFO pt. 1 (off of the record Godlike Snake)
Quasi - My Coffin (off of R&B Transmogrification)
Sun City Girls -Flowers (off of  Torch of Mystics)
Head of Wantastiquet - Mortagne  (off of Mortagne)

DOWNLOAD THIS WEEK'S SHOW

This week's show is available for download as an mp3 from cfmu,mcmaster.ca by going to the program page and clicking on New Directions (Wednesday's @ 10 pm. and the March 24 show date) or off Rapidshare by clicking here.

All that Egyptian and Mayan Stuff

The top of this week's show started off with a poem written and read by music/art icon Patti Smith called Histories of the Universe. As mentioned on the show I located it via a fantastic website called ubu.com, which a couple of people have directed me to and has proven to be a fantastic resources for all things artistic and interesting. Listening to this poem kind of blew me away just because of the super conversational/informal style Smith has which makes her words sound like a real organic stream of ideas which lends it power. Also I think she's alluded to female orgasm, though maybe that's just what I read into it. I've been really interested in sort of ancient mysticism as of late, so I also enjoyed the way she connected the creative process to a sort of mystical force present inside of us.  But yeah, do check out that site because there is an insane amount of films, music, and other stuff to absorb.

Musicselections for Jan 20th show:
AAM - Later During a Flaming Riviera Sunset from the album AAMMusic
John Cage - Credo in US 7" (Dolor Del Estamago)
Pulp Music - Low Flying Aircraft from Low Flying Aircraft 7" (Pputre Apparente)
U.S. Girls - Me + Yoko from Me + Yoko 7" (Not Not Fun)
The Red Krayola - Say Hello to Jamie Jones from God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It
Robedoor - People of the Book and The Downcast Eye (Not Not Fun)

I've really been into getting into new things and old things I've never given enough ear exposure time to. This has been my main duty as of late and how I came to finally listen to AAM. I don't know where AAM has been all my life. Pretty much just out of my consciousness. I had heard of them a while ago before re-discovering them and this album, which is pretty astounding. I am terrible at describing music, except to say things like it was recorded in 1966 and the band includes Keith Rowe, who a lot of people into experimental music/improv jazz have likely heard of. Definitely worth checking out, just as a source of inspiration and awe for anyone into experimental/improv sounds.

Rare post-punk/avant  gem reissued after first released in 1979. Not much was known to me about this band, except recalled hearing them hailed by someone a while ago. There is a lot of info about the duo, made up of Anne Bean and Paul Burwell, on the inner sleeve included with this disc which you can read on the label's website poutre apparente if you are interested.

Going to have some links to the show posted up soon, but for now it can be downloaded off CFMU's webiste, cfmu.mcmaster.ca under the Wednesday night section of the Programming Guide.

Back to the future

This week's show focused mainly on artists that were ahead of their time, pioneering some futuristic sounds that are even today still pretty far out.  I unfortunately didn't have time to talk about some of the sci-fi novels that I wanted to get into on-air, but I guess that's what the unlimited capacity of the internet is for.

Playlist:
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Struktur IV from Kontakt
Morton Subotnick - Silver Apples of the Moon for Electornic Music Pt 1 from the album of the same name
Conrad and Gregor Schnitzler - track 1 from Conrad & Sohn.
Mort Garson - Capricorn from Zodiac Cosmic Sounds
Silver Apples - Oscillations from S/T
Bruce Haack - National Anthem   to the Moon from Electric Lucifier
Neil Young - We R in Control from Trans
Simply Saucer - Here Come the Cyborgs Pt. 1 from Cyborgs Revisited

The only really out of place selection to me, is Neil Young, which I threw in kind of for novelty and to show the influence that synths/eletronics had on some more mainstream artists. A lot of people deem Trans to be Neil Young's most curious release, but I really dig it because it is such a departure from almost everything else he's released before or since.

I was really fortunate to see Simeon, the surviving member of Silver Apples, while in Copenhagen, Denmark at a venue called Kulturebox back in 2008.   These are a couple of photos I took during the show, plus a photo of some of the gear he used that night.

I have been a long-time fan of certain kinds of Sci-fi type stuff, from films to novels. To me, this genre relates to the kind of music I play on my show because it forces us to suspend our ideas about reality and dream of places beyond our reach. I think it is this kind of thinking and the pairing of imagination and technology that led to a lot of the most pioneering musical sounds.  Also, a lot of old sci-fi novels have some pretty awesome covers.

Books:

A Wrinkle in Time  by Madeleine L'Engle
This novel pretty much changed my life when I read it in elementary school. It introduced kids like me to ideas like telepathy, inter-dimensional travel, and atomic particles that could be moved at will.

Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five
This was my first introduction to an author that would become one of my favourites. More intro-time travel set against the background of world war II hysteria.

 

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep & Ubik - Phillip K. Dick

Phillip K. Dick to me is one of the most far out and visionary sci-fi authors of all time. This is probably while hollywood has stolen many of his books, and except in the case of Bladerunner and A Scanner Darkly, turned them into kind of shitty movies. Ubik is probably the weirder of the two novels. Most people are aware of the premise of Bladerunner, but Ubik also deals with telepathic powers, trips to the moon, and shifting realities.

Deathworld - Harry Harrison
A killer novel about a killer planet. Super strong gravity and plant and animal life that is evolutionary inclined to be lethal to humans.

this week's show

Thank you for visiting the new directions radio blog, which is finally up and running.

This week's show featured a radio play by Samuel Beckett called Rough for Radio II from a recording entitled Seven Radio Plays by Samuel Beckett. These recordings were first heard on the BBC radio.  I really wanted to play All that Fall, however it runs more than an hour. I was inspired to select Beckett this week because I just recently obtained a copy of Nohow On from a second hand bookstore. I have been looking for this for a while during my used bookstore investigations.

I also played some GHQ, a band that has been one of my favourites for a while. I played Sacramento the B Side off of California Night Buning Dreams, which I had playing under the Beckett recording. That was followed by GHQ's Part i from Requiem for Bophal. There was also track by Kites called Baby Fawn with Broken Legs from their album Peace Trials that I tend to favour a lot. I figured I hadn't played/listened to either of these projects in a while which sort of guided my selection. I wasn't disappointed.


I ended things off with a too short excerpt from a Tuluum Shimmering CS called Flowers of the Honey Tree released on the House of Sun imprint. I had no knowledge of this label or really Tuluum Shimmering before I played it on the show, which is sometimes how it goes. I picked it up on the advice of a very wise friend and I am glad I did. Since roaming the internet for some info, I've learned that that this new age drone magic was created in Flintshire, UK and has other releases on Cloud Valley Recordings and Housecraft Records.

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