wReck thiS meSS ~ Radio Patapoe 88.3
Amsterdam ~ Ethno-Illogical Psycho-Radiographies
15.11.10 // 17.00-18.30
“What we imagine is order is merely the prevailing form of chaos.”
• Kerry Wendell Thornley, co-founder of Discordianism
“Rocket Ship explode…”
• Kode 90 + Spaceape
LISTEN AT WRECK THIS MESS MIXCLOUD
Buffer Zone > Bob [Unstable Friends / &records]
Addiction > Kode 9 + The Spaceape [Memories of the Future / Hyperdub]
Back 2 Badjam > Math Doly [King Size Dub 11 / Echo Beach]
Light Bulb > Bob [Unstable Friends / &records]
Sine > Kode 9 + The Spaceape [Memories of the Future / Hyperdub]
A Mean Dub > King Tubby [King Dub / Nascente]
Chicharras Night > Up, Bustle & Out [Mexican Sessions / Collision]
Bristol Brooklyn Bridge > Up, Bustle & Out Vs Blanquito Man & Fragment Crew
Somewhere in Space > Sun Ra [My Ears! My Ears! / Blast First]
Needles > Matmos vs So Percussion [Treasure State / Cantaloupe]
Surgery > Robert Armani [Hyperspace / BML]
Aluminum > Matmos vs So Percussion [Treasure State / Cantaloupe]
Death to the 8 Notes > If, Bwana [Assemble.Age / Pogus]
First Landscape > Gerry Hemingway [Kwambe / Auricle]
The Ultra GTO / US Route 466 > The Coachmen [Mercy (Can Make You Happy) / JDK ]
Bristol Brooklyn Bridge > Up, Bustle & Out vs Blanquito Man & Fragment Crew
“Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.”
• Henry Miller
Sometimes you come up against the end of a rope and that rope is a frayed, torn, cut cable. The chances of you hanging yourself with it are slim. Sometimes you lose your way even though everyone around you would be surprised to hear that you do not know the way from say the joy of “making” music or making it happen or putting it together like some ethnomusicologist with no discipline or patience for categories, nomenclature, technology especially tech that doesn’t work. Because, after all, tech’s rep is built on the notion that it transcends happenstance, that it is reliable.
I am beginning to wonder what I have been up to all these years. Was it all onanistic with a preference for making something deep out of all this audio wanking? Faced with rapidly decaying hardware in a sour smelling basement in a studio with all the ergonomics of an explosion site, you begin to question hard the presumptions of your routine. What I really like is the notion that there is reason for doing this, that pleasure is its own dynamic politics, that drinking a bit of wine with a torrid mix cranked up full blast for a few minutes serves the same function as sticking your head out of a car window with your beloved pressing the gas pedal to the floor, The sun on your face, the wind wiping away all concern for a few seconds inside the terror and joy of speed. That is what I sometimes still feel doing radio. Mass audience concerns evaporated about 15 years ago. That is probably why I started to do annotated playlists, the reading and writing of the lists becoming an informed kind of ulterior listening, listening with hypertext. That I began to switch over to a blog was a natural because I like the visual component of music as well as the literary and sonic. That I began to upload my shows on mixcloud was a natural reaction to present-day circumstances: the decline of alternative radio, the decline of the radio DJ as an information disseminator, or as radiomaker-artist. That I still get pleasure out of mixes and challenging segues and wrestling with equipment that requires crisis management levels of adrenaline makes it all seem … Worth it. Or is it?
When I hear things like the Coachmen with their sonic disregard for all aesthetics, with their call for rebuilding culture from 0, that labels like Pogus continue to survive, that there is nobility in survival, that Kode 9 has reinvigorated deep dub beats that Up Bustle & Out continue to characterize the new musical being: able to draw from all cultures simultaneously and make it come out like a global music beyond the charming warmth of World Music and all of its cuddly categories is also inspiring.
That my body is not quite ready to go totally digital, that my show is wedged between 2 very different shows is symbolic I guess of my quandary: The Beautiful Freaks are high school kids with a lot of enthusiasm for new rock and old style radio that amuses and informs. Great. They are however totally digital. Plug in the computer and click I-tunes and the playlist is all there. There are advantages to this: you don’t have to be beholden to or the victim of failing hardware. Just plug it in, be sure the mic works and you are ready for take off. I have a more transitional approach – was playing cassettes not so long ago, continue to play vinyl, CDS and CDRs with some premixed work but still lots of happenstance to make things human, surprising and exciting.
Meanwhile, the Jongens van de Vlakte [street kids up to no good] are mostly diehard vinyl freaks, sometimes doing 100% vinyl shows, disdaining any mention of CDs, but also turn to an iPod plug once in a while. But they do swear by the charm and remaining value of LPs. Perhaps the human body is so plugged into the routines that technology create, routing our emotions via cables, desktops, mixing boards, etc. that we as human beings find it hard to continually adjust our tactics but also our hearts to the evolving technology.
Regardless, when I am spinning and the spinning is going well I am still able to create movies on the inside of my head via the medium of sound. In other words the audio during a radio show continues to stimulate parts of the human brain [mine] not commonly pricked, primed and stimulated by other daily activities…
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