Listenability Rating: Moderately advanced - if you can get past the abrasive violins, the random assemblage there awaits a funky orchestra at the end.

In a modern classical mood we have The Kronos Quartet playing the first movement from composer George Crumb's "Black Angels," a vivdly descriptiive work inspired by the Vietnam war. Composed in 1970 it pushes the limits of the staunchy string quartet, and does it with a bit of humor too.  Crumb describes this work as "a kind of parable on our troubled contemporary world."

Sometimes the links between these pieces only become apparent to me as I am forced to verbalize a descriptive rational behind my motives. So what I see is this fusing of the old, recognizable sounds of the orchestra and the string quartet and the more extended, modern, electric, out there sounds of the now. Since this filters thru me I find myself, Inkxpotter, mixing together both in my own piece, "Visual Clues." There is the ever present neutral flavors of noise along with the classical guitar, the synth squeeks and blips alongside my own nylon string imaginings.

The sounds of Jimi Tenor bring us the " Night in Loimaa" from his 2000 release "Out of nowhere". For this album he's joins with the Orchestra of the Great Theatre of Lodz in Poland. The result is an orchestra with a distinctive soulful groove. Tenor says his greatest talent is faking, making people believe he has a talent even if he doesn't. Well, whatever he says, he makes great music, cleverly combining elements from jazz, funk, soul and techno into an enjoyable experience.

Listenability Rating:  Intoxicating: One may find that the crackles and pops on this podcast go much farther than Rice Krispies ever intended.

This weeks show starts off with Akinori and his piece, "Red Field." I like the piece but wasn't able to locate a link to the artist. Maybe someone, somewhere can locate a link to Akinori. I found a few things but they didn't seem right.

In the ongoing series of collages I've mixed together with material I've recorded with my Ipod this weeks selection is titled "Somber Slumber.'" The recording quality is sub standard but I like the flexibility I get with the Ipod and the Ilisten attatchment, the two minute intervals when the hard drive starts spinning gets recorded so accurately. Anyway the sounds get sequenced through Sonar and out comes another something or other.

Ryuchi Sakamoto closes out our slightly Japanese foray into the strange. He has experimented with many different musical styles throughout his career and has made a name for himself in popular, classical and, film music. We listened to a few short pieces from his soundtrack to "Love is the Devil."

a spiral light comes forth from the cosmos...

Listenability Rating:  Challenging (this cast contains noise, samples, and other annoying things)

On a bit of a noisy note I figured I would start rating these shows for those who happen to stumble across my site and take a listen to what we do here. For the regular listeners it's not necessary because they have come to know what to expect. Yet it probably means I need to go and add ratings to all past shows, maybe some other time...

The first piece we listened to is by Pita off of the Get Off cd, we heard "Resog 45". "This is his (Peter Rehberg's) fourth solo album, and in addition to solo work he has collaborated with everyone from Fennesz  to choreographers Gisele Vienne and Chris Haring. Compared to his previous efforts, Get Off may very well also be the most varied work to date from Pita. Ranging from minimal and sparse to dense and attacking, the effort is everything from ambient to noise, and sometimes a little bit of both." - almost cool music reviews

For my contribution I recorded six five minute sections on my ipod with one of those plug in mics (yes the sound quality suffers but you know I am not one to care about that.) and then mixed them together into a little collage titled "staring straight."  I think I might do a few more of these and try to keep things more minimal, most times I start out trying to do that but end up falling into the density of overlapping sound sources and succombing to their spells. Maybe next time...?

Christian Marclay closes out the show with his piece Jukebox Capriccio, it's off of my Haunted Weather compilation CD but can probably also be found elsewhere. Performer, sculptor, and sound artist Christian Marclay has been experimenting, composing and performing with phonograph records and turntables since 1979. As a musician, he was one of the first to use records and turntables as a medium for performance and improvisation. Mixing a wide variety of LPs on multiple turntables, fragmenting and repeating sounds, altering speeds, playing records backwards, spinning, throwing, scratching, and otherwise manipulating records to create his unique "theater of found sound,"