Prepping tonight’s show — tune in to KRTS from 9-11p tonight, August 5 — and came up on these Sunday morning videos over at Root Blog:
An excerpt of Jordan Belson‘s Bardo
And William Sabiston‘s flickering color field to go along with ID Music fave Pete Swanson’s “Stuff It,” from I Don’t Rock At All.
The ID Music team on a field expedition in search of new underwater jams.
(via OfNational Geographic)
Tune in to KRTS on Sunday, July 1 from 9-11p (CST) to see what we found on our recent trip to the wilds of Southern California. If you’re out here with us in the Big Bend of Far West Texas, point your radio dial to 93.5FM. Everybody else can zone-out via computer at www.marfapublicradio.org.
Oh isn’t this lovely.
Researching new music, gearing up for ID Music’s monthly transmission, coming up next Sunday, May 6 on Marfa Public Radio. Here are some righteous tunes we’ve unearthed in our survey, from rare Sunburned Hand of the Man side-projects to mixes of the New-Agey hip-hop beats that we touch on from time to time.
• Our friends Sun Araw and M. Geddes Gengras made a record with the Congos (yep, those Congos) down in Jamaica last year, and it’s finally out. Icon Give Thank is Nyabinghi drone gospel perfect for the next Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church picnic. The making-of documentary is up at the top there, and you can stream the tunes over at RVNG INTL.
• Cameron’s Sun Ark label also has a lovely reissued cassette from Houston synth guru JD Emmanuel, and more jingle-jangle drones from High Wolf. Still available (cheap!) in the Sun Ark Shop.
• Two fresh “cloud rap” mixes surfaced this week, the first a 25 minute “Evolution of” mix from ID Music mainstay Clams Casino for BBC Radio 1. Starts out with his immediately recognizable hazy purple ambience for A$AP Rocky, then goes into more unfamiliar territory. The trainspotters are decoding a tracklist that already includes Actress over at Self-Titled, where you can also either stream or download the mix.
The second is a 75-minute Ryan Hemsworth mix of what the heads at Fool’s Gold are calling “spacy trap gems,” including washed-out remixes of of Main Attrakionz, Clams Casino and Araabmuzik. Listen or download at Soundcloud. [via Fool's Gold]
• Must-read obscuro music blog Mutant Sounds posted a delight for those of us eager for new music from your favorite crust punk’s favorite jam band, Sunburned Head of the Man. It’s a 1990 side project called Balls from future Sunburned player Phil Franklin, plus someone from Gamelan Son Of Lion and a guy who would go on to be in … uh … The Presidents of the United Sates of America (?!). Three bass players and a drummer work through hypnotic rhythms that wouldn’t sound out of place on classic Sunburned albums like Jaybird or Headdress. Give it a listen at Mutant Sounds.
• The new Black Dice album, Mr. Impossible, is as good as everyone’s saying, more music in the same vein as Sunburned and Boredoms’ resinous noise vibrations. Up there with Beaches & Canyons and Creature Comforts. Our favorite song, “Outer Body Drifter,” is accurately described by Pfork as sounding “like a couple of fun-loving dudes trying to get a party started, but their voices have been ripped from their throats and packed together into a single gooey, wholly unintelligible ball.” Yep. Listen at Soundcloud.
• Likewise, the new Actress album, R.I.P., lives up to the hype. Less suffocated techno. More shiny fractal ambience. “Shadow from Tartarus” sounds like ice tinkling off the conning tower of Porter Ricks‘ submarine after surfacing in the sparkling glare of Arctic sunlight. Preview at Honest John’s.
• We’ve also been perusing the archives at our favorite blog for ragas — Raga Blog, natch – where we came up on these golden sitar zones from one of our favorites, Nikhil Banerjee. Perfect music when we’re hiding from the burning afternoon sun, or watching meteor showers on the back porch. Ahh. Calming down. Listen to The KPFA Tapes – Berkeley 1967 at Raga Blog.
This is material shot by Dr. Hans Jenny.
Please just enjoy. It is all for you.
Sorry for the long absence: Hollander and I will be coming back a little more frequently here on the ID Music website if all goes according to plan. To start off with, here’s my setlist from this weekend’s sublime Tonalism happening out at El Cosmico.
Super stoked that everybody was feeling the Dead bootleg. Favorite moment came when OG Houston Synth Guru JD Emmanuel comes up during the opening guitars of “Scarlet Fire” and he’s like, “Phish or Umphrey’s McGee?” Dude is so down. It was an absolute lifetime DJ highlight to provide the bridge between Sun Araw’s undulating free-form meditation soundtrack and JD’s epic healing synth session. Here’s what I played.
Scarlet Begonias > Fire on the Mountain – Grateful Dead – 05.08.77 Barton Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca NY / The Illness – Sunburned Hand of the Man – Headdress / Vent B5 – Thoughts on Air – Vent / Dub Disorder – Jah Division – Dub Will Tear Us Apart / St. Elmo’s Fire – Uilab – Fires / Iron Man – Four Tet – Everything Comes and Goes / Cortez the Killer – Stag Hare – A Fundamental Experiment / Take it Easy – The Meditations – Wackies Sampler
ID Music co-host art show at Marfa Book Co.
More at Into the Green.
Artist-endorsed fan video for “Zombies (Day)” the first sampling from Rangers self-titled double LP, forthcoming from Not Not Fun later this summer (via Brunch Blog).
Blissed-out Kraut/New Age guitar-on-synth meditation grooves from 1979, courtesy of the always reliable Root Strata blog. Get it here.
