Mooooooosic.

found this the other day heh.

This week the show features both appropriate and inappropriate songs that could be played at a funeral as well as some odds and ends I “dug up” on the internet. Heh. Something for everyone!

Tracklist:

[funeral skit]

Sound of Silence - Simon & Garfunkel
Monkey Gone to Heaven - Pixies

[Scrubs - Funeral Sex]

The Last Hour - Elliott Smith
Dont Stop Me Now - Queen

[Graham Chapman eulogy by John Cleese and Eric Idle]

I’m Only Sleeping - Beatles
Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead - Wizard of Oz
Closure - Opeth
End of the Line - Nina Simone
Somewhere (There’s A Place For Us) - Tom Waits
How To Disappear Completely - Radiohead
Out Of this World - Loudon Wainwright III

[funeral home news story]

I Did It My Way - The Sex Pistols
One Step Beyond - Madness

[Whose Line Is It Anyway - Funeral Song]

Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons - The Pixies (*my own personal funeral song)
Kickstart My Heart - Motley Crue

I remember seeing one of those rock video programmes on TV a few years ago and for some reason every single video featured animals in one guise or another. I don’t know if there was a causal relationship but every single song they played was utterly awesome. So this week we’re making animal noises and listening to songs with animals in their titles.

This one’s for the lolcats.

Tracklist:

Kookaburra - John Vanderslice
The Albatross - Sarah Blasko
Fire Snakes - Laura Veirs
Great Apes - Tex Perkins and the Dark Horses
Portions For Foxes - Rilo Kiley
The Monkey’s Back - Machine Translations
Sensing Owls - Jose Gonzalez
Sleeping Bear, Sault Saint Marie - Sufjan Stevens
Flightless Bird, American Mouth - Iron and Wine
Hey Rabbit - Fionn Regan
Snakes In The Grass - The Essex Green
Foxes Mate For Life - Born Ruffians
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi - Radiohead
Lioness - Songs:Ohia

Yes it’s Valentine’s Day. Yes I’m completely lacking in imagination. I considered going the cynic’s route but to he honest my heart wasn’t in it (irony?). So I’ve picked some of my favourite gooey songs and cut in some bits from “Chasing Love” by Miguel Macias.

You can download the original documentary here. I can think of worse/less constructive ways to spend 3 years of your life than making something so incredibly interesting and indeed beautiful in its own right.

Chasing Love started as a meticulous look at the arrival and evolution of the idea of Romantic Love in Western society. But since the very beginning, I felt very attracted by the vague connection that Octavio Paz establishes between capitalism and Romantic Love.

Traveling through psychology, anthropology, biology, linguistics, history and philosophy, the content of this project changed over the time, grew and shrank until, one day, I made the last connection, the one I needed to put together the more than 80 hours of interviews collected with experts and ordinary, wonderful people.

Tracklist:

An Unashamed Passion - Carter Burwell (’Adaptation’ Soundtrack)
I Feel It All - Feist
Song For Batya - Eef Barzelay
Staring Down the Sun - Josh Pyke
Try Whistling This - Neil Finn
All of Me - Angus and Julia Stone
Babylon - Angus and Julia Stone
Between the Bars - Elliott Smith
Song of Our So-Called Friend - Okkervil River
Falling Aeroplanes - Darren Hanlon
The Crane Wife 1 - The Decemberists
No More - Julie Doiron
Reasons to Lie - Whiskeytown
I’d Rather Be Lonely - Loudon Wainwright III

Here is my first foray into the realms of podcasting recorded for the Queen’s Radio show ‘Out There’ Thursday mornings from 12-1am.

This week’s show features some first hand accounts of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima with a soundtrack of contemporary Japanese ambient music.

Tracklist:

Impression - Michiru Oshima (”Ico” - Game Soundtrack)
Lurid Sky and Tama Stream - Ametsub (Linear Cryptics)
I love You - Tujiko Noriko (Batofar Cherche Tokyo)
Mad - Joe Hisaishi (”Dolls” - Soundtrack)
Prisonic Fairytale - Akira Yamaoka (”Silent Hill 2″ - Game Soundtrack)
Zatoichi Showdown - Keiichi Suzuki (”Zatoichi” - Soundtrack)
Wind of Falling into Ruin - Kuniaki Haishima (”Macross Zero” - Soundtrack)
Earth Beats (ambient mix) - Kuniyuki (We Are Together)
Inner-Space Dub - Radiq aka Yoshihiro Hanno (Ballads For The Atomic Age)
(Japanese Signs) - Sawako (Fishwish)
Chasm - Ryuichi Sakamoto (Chasm)
Rama (Cornelius Remix) - Takagi Masakatsu (Sail)
26th Floor - Aoki Takamasa and Tujiko Noriko (28)
Azukiro No Kaori - Susumu Yokota (Sakura)
With the Sea - Piana (Eternal Castle)
Wandering Flame - Masashi Hamauzu (”Final Fantasy X” - Game Soundtrack)

Poem  - “War is Kind” by Stephen Crane read by Alan Davis Drake for librivox.org

Published in 1899, just a year before his death, War Is Kind by Stephen Crane evokes again the dark imagery of war which made his fortune in The Red Badge Of Courage. Unlike that book, this collection leaves the battlefield itself behind to explore the damage war does to people’s hearts and minds. Reeking of dashed hopes, simultaneously sympathetic with the victims of war and cynical about the purposes of war, Crane implicitly criticizes the image of the romantic hero and asks if Love can survive.

The poetic voice is one of an old and wearied soul, stark and disillusioned, which is all the more intriguing since Crane was dead before he reached his 30th birthday. His work calls to mind the Beat Poets of the mid 20th century in its powerful use of language and bleak idiomatic landscape. It is poetry on the cusp of the fin de siècle; echoing the passing age and presaging the newborn century.

Comments of any kind are appreciated! Cheers!

Now I know how Ann Frank felt … or rather how she would feel if she were genetically crossed with Tom the Cabin Boy.

I’m considering building an observatory on the roof. I have an attic bedroom so all I need to do is build a small platform below where my window opens up. I’m imagining a tiny wooden dome, or maybe an octagon, with a beautiful antique brass telescope. I could spend my quiet nights stargazing and considering the big questions.

Are we alone?

Aren’t we alone anyway?

Is the yappy little dog over the back fence alone?

Spending the night cultivating a little patch of spiritual serenity and slowly becoming one with the universe sounds a lot better than sealing myself up in a cave like some half-crazed Buddhist monk with a thirst for intellectual inquiry within the rigid structures of academia.

I’d have to do something about the cold of course. A big warm overcoat and an old dog who would sit at my feet and stare at me calmly as I shared my latest thoughts on this or that … maybe a little stove with a copper kettle of tea constantly on the heat. Once in a while I could entertain visitors who could sit on a small padded stool built for such a purpose. Rather than sorting out the world’s problems we could just sit and talk about the simple things, appreciate the simple things. Add some peace to the world just by existing and feeling content.

Peace out. Metaphorically and literally.

is to never hear this again.

Something I made by jamming some loony samples from the Apollo moon missions through a whole bunch of loony filters in Renoise.

This is a long piece I made a few years back. Ooh soundscapey!