Listen Ability Rating: From a circuit bent chipmunk to avant electro jazz and the indigenious sounds of urban improv this podcast is full of surprises. (22:30, 30.2mb)

The first piece that enters our collective ears is from a CD I came across in the Amoeba record store in SF. "Gravikords Whirlies & Pyrophones" is a collection of odd sounds from makers of unusual instruments. It comes with a cool booklet that goes into detail about the instrument makers. Reed Ghazala's "Silence the Tongues of Prophecy" is a part of this collection, he is known as the father of Circuit Bending, if you don't know what that is check out his site for more info. Or have a listen to his piece which features a collection of his hand built instruments.

Following the silence we have a cut off of David Toop's 1996 solo album titled, "Pink Noir". We have a listen to the cool title track. I've played some of the music that he has written about on past shows but this is the first time we get a chance to listen to his own music. Highly reccommended!

Rounding out the shape is the cut "After Marja's Cats" off of the recently released No Neck Blues Band and Embryo collaboration, EmbryoNNCK. Seven tracks and 44 minutes of concentrated musical collaboration, a fierce and uncompromising mesh of artistic visions that will surely be among the year’s best experimental releases.

Enjoy!

Check out the cool sounds of Akron/Family and a bit of video I edited together to meld with the music.

New podcast up soon!

Listen Abiliy Rating: This week we have a gamut of sounds from avant electronic to edgy ambient and a dose of lo-fi freedom thrown in for good measure. (30.9mb, 22:20)

Gordon Mumma sets us off on our way with "Stressed Space Palindromes" which was created in the time frame 1977-82.
He worked a lot with live performance but I kinda doubt this piece was one that could be played live.

Blood and Snow off of Susumu Yokota's 2003 Cd The Boy And the Tree fills in the mid section of our three part dis-harmony.

Ariel Pink and his lo-fi masterpiece from 2003 Worm Copy brings us a glimpse of "Life in LA". The grainy faraway sound of this piece makes it a perfect snapshot of life in the deepest corners of the city of Angels.

Listen Ability Rating: A taste of Edan's funky rap, Nobukazu's quirky kitsch, and Blumm's childish moments.

From 2005's Beauty and the Beat we listen to a cut itled "Promised Land." With rapid fire rap spilling out apocolyptic futuristic visions Edan gives us a taste of the past to live for.

Cut number two is a challenging listen but I am sure my listeners can handle it. From Nobukazu Takemura we have the piece "Trampoline " off of the Cd Hoshi no Koe, which came out in 2001 on the Thrill Jockey label. Nobukazu is a Japanese musician whose style has run from jazz to house to drum and bass to chamber music to electronic glitch within less than a decade.  In his bio I read that Takemura was also responsible for the sound design of Sony's robotic dog Aibo. Think of little Aibo attempting to communicate his emotions to humans as a reference point for this melodious track!

For our third selection we have a soothing contrast to Takemura with FS Blumm and his piece "Fa", I found this one on a CD entitled Childish Music, a collection of pieces by various artists doing childish things with sound.  Hope you enjoy the latest collection and leave me some feedback if you get a chance. Keep on listening!

Listen Ability Rating: Welcome back friends of the Strange! I have prepared a show of  electro jazz noise, ambient piano ships, and moon children possessed  ---   So if your ears are ready to resume then I will give them a jolt of fun!

So it is in the resuming that we begin again. What is a few months in the grand schematic of the wiring diagram? You were busy as was I and the past days slipped away like so much sound. Yet a bit of reassurance was found in watching the steady stream of downloads of past episodes continue to flow from the Strange Music archives. The momentum continues to fuel the creature but it's time for some fresh food, so feast!

Lets refresh our ears with a taste of The Fiery Furnaces The song is called "Oh Sweet the Woods" off of Bitter Tea. Heres a taste of the lyrics to set the mood...
So imagine the music they would put on and then twist it around your mind until it spirals back again. Envelopes of dimensional spirit...reflectors of inner eyes...ritualized and fanatacized in glorious harmonies of Excellence.

Sound is ours. When we find our ears heading into a bit of ambient meets rocking sea vessel. Artist/ComposerMagician M. Bentley shares an excerpt from his piece Piano Ship.

An episode of extremes has reinitiated the SMSD download.

Yes I once again mine the seemingly endless variety of sounds contained in the John Zorn library. Not just another bit of disturbing sonic artifacts, not this time. Here we have something special. A communication of reunion and unity. A prayer to the sky.To the moon children of humanity not living.
Mr. Zorn did get one of those genius grants so we must listen ever so closely for the hidden subtext of magick and ritual in the sound of "Possession" from his recent CD Moonchild.

Listen Ability Rating: You are feeling fitter and happier and the crush of improvised hum will suit you just fine. (11.3mb. 9:50)

The first piece we are listening to is a little gem from Radiohead titled, "Fitter, Happier." This cut is off of their gazillion selling OK Computer album. Oddly disturbing use of the often mocked "computer as narrator" technique.

Under the category of ramshackle demix I have constructed a bit of malappropriated sound sourcing from our old buddy Aphex Twin. Calling this piece "Ateg, Achex" it sounds more like a sneeze than a song but I am sure we can all appreciate the sonic complexity that underlies such a sneeze.

During this show i call this band Hornswoggle and Humcrush, but it is in fact Stronen/Storloklen, the album is Humcrush and the song is Hornswoggle. This is a collaboration between the keyboardist from SuperSilent and the drummer from Food. They improvised these sessions in the studio creating a complex interplay of sound. Check it out!

Listen Ability Rating: Insanity reigns supreme! (24:24, 28mb)

As the summer hiatus into the landscape briefly opens up I have prepared a feast of audio delight for your consumption. We start off with the words of EJ Gold read by the Inkxpotter amidst a cacophony of electronic vibration. The piece is title "Corpuscle."

For an altogether abrubt segue we head into the world of the "Disco Infiltrator" by LCD Soundsystem. I've been wanting to play this track for a while but couldn't find the right spot for it, until now.

Heading into the world of John Zorn once again (a vast and varied landscape indeed) we explore the sounds of "Nerve Key" from Songs from the Hermetic Theatre. One of the very few purely electronic pieces he has composed, this one is worth a careful listen.

Listen Ability Rating: Well it's short and it runs the gamut from comedy to cathedrals of light. (11:56, 13.7mb)

For this episode I've thrown in the comedy of Bill Hicks and some squelchy noises by Wolf Eyes. Bill has a few choice words to say about the evolution of ideas. Which also relates to our own ideas about the ever evolving soundscape that we inhabit on a daily basis. We flow thru this into my own beat laden mix titled "Bubbles and the Marim Buh". A strange name for a rather straightforward piece.

From there we go towards the "Cathedral of light", a piece by William Parker off of his recently released CD , Long Hidden: The Olmec Series. He writes in the liner notes that his whole theory of music is contained in this piece. See if you can hear it.

Listen Ability Rating : An extended mix of sound and suicidal rambling.  (22:04, 25.3mb)

Although I usually play a few pieces of carefully chosen music by other artists to accompany what I have been working on this will not be the case for this episode of Strange Music in Small Doses. The extended mix I have prepared uses samples from a radio documentary on suicide, found sounds, and synth textures. All of these unfold in a rather lengthy fashion leaving little room for any other music to fill in the edges.

A few mentions of the Golden Gate Bridge caught my interest when I first heard the documentary a few months ago, I came across it in the archive last night and put this mix together. Enjoy!

Listen Ability Rating: A good introduction to the sounds that my show has to offer. We've got beats, jazzy flavors and, as always, a bit of heavy deconstruction writhing in between. (15:02, 17.3mb)

This episode was inspired by a recent live music event where I saw the Kronos Quartet in San Francisco. They did a variety of modern pieces that included taped, improvised and other elements. Matmos also joined them for thrilling electronic and live sound moments.

Wibutee gets us moving with their own combination of jazz and electronica. This is a cut titled "1-800- Skauen" off of their 2004 release on Jazzland Records Playmachine.

On my usual excursions thru cyberspace I came upon a website for the school district of Milford, Connecticut. There I found a midi file that was created by a student named Tim Wilson for his electronic music class, he titled the piece "Helms Deep." In true Inkxpotter fashion I have mutated it with Ableton Live and turned it into my own homage to the ogres and trolls of Tolkien. Inkxpotter exclusive!

Xploding Plastix is the musical child of Jens Petter Nilsen and Hallvard Hagen. An oeuvre of an ear-opener: Zipping and unzipping the beat, a beat-science out-of the ordinary. Emphasizing the flowing warmth and organity of the rhythms. Triggering flailing, skittering, skipping and spinning breaks, makes this pure nigthvisioning. We listened to "Sports, not heavy crime" off of the 2001 release Amateur girlfriends go proskirt agents.

Listen Ability Rating:  Drones, doors, delays and blog blabber. You be the judge. (18.5 mb, 16:05)

For this installment I've done away with the overdubs of my intros, extros and other wordless edits. Let the flow dictate and so it shall! The Cleophone gets us started. Strange Music in Small Doses listener Dave sent me a recording of his latest instrument creation. Super cool sounds on a one of a kind instrument. The official Cd comes out very soon, but you can hear it here first! Inkxpotter exclusive.

Dave will have to forgive me for taking some of his sounds to my own extremes just a bit of sampled blog blabber asked to be swirled into the mix. And then from left field a Door opened and Jim decided we must begin to Take it as it comes,  you know what I mean.

Jin Hi Kim has her own take on the sounds of ancient misty hilled Korea. Can we hear the similairities in the Cleophone and her Komungo ( Korean fourth century fretted board zither)? Ask your ears this compelling question as soon as possible

Listen Ability Rating: Challenging and yet somehow strangely soothing. (20:28. 23.7 mb)

Rolling the show to the go is Sketch Show off of their 2003 CD Loophole, we enjoyed the piece "Chronograph." "Sketch show is a  project that has risen from the ashes of the legendary Yellow Magic Orchestra (Haruomi Hososno and Yukihiro Takahashi). "Loophole" evolves through its delicate popping microscopic clicks and pop structures into what sounds like a singer songwriter fairytale album fed through a laptop and spat out covered in velvet and loose wires." - Boomkat

Linking the edges is the Inkxpotter and JS Bach collaborative piece structured thru time and space and fed synthesizers and a real live acoustic piano. Inkxpotter Exclusive!

Closing the door but opening our minds to the pure sonic potential of undiluted sound is none other than the genius of Borbetomagus. We listened to an excerpt from Barbed Wire Maggots. Now if the name doesn't alert you then I will because the musics beauty will topple your head, you just need to remember that it will all end at some point.

Listen Ability Rating: Rather melodic if I do say so, from avant jazz to oddball rock/pop you will dig this mix. (17:02, 19.6mb)

The Lounge Lizards are the ignition for this weeks machine. With "The Magic of Palermo" off of 1987's No Pain for Cakes. The Lounge Lizards emerged from the New York post punk scene of the early 80's. "Initially a tongue in cheek "fake jazz" combo, drawing on punk rock and no wave as much as jazz, The Lounge Lizards have since become respected for their creative and distinctive sound."

For this weeks Inkxpotter mix I created a piece titled "Wacked out interlude," that pretty much sums up this piece. A random segue of warped beats and scritchy scratchy sounds. Inkxpotter exclusive!

Animal Collective closes out this week's trio with "The Purple Bottle" from last years Feels. Here's what the folks at Pitchfork media had to say about this record,  "With each new album it becomes clearer that Animal Collective will not stay still. You can see them on tour and get a preview of the album to come in their live show, but aside from that, it's difficult to tell which direction their music will go next." You can follow the link for the full review.

Direct download: smsd060226_copy_1.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 9:11pm PDT

Listen Ability Rating: Spin together a radioactive fallout shelter, a trip down the ghost river, and some fun with foil and you'll decipher the sounds in this show. (15:19, 17.6mb)

Getting off to the usual odd start we find ourselves in the Negativland. Inhabited by artifacts from all over the planet we segue from a rather suspect "Announcement" into "Yellow Black and Rectangular." These cuts are off of the Escape from Noise disc originally released in 1987. Their website is packed with oddities and worth a drive thru.

"Ghost River" is the name of the river we must cross to find the bright omen on the other side, or so says Stephen Karcher author of "Total I Ching." His words were pirated from a radio interview and give us a brief glimpse into the complex probablities of the Book of Changes. Also included in this mix are synth sounds courtesy of Touching Centauri, a listener to the show who offered up his own work for the Inkxpotter to do with as he wants. And so I have! Inkxpotter exclusive!

"Priznak Aluminum" (Holiday Suite for Foil) by artist Violet is our next selection. Jeff Surak (aka Violet) is a veteran experimenter from Washington, DC. He began recording under the moniker -1348- in the early 1980s and participated in the hometaper underground. This edited cut is off of "The Sun is Shining & the Flowers are Blooming on Violet Street 3" on Scarcelight .

We close the show with "Washing Machine A" by John Zorn from Filmworks Vol. 3. A tasty collection of screeching saxes and avant jazz noise! Enjoy.

Listenability Rating: Well you need to be comfortable with the mother effer word in this mix of rap, avant noise, folkatronica and general weirdness. (16:42, 19.1 mb)

On this version of Strange Music in Small Doses I've felt like talking even less in order to facilitate the flow of audio energy into your waiting earbuds. That being said I'll try to summarize what you are hearing but sometimes multiple pieces are playing at the same time.

With John Zorn's "Objects" from the Filmworks 2 disc entering your sound space first I've added a generous dose of Delay just to spice up the stabs of sound. From there we flow into a piece off of Missy Elliots "...so addictive " disc. Here we got Busta rhymes doing a bad ass intro for the master of rap herself. From there we jump into a bit more "Objects" and segue ungracefully right back into another cut from the "...so addictive" disc, "Whatcha gonna do?" The rap music may seem a bit of a departure from the usual oddities I play but patience is golden my friends, patience is golden.

Bruce Haack brings us straight back to the strange with "Abbacadabra" from his "Listen, Compute, Rock Home" disc. Then a brief segue into "Aux Creux Des Vages, Mon Visage" by aMute. For the finale of this sixteen minute mix I've put together a bit of my own folkatronica and entitled this weeks Inkxpotter contribution as "Huiyar."
Enjoy the mix!

Listen Ability Rating: One part beef heart, a dash of rag, two pounds nerve snapping Japan psych - rock. Mix thoroughly! (17:36, 20.9mb)

Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band give us a jolt of "Electricity" from his 1967 debut album Safe as Milk.  BBC DJ John Peel once stated, "If there has ever been such a thing as a  genius in the history of popular music, it's Beefheart ... I heard echoes of his music in some of the records I listened to last week and I'll hear more echoes in records that I listen to this week."

Up to my old tricks I've come up with a piece titled "Carousel to Hell." I've turned on the Inkxpotter deconstruction machine and this week it was fed a Scott Joplin midi file titled, "Original Rag." After a few days of working on this I found I had conjured flying dinosaurs and other airborne creatures doing wide circles in the sky in my dream time. If you listen to it the same may happen for you. Inkxpotter exclusive!

The title of our last selection by Fushitsusha was what initially sucked me in, "Don't Be Afraid. Even If Your Nerves Snap, You Can Tie Them To A Fragment Of The Universe..." Who could walk away from a title like that? "The sounds this music contained seemed to suggest nothing so much as the primeaval mythic soul-soup from which all music originated." Listener you have been warned!

Listen Ability Rating: Some heavy sampling, heavy beats, and basterdized Bach!

Mixmaster Mike opens up the show with "A Can of Ass Kicks". I pulled this one off of a Wire compilation CD, can't say if it's available elsewhere but it's definitely a kick. One of the premier scratch artists of the day, Mixmaster Mike got his initial itch for vinyl while growing up in San Francisco listening to his uncle's extensive record collection.

Since there is a bit of a Bach theme going on here (don't ask me how the Mixmaster fits in) the Inkxpotter mix this week offers up a rendition of the Lute Prelude in D minor by JS Bach . Along with some scientific facts thrown in for good measure, oddness is let loose once again. Inkxpotter Exclusive!

Laibach brings this Bach frenzy to a close with W.A.T. or "We Are time". "On WAT Laibach accelerate once more dragging audiences into their own temporal zone, conjuring up the normally hidden forces supporting the regimes that govern our reality. Nothing and no one is spared interrogation by Laibach and the effects of its interventions are irreversible. WAT interrogates both Laibach's own history and the desires and projections of its audiences." Fun stuff!

Listen Ability Rating: As the title suggests the "blues" dominate this episode. Not your standard 12 bar variety though, tonight we've got Tuvan throat singers and primal improv rounding out this collection of sounds.

With the blues at the forefront we start off this podcast with a cut from the Genghis Blues soundtrack. This excellent movie chronicles the journey of blind blues musician Paul Pena and his journey to Tuva in the mid nineties. He first heard the sound of Tuvan throat singers ten years earlier on a short wave broadcast and amazingly taught humself how to sing in this way and also how to speak some of the Tuvan language. We listened to a duet with Kongar ol-Ondar titled "Sunexin Yry (Soul's Song)."

In searching for a way to incorporate the blues I have taken my own unique Inkxpotter path. Of course it didn't start out so obvious but after a few unsuccessful attempts at using samples of blues artists I decided to take another route entirely. So for this weeks Inkxpotter mix we have a scientist talking about "Blue Moons", it's got blue in it so I figured that was close enough. Along with some samples recorded at the piano we have this weeks Inkxpotter mix. "Blue Moon." An Inkxpotter exclusive!

Going even farther out in the realm of what is the blues we listened to "The Natural Bridge," by the No-Neck Blues Band. (This is an odd link but somehow I think it is related to the band, see for yourself.) The No-Neck Blues Band are.a loose collective of New York and Boston improvisers that was first assembled in 1992 by, among others, multi-instrumentalist Keith Connelly and percussionist Dave Nuss. Their recordings are mainly devoted to long chaotic instrumental jams. Their basic method is the free-form psychedelic freak-out, enhanced with ritual percussive passages and spastic discordance. My kind of band!

Listen Ability Rating: I've been up to a bit of remixing lately as this podcast will show. Nice sounds, aggressive sounds, strange sounds, and Bob sounds.

Beginning the show I've mixed together John Zorn, French electronica group aMute and Bob Dylan from way deep in a reverb canyon. This flows for a while until the Art Bears snap us out of it with "Democracy" from The World as it is Today..

For the weekly Inkxpotter Mix (the real mix!) I've taken the words of a fellow Podcaster from South Dakota named Bob. His site is called The Podcast Reviewer. He did a review of Strange Music in Small Doses last week and I wasted no time in cutting and pasting his words into a tasty morsel entitled "Bob, from South Dakota." Have a listen and hear what he has to say about your favorite podcast :) Inkxpotter exclusive!

Lastly we listen to Soul Coughing from Ruby Vroom and the cut was "Supra Genius". This cut from the !995 Cd is a winner. Soul Coughing  was a New york-based band whose music blended elements of hip-hop, jazz, and rock. Their style of music was described by members of the band as "deep slacker jazz."