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.