Underworld's 20th Anniversary LP and a State of Cultural Curation
 

Below is an article I published to my music journal on this day last year.

Today it finally arrived! The 5-disc Super Deluxe 20th Anniversary Edition of Underworld's incredible album, Dubnobasswithmyheadman.

Underworld is perhaps where I go off the deep end from fan to fringe fanatic. The first album I ever heard which wasn't commercial pop radio - this record changed my life forever. The album packaging also marked the definitive moment when I knew I had to become a graphic designer.

To date I now have 394 of their albums and EPs in my digital library and nearly every LP, single, book, poster and print they've issued since 1979.

It's collections like this that make me cautious - While I don't buy these titles blindly, I feel somewhat of a sense of responsibility to have them all - perhaps as a part of what critic Simon Reynolds called the growing "curatorial culture" of music fans.

The snapshot below comprises the majority of the releases linked directly to Dubnobass in 1994. But emotionally it feels like I'm archiving my own life story at the crossroads where my preconceived notions of Music were shattered.


I'm really at a thoughtful point in my self-appointed archival career. I'm reading a number of books that examine the nature of post-millennium economy of music sales. Most address the same fundamental points -

- The ease of distribution of digital files and their compact size has stripped music of its commercial value and rendered the majority of physical media useless, making music more of a utility than a property. Most casual listeners are satisfied to sacrifice fidelity and dynamic range for the convenience of carrying thousand of albums with them while they shop, eat, and work, or to give up possession of their libraries entire in exchange for cloud-based music services.


- Simultaneously, the inevitable gluttony of music acquisition which takes place in the digital age further diminishes the value of commercial music.

- However, vinyl sales continue to increase year after year while all other media sales plummet as music consumers discover the merit of the EXPERIENCE of actively listening and participating in their music instead of consuming it passively while performing other tasks.


- And finally, there is an ever-growing culture of music curators who collect physical artifacts of any number of periods, artists, styles, and formats in an effort to reaffirm the value of their music. Another benefit of the digital age is that the Web grants these "curators" access to the furthest reaches of obscure and limited-pressing musics from cultures near and far and from (most) any period in history.

I've found myself spending more time and energy (and money) than I ever have before building my library of "artifacts," in part to document my own personal story via music and also out of a sense of duty to build a library of Music that Matters, so that I can share it with the world and open the minds of listeners yearning for strange and wonderful sounds.

What about you? Are you a cultural curator? Are we wasting our time and our money with these antiquated and out-dated treasures or does our very act of collecting them somehow justify their value?

Attention K-Mart Shoppers
 

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This installment of Innerspace features a special look at a unique pick from The Internet Archive. Mark Davis, former K-Mart employee and dedicated crap-audio archivist rescued a stockpile of K-Mart muzak cassettes which were broadcast over the store's PA system throughout the 80s and 90s. Davis wrote an excellent summary of the library on the collection page titled, Attention K-Mart Shoppers:

OK, I have to admit this this is a strange collection. In the late 1980's and early 1990's, I worked for Kmart behind the service desk and the store played specific pre-recorded cassettes issued by corporate. This was background music, or perhaps you could call it elevator music. Anyways, I saved these tapes from the trash during this period and this video shows you my extensive, odd collection.
Until around 1992, the cassettes were rotated monthly. Then, they were replaced weekly. Finally sometime around 1993, satellite programming was intoduced which eliminated the need for these tapes altogether.

The older tapes contain canned elevator music with instrumental renditions of songs. Then, the songs became completely mainstream around 1991. All of them have advertisements every few songs.

The monthly tapes are very, very, worn and rippled. That's becuase they ran for 14 hours a day, 7 days a week on auto-reverse. If you do the math assuming that each tape is 30 minutes per side, that's over 800 passes over a tape head each month.

Finally, one tape in the collection was from the Kmart 30th anniversary celebration on 3/1/92. This was a special day at the store where employees spent all night setting up for special promotions and extra excitement. It was a real fun day, the store was packed wall to wall, and I recall that the stores were asked to play the music at a much higher volume. The tape contains oldies and all sorts of fun facts from 1962. This may have been one of the last days where Kmart was in their heyday - really!

One last thing for you techies, the stores built in the early 1970's (such as Naperville, IL Ogden Mall Kmart #3066, Harwood Heights, IL #3503 and Bridgeview, IL #4381) orignally had Altec-Lansing amplifiers with high quality speakers throughout the store. When you applied a higher quality sounding source, the audio was extremely good. Later stores had cheaper speakers and eventually the amps were switched out with different ones usually lacking bass and treble controls.

Disaffected millennials raised in the age of irony and cynicism will love these plastic corporate recordings. If you've any vaporwave music in your library, this is the archive for you.

Tune in and don't miss the blue light special.

A Guided Tour of The Manor!
 

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Today is a wonderful milestone! Forgive the slight detour from the usual musical content but I've just finished unpacking in this, my first home. It is a charming house of antiquity built in 1926 and I've worked hard to make every square foot reflect my own style.

Click here for a guided tour!

Space Exploration: A Lost Ambient Milestone
 

What will follow in the days ahead will be a trilogy of entries showcasing rare and unreleased (or privately-circulated) material celebrating the catalog of The KLF. Wherever possible I will include the recordings for readers and fellow Discordians to savor for their own. Let’s dive right in...

Space Exploration: A Lost Ambient Milestone
(orig. pub. 2014/05/04)

I cannot express the level of my excitement in finally hearing this special recording. This new disc was to be the ninth in the series of unofficial reworkings of the KLF’s catalog – masterfully engineered and easily one of the finest ambient recordings of the year. Sadly, due to issues beyond the producer’s control, the disc will not be released to the public.

The disc contains a 2014 72-minute epic rework of the original Space LP created 24 years ago, originally as a collaboration between Dr. Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty – the original line-up of The Orb.

For those who aren’t familiar with the outstanding KLF: Recovered & Remastered unofficial releases from my past entries, let me bring you up to speed.

1987. British acid house. Drummond. Cauty. The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu. The Timelords. The JAMs. One World Orchestra. 2K. The Stadium House Trilogy. Doctorin’ the Tardis. Anarchism. The White Room. The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Top of the Pops. America: What Time is Love? The Manual. A lost road movie. The K Foundation. Extreme Noise Terror. Why Sheep? Waiting. The Rites of Mu. Chill Out. The birth of Ambient House. Burning a million quid on the Isle of Jura. Abandon all art now. And Space.

There. That about sums it up.

20 years into the silence that followed the K Foundation’s exit from celebrity a man surfaced who set himself to the task of recovering and remastering the KLF’s catalog to fill the void left in Cauty and Drummond’s absence.

The first six releases, catalog #KLF 001 RE – KLF 006 RE were brilliant, and the sixth release, Live From The Lost Continent 2012 presented listeners with a 77-minute stadium-packed concert that never was.

Following this triumph, two more released emerged – KLF MINUS-ONE and KLF MINUS-FOUR, each better than the EP before.

But our hero had one last stupendous project up his sleeve. And in April of 2014, it was complete.

A message from its creator revealed that MINUS-SIX was to be:

“…a 72 minute remodel of the classic SPACE release, sounding like a cross between ‘Silence’ (from Pete Namlook’s legendary Fax +49-69/450464 label), SPACE, and classic ambient drone releases. It’s almost like Trainspotting for KLF fans.”

Listen to the original Space LP (1990) here.



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The final piece is a monumental achievement – a new Music for Airports, or perhaps a new Selected Ambient Works Vol II. It effectively unites sparse white-noise drones with all of the familiar elements of the original Space record which made it so memorable. It is brilliantly subtle, while simultaneously making the sounds of simulated space flight an exciting and dramatic experience.

Then came the crushing news – the MINUS SIX project had suddenly been halted, and there were to be no more releases in the series.

I make no exaggeration when I state that, with this loss, the ambient music audience is experiencing its own Nick Drake, or more accurately – its own SugarMan.

https://i.imgur.com/LedMdho.jpg

At least this dude got his own movie.

Worse yet – because Rodriguez had a nation celebrating his work for generations an ocean away from his quiet daily life, and at least Nick Drake experienced posthumous success – becoming a household name in the years which followed his untimely demise.

But production of MINUS-6 has been cancelled. Quite sadly, the millennium’s ambient and drone audience and the millions of listeners who grew up with the KLF may never hear this record.

Its legend is shrouded in mystery. Will KLF fans ever know the engineer’s name? Why the sudden cease just before unveiling his holy grail?

But perhaps it is the legend and the mystery that adds a touch of vitality to the series.
And I still have hope. The K Foundation announced a 23-year moratorium on all projects beginning November 1995. Perhaps, in honor of the 2018 reformation of the KLF, our mysterious friend will emerge.

My sincerest hope is that the man behind these nine fantastic EPs one day receives the recognition (and listenership) that he deserves.

If you’re out there – Bring the beat back.

https://i.imgur.com/oGHAkYF.jpg

Tune in to The KLF: Recovered & Remastered ‎– KLF MINUS-SIX - This Is Not What Space Is About in full.



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Principia Discordia: Contextual Insight into the Chaos of The KLF
 

Principia Discordia: Contextual Insight into the Chaos of The KLF
(orig. pub. 2013/12/17)

There is no better analysis of the mayhem and madness of the band than John Higgs’ book – THE KLF: Chaos, Magic, and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds.

To quote DJ Food, who himself blogged about the book upon its publication:

“If there’s one event that the book centers on it’s the burning of a million pounds and from there [Higgs] draws clear lines to Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea, Alan Moore, Ken Campbell, the number 23, Dr Who, magical thinking, The Dadaists, the Devil, Discordianism, the assassination of Kennedy, Wicker Men and the banking crisis of the late 20th Century.”

This is definitely not your average KLF biography.

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I received my copy just days after publication so I was happy to create an entry for the title on Goodreads and to provide its first review.

I’m 3/4 through this brilliant book and with each new chapter I am amazed how much this humble little paperback reveals about global events and cultural responses of the 20th century.

For example, Chapter 12: Undercurrents examines the quiet death of 20th century culture – the forgettable early-to-mid 90s.

The chapter summarizes the beginnings and endings of cultural climates, citing key events beginning with Darwinism’s impact on the pillar of faith in the late nineteenth century to The Great War, the conflict of the 40s, the conformity of the 50s, the liberation of the 60s, the hedonistic self-indulgence of the 70s, and the shift toward material wealth in the 1980s.

All of this lead to the 90s – the point where culture simply burned out. “They were out of ideas.” Slacker became the iconic low-culture film of 1991. Nihilism peaked in 1994 with Kurt Cobain’s suicide, the KLF’s burning of a million pounds, and the death of Bill Hicks.

And with these events, Higgs declares, “this was the point when the constant creation of new musical genres that had characterized the 20th century came to an end.”

Higgs refers to 1991-94 as the “Age of Extremes,” bracketed by the end of the Cold War and by the birth of first popular web browser.

The chapter also touches upon Surrealism, Situationism, Anti-capitalism, Communism, Fascism, Dadaism, The Cabaret Voltaire, Generation X, Tony Blair, George W Bush, The Spice Girls, and how all of these lead us to the new millennium.

Other chapters are equally rich in content. Chapter 4: Magic and Moore, (specifically pp 80 – 89) examine the nature of consciousness, Carl Jung, Alan Moore’s concept of “Ideaspace,” and reality itself.

A thoroughly exciting book, I had to put it down mid-chapter just to collect my thoughts.

One thing is for certain – Higgs’ book will give you more insight into the mysterious entity that is the K-Foundation than you could ever have asked for.

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A screen print design I made in tribute to the K Foundation

The Dawn Coming Up: Rare Treasures and Tributes to The KLF
 

The Dawn Coming Up: Rare Treasures and Tributes to The KLF
(orig. pub. 2013/08/20)

I’ve loved the first two LPs by minimal drone artist, Black Swan since their release in 2010 and ’11. Black Swan composes what are perhaps the finest modern classical works I’ve ever heard. Quite sadly, the Wikipedia, allmusic, rateyourmusic, and discogs offer absolutely no information about the artist. And the Black Swan official homepage presents little more than snapshots of their minimal but breathtaking album covers.

Fortunately, a user review from Discogs sums it up nicely:

The anonymity of this New York-based artist has an effect on the listening experience. The music is given the right to exist on its own, as if it had always existed. It stakes its claim in the mind, making the listener a collaborator in a seductive narrative-noire that travels through a hall of horrors and memories, an escort to a final resting place. One might encounter spirit animals, forgotten lovers, faceless apparitions, leviathan rifts, or a cozy blanket of stars. It is easy to become comfortable in the soothing darkness, and when it seems like eternity has arrived, Black Swan pulls the plug.

And so I was absolutely floored when the artist posted a first-ever listen to a pre-Black Swan double album he produced back in 2001. The previously-unreleased album is called Alone Again With the Dawn Coming Up: A Tribute to the KLF.

It took a moment for the sheer awesomeness to fire across my synapses.
BLACK SWAN… POSTED A 12-YEAR OLD TRIBUTE RECORD… TO THE KLF. In its entirety. For free. Complete with album art (a la Chill Out.)

Once you’ve scooped your cerebral matter off the back wall of your room, head over to swanplague.com and download it NOW before it disappears.

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Thankfully, I’ve had the good fortune of meeting the mysterious artists in my travels since discovering the mix, and the moment Black Swan decides to release this gem on vinyl, I will be the first in line to claim a copy for my library.

It’s that good.

And as a final highlight of rare KLF material, no amount of praise will do justice to privately released KLF 006 RE (Live From the Lost Continent). Expertly mixed with cheering crowds and all of the KLF’s fire and energy, this mix transports you to the concert that never was. Some rabid fans have convinced themselves this was an actual show… and that they were there.

So turn off all the lights. Put on you finest circumaural studio monitors. And turn it up to eleven.

“This is what the KLF is about.”

Cheers to Mr. Ward for your magnificent work keeping the KLF alive into the new millennium.

Tune in to the entire Live From the Lost Continent Mix below.



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St Germain is BACK with a refreshingly creative project!
 

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Ludovic Navarre, aka St Germain's first album in 15 years is an exciting interweaving of downtempo electronic and deep house, jazz, folk, African, world, & country music.

St Germain is perhaps best-known for his downtempo singles, "So Flute" and "Rose Rouge" from 2000. I confess, when I read that the artist was releasing his first album in over a decade I was skeptical whether or not his best years were behind him. Thankfully, Navarre quickly dispelled my doubts as soon as I tuned in to the opening track.

Here are "So Flute..."



...and "Rose Rouge."




For the album's promotion, St Germain commissioned Urban Art creator Gregos, known for his smiling and frowning faces stuck on walls throughout Paris and Europe, to create a series of masks painted with the flags of the nations of the world. Navarre then traveled the globe covertly installing the masks in public spaces. His website features a map with mask markers indicating in which countries they have been found. Sending his listeners on a global treasure hunt, those who find the mask for their country receive the double LP for free.

Artists take note - This brilliant, heady music and the creator's unique promotional project are precisely the stuff that will make an album successful in the digital age.

Check out video for the first single which includes footage of the mask installations below.



UPDATE: Delighted to find that my local indie record shop had a copy in stock!

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RETROMANIA: Pop Culture's Addition to Its Own Past (a Review)
 

RETROMANIA: Pop Culture's Addition to Its Own Past (a Review)
Orig. Pub. 10-23-14

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Music critic Simon Reynolds is perhaps best-known for his coining of the term, "post-rock." He is also regarded for his incorporation of critical theory in his analysis of music. His 2011 book, Retromania was my first encounter with his writing.

Retromania turned out to be much more than a critical examination of popular culture’s fascination with its past. It was a revealing study of my own approach to culture, trends, styles, and music. And I’m certain that I wasn’t alone in this discovery. Like most readers who made the personal decision to read 500 pages of cultural analysis by a music critic, it demonstrates the emerging and growing demographic of cultural curators.

The new century is rich with metadata and globally-accessible archives of content from all cultures and eras. Youtube alone adds 100 hours of new video content every minute, and the emergence of music streaming services have only further-accelerated the accessibility of media, old and new alike. This raises perhaps one of the biggest questions of our era: can culture survive in conditions of limitlessness?

Chapter 4: The Rise of the Rock Curator was the first glimpse into my own rationale as a cultural custodian. It begins with the New Musical Express’ weekly column in the early 1980s - ”Portrait of the Artist as a Consumer.” Several rock groups of the decade presented their music with a kind of invisible reading-and-movie-watching list attached, conveyed through literary references within their lyrics of images depicted on their album jackets. (Sgt. Peppers is perhaps the best-known example of this execution.)

Reynolds writes that “being a Throbbing Gristle or Coil fan was like enrolling in a university course of cultural extremism, the music virtually coming with footnotes and a ‘Further Reading’ section attached.”

As the decade progressed, this curatorial baton was passed from the artists to their fan-base, who began, (whether consciously or unconsciously) to compile not just their favorite artist’s records, but the films, novels, and art which inspired their recordings.

The book goes on to explore the nature of collector-culture in the digital age and touches upon both the decisively retro action of record collecting and the inherent merits and dysfunctions associated with the activity, as well as the hoarding habits of media collection with respect to digital music.

But it was in a chapter on the 60s’ embrace of revivalism that I found the greatest revelation regarding my own bizarre fascination with music, art, and culture of the past. Reynolds writes -

Retromania is a thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening read. In a simple skimming of the book's index, I found what was effectively a list of the contents of my own studio. The book examines:

Project Pin Drop: Silence in the Lab
 

Upon moving Innerspace Labs into the office in the home I purchased, it was instantly apparent that something needed to be done. The larger open space and hardwood flooring acted as a resonating chamber for my already thunderously loud server. The resulting noise dominated the room, inhibiting my enjoyment of the sparse, ambient soundscapes I often play as an sonic wallpaper while I work.

Submitted for your amusement, here is an actual recording of my server churning away at idle with accompanying footage of a military subject in a wind tunnel.



I considered multiple potential solutions. Dampening pads for the tower would only muffle the noise. Liquid cooling is not my forte. And replacing the power supply, heat sinks, and case fans was a mess I didn't want to get into.

And then came the epiphany. I consulted a few wise colleagues regarding hardware specs and invested in a certified refurbished last-gen HP thin client. Fitted with an inexpensive wireless adapter, the troublesome tower was tucked away in a spare overhead cupboard well out of earshot of my office. (Don't worry, I'll work out ventilation in the days ahead). The thin client, free of moving parts, operates in absolute silence - a drastic departure from the sonic assault that was my server.

Here's a look at my desktop - no tower to be seen (or heard!)

http://i.imgur.com/uMAsdtp.jpg?1

And here, stealth-ly tucked behind Beethoven is the client.

http://i.imgur.com/FFGspTz.jpg?1

The server now occupies this overhead cupboard, where it actually drowns out the sound of the massive appliance below it.

http://i.imgur.com/Is3vmLy.jpg?1

I'm proud to declare Project Pin Drop an absolute success!

On Readership
 

I received a pleasant notification this AM. I am now among Quora's Top 10 Most Viewed Writers in the following topics:

- Digital Music
- Song Identification
- Free Lossless Audio Codec

with nearly 800 views in 5 days.

I'm also maintaining 10,000 - 20,000 annual views on my music blog. It feels great to have readers who enjoy my content.

http://i.imgur.com/5U2ta7o.jpg?1

Love the McIntosh tube amp. I worked along side of Ron Fone for a few years back east. He was the president of McIntosh back in their glory days. Very cool guy.

The Merits of Nostalgia and a Cozy Placebo Effect
 

Thanks Chula! Great to see love for the MAC on MB. In January I published a short entry about my last few McIntosh amps. This one's for you!

...

The Merits of Nostalgia and a Cozy Placebo Effect
Originally published 1/12/15

And so it came to pass that my beloved McIntosh C39 pre-amp was not made happy by replacing the volume pot. I'd decided in advance that if that didn't fix it, I would cut my losses and consider, for the first time in my 30+ years, to explore the possibility of a brand new pre-amp/power amp combo.

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My first McIntosh - a MAC 4280. RIP 2013.

I am fully aware of the tried-and-true code of the audiophile - quality vintage gear will generally out-perform and out-last newer contemporaries dollar-for-dollar. But after repeatedly battling oxidation, bad resistors, and a few bad volume pots for the better part of three decades, I was ready to consider something new.

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The Next Generation: My McIntosh C39

My life-long trusted audio adviser and best friend tossed a few suggestions my way, namely the emotiva xsp-1, some newer Rotel models, and the most alluring of his suggestions - the Parasound Halo p3. But for the interim, I had a local hi-fi shop tune up my Yamaha CR-840 - the first real amp I ever had. Years ago channel A stopped working, and oxidation built up rending the amp nearly-unusable, but I'd never given it up, as it was a very special gift. Thankfully the shop returned it to me the next day in PERFECT working condition!

I'd forgotten how great it sounded. Please understand - I know it's not remotely in the same class as some of the finer amps I've used, but the warm and familiar tone of this amp transports me back to college and all the memories attached to those years. I completely acknowledge that this nostalgia trip is in no way a measure of the amp's technical performance. It is of no quantifiable measure an amp comparable to my MACs or, likely, to the Parasound amp. But I will fully-embrace the head-trip it brings and am more than satisfied to use it until the right upgrade comes along.

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Next up - Perhaps the Parasound Halo P3

To make the amp-swap official, I chucked the eyesore of a component rack that I'd picked up from a thrift shop. 30-seconds of Craigslist searching produced a nifty 60s record shelf for only a few bucks to serve as both a surface for the amp and as additional record storage. Better still - the funky elderly couple selling it were ridiculously adorable and had mirrored-and-velvet-patterned wallpaper with matching decor all about their home.

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Not kidding. This... with mirrored panels.

The shelf has a very "college" feel to accompany the amp, and the space was PERFECT to relocate all my LPs pressed between 1995 and the present. All my favorites are in here - DJ Food, Boards of Canada, Lemon Jelly, DJ Shadow, The Orb, Underworld, Stereolab, Spiritualized, The KLF, St Germain, Bonobo, Aphex Twin, Cinematic Orchestra, Sigur Ros, Pantha Du Prince, Low, Beck, The FLips, with just enough room to sneak in nearly all of Brian Eno and Tom Waits' albums.

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The Nostalgia Corner

This is as good a time as any to resolve to listen to more of my records in 2015 - to enjoy what I have instead of always searching for the next grail.

And there you have it - an objective and meticulous audiophile reduced to a nostalgic dolt by his trust old amp. Think what you will, but I'll be happy here, spinning some great tunes.

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Eno & Hyde Postcards from their first two LPs

The November Project: Day 1 - FSOL
 

Yesterday evening I took a hard look at my vinyl library and was alarmed by how many classic LPs I've purchased but never spun. I promptly set myself a resolution to get to know my music better.

I quickly assembled a list of an initial 70 critically-acclaimed records in my catalog which I myself am not well-acquainted. I built a reference Google Sheet of the pressings and catalog numbers and scheduled listening sessions on Google Keep for the next 30 days to check those titles off my list.

November evenings will be spent immersed in music education. What good are records if you don't take time to enjoy them?

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First on my list was a record which never fails to surface on avant garde electronic lists of the 90s - The Future Sounds of London's Lifeforms LP.

The Future Sounds of London is the work of Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans, both of Manchester. Brian Dougan's father was involved with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop which was a heavy influence in the almost music concrete feel to the Lifeforms LP.

Written and produced by Cobain and Dougans, Lifeforms also involved a number of contributors including legends like Robert Fripp, Klaus Schulze, and Elizabeth Fraser as well as sparse sampling from sources like Ozric Tentacles and Cronenberg's Scanners.

The result is an incredibly rewarding listening experience - a cerebral ambient soundscape which never quite settles into 4/4 dance territory. Instead the focus is ever-shifting as elements drift toward and away from the center of the listening space, and each track moves seamlessly into the next.

I'm truly glad I made time to take in this recording in a dedicated listening session, and it warrants repeated play. The critical acclaim is well-deserved - this is a record for the books.

Regarding Tom Waits' Suit Against Adele
 

As you may (or may not) have heard, Tom Waits has filed suit against Adele over the similarities between her song, "Hello" and his song, "Martha" from his debut album, Closing Time from 1973.

Waits' track is a staple song of love lost and the passage of time. It's a stripped-down and vulnerable piece comprising only a sustained piano melody, minimal strings, and Tom's lonely voice professing his hopeful outreach to a physically (and metaphysically) distant soul for which he once felt perhaps a touch of warmth.

Adele's pop track falls horribly flat by comparison. The lyrics are transparent, lacking of heart and authenticity. The synthesized backing track is appropriate in that it, too is devoid of soul or feeling. It's just another pop track with pantomimed lyrics by a dolled-up product of commercial radio.

Adele's contract was a low-point for XL Recordings, who once carried artists of substance and character. Adele is utterly dull as a performer, her music is instantly forgettable, save for the super-saturation of the airwaves with her infantile hooks and ridiculous lyrics (because barking the phrase, "rumor has it" 136 times apparently qualifies as a song).

I was baffled to learn that Adele is still producing music in 2015, and further astounded by her sales accolades in the pop market. But this really only speaks to how miserably low the bar has been set for artistic ability in the world of pop today.

In a decade's time, no one of artistic merit will be discussing Adele. Mr. Waits on the other hand, remains and will remain a critical artist of popular and avant-garde music.

If Adele makes the claim that the songs are incomparable, I'll agree wholeheartedly. But as even embarrassingly-poor mimicry is still grounds for suit, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Here's the original track, "Martha" from a young Tom Waits way back in '73.

Fingers crossed that this will help make Adele irrelevant again.

A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind
 

After being blown away upon first-listen to Future Sound of London's experimental ambient epic, Lifeforms from 1994, I did a bit of digging to find more exciting sounds from the artist. I quickly discovered that the same gents from FSOL also perform under the moniker, Amorphous Androgynous with quite an expansive catalog for the project. But the real shocker was the realization that FSOL was in fact the other half of the brilliant psychedelic EP I'd ordered from DJ Food earlier this year!

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The Amorphous Androgynous

DJ Food & The Amorphous Androgynous collaborated on The Illectrik Hoax EP in 2012 producing a fantastic electro-psych-rock-leftfield mix that really gets inside your skull.

It sounds as good as it looks.

DJ Food & The Amorphous Androgynous - The Illectrik Hoax EP

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I wasted no time in picking up an archive of both FSOL / Amorphous Androgynous' extended discographies as well as a complete archive of their radio broadcasts, live mixes and anthologies, anxious to learn more about the psychedelic side project.

For those who own copies of FSOL's primary albums, there is a treasure trove of other material in the presently-circulating lossless discographic archive and its accompanying radio broadcast collection. The content is organized chronologically into a series of categorical subfolders thusly:

The Future Sound of London Studio Discography
The Future Sound of London - Complete Radio Broadcasts
BBC Radio 1 Essential Mixes
The Collected Electric Brain Storms
The Collected ISDN Live Transmissions
The Collected Kiss FM Transmissions
The Collected Monstrous Psychedelic Broadcasts

The Future Sound of London Studio Discography:
Albums
Anthologies
EPs & Singles

Albums:
(1991) Accelerator
(1994) Lifeforms
(1995) ISDN
(1996) Dead Cities
Environments Series
From the Archives Series

Environments Series:
(2008) Environments
(2008) Environments 2
(2010) Environments 3
(2012) Environments 4

From the Archives Series:
(2007) From the Archives Vol. 1
(2007) From the Archives Vol. 2
(2007) From the Archives Vol. 3
(2007) From the Archives Vol. 4
(2008) From the Archives Vol. 5
(2010) From the Archives Vol. 6
(2012) From the Archives Vol. 7

Anthologies:
(1992) Earthbeat
(2006) Teachings From The Electronic Brain (The Best of FSOL)
(2008) By Any Other Name
(2008) FSOL Digital Mix
(2013) The FSOL Remix Anthology
(2013) The Papua New Guinea Anthology

EPs & Singles
(1993) Cascade
(1994) Expander
(1994) Lifeforms EP
(1994) Promo 500
(1995) Far-Out Son of Lung and the Ramblings of a Madman
(1996) My Kingdom
(1997) We Have Explosive
(2007) A Gigantic Globular Burst of Antistatic
(2008) The Pulse EPs

The Future Sound of London - Complete Radio Broadcasts:
BBC Radio 1 Essential Mixes
The Collected Electric Brain Storms
The Collected ISDN Live Transmissions
The Collected Kiss FM Transmissions
The Collected Monstrous Psychedelic Broadcasts

BBC Radio 1 Essential Mixes:
(1993) BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix 1
(1995) BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix 2

The Collected Electric Brain Storms:
01 Vol. 1 (2008)
02 Vol. 2 (2008)
03 Vol. 3 (2008)
04.1 Vol. 4A (2009)
04.2 Vol. 4B (2009)
0.5 Vol. 0.5 (2006)
05 Vol. 5 (2009)
06.1 Vol. 6A (2010)
06.2 Vol. 6B (2010)
07 Vol. 7 (2011)

The Collected ISDN Live Transmissions:
01 Transmission 1- (1994) ISDN Tour
02 Transmission 2- New York, 11th May 1994
03 Transmission 3- Edinburgh, 28th October, 1996
04 Transmission 4- Netherlands, 9th September 1994
05 Transmission 5- Rome, 16th May 1994
06 Transmission 6- France, 17th May 1997
07 Transmission 7- Manchester, 6th November 1996
08 Transmission 8- Los Angeles, 22nd January 1996
09 Transmission 9- London, 25th March 1997
11 Transmission 11- Berlin, 12th June 1996
14.1 Transmission 14a- Barcelona 1995 - Preshow
14.2 Transmission 14b- Barcelona 1995 - Art Future Festival
16 Transmission 16- France, 1997
[1997] ISDN Show

The Collected Kiss FM Transmissions:
Test Transmission (Pts 1-6)
Test Transmission 2 (Pts 1-6)
Transmission 1 (Pts 1-6)
Transmission 2 (Pts 1-5)
Transmission 3 (Pts 1-2)
Transmission 4 (Pts 1-6)
Transmission 5 (Pts 1-6)
Transmission 6 (Pt 1-6)

The Collected Monstrous Psychedelic Broadcasts:
A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind: 13-Episode 8 Volume Library

01 AMPBEIYM Vol. 1 (Part 1)
02 AMPBEIYM Vol. 1 (Part 2)
03 AMPBEIYM Vol. 2 (Part 1 - Paul Thomas Mix)
04 AMPBEIYM Vol. 2 (Part 2 - Annie Nightingale Mix)
05 AMPBEIYM Vol. 3
06 AMPBEIYM Vol. 4
07 AMPBEIYM Vol. 5
08 AMPBEIYM Vol. 6
09 AMPBEIYM Vol. 7 (Part 1)
10 AMPBEIYM Vol. 7 (Part 2)
11 AMPBEIYM Vol. 7 (Part 3)
12 AMPBEIYM Vol. 7 (Part 4)
13 AMPBEIYM Vol. 8

Similarly, DJ Food has generously made a multitude of his mixes available at djfood.org for your listening pleasure. And NinjaTune has 37 of DJ Food's Solid Steel mixes uncut on their Soundcloud page.

This latest musical discovery has really pushed these two libraries to the front of the line. In the weeks ahead I'll be further-exploring the IDM / trip-hop / dub / psychedelic / and ambient wonders of DJ Food and Amorphous Androgynous. When I emerge from the funky depths, I'll go on to explore FSOL's thirty other aliases -

• Aircut
• Amorphous Androgynous
• Art Science Technology
• Candese
• Deep Field
• Dope Module
• EMS:Piano
• Heads Of Agreement
• Homeboy
• Humanoid
• Indo Tribe
• Intelligent Communication
• Mental Cube
• Metropolis
• Part-Sub-Merged
• Polemical
• Q
• Sand Sound Folly
• Semtex
• Semi Real
• Six Oscillators in Remittance
• Smart Systems
• Suburban Domestic
• T.Rec
• The Far-out Son Of Lung
• The Jazz Mags
• The Orgone Accumulator
• Unit 2449
• Yage
• Yunie
• Zeebox

...I've got some work ahead of me.

Tune in to the title track from The Illectrik Hoax below.



And check out the ambient epic - Lifeforms from 1994.



UPDATE: Before the end of the evening I was able to acquire the remaining stray albums and DJ sets missing from the above catalog. Now I've added:

1993 - Amorphous Androgynous - Tales Of Ephidrina
1994 - Future Sound of London - ISDN (Black Edition)
2005 - Amorphous Androgynous - Alice in Ultraland
2008 - Amorphous Androgynous - The Mello Hippo Disco Show
2008 - Amorphous Androgynous - The Peppermint Tree & The Seeds of Superconsciousness
2013 - Amorphous Androgynous - The Cartel Vol. 1
2013 - Amorphous Androgynous - The Cartel Vol. 2
2014 - Amorphous Androgynous - The Cartel Remixes
2015 - Amorphous Androgynous - A Monstrous Psychededlic Bubble Exploding in Your Mind - The Wizards of Oz (2CD)

The Complete Guide to Music Discovery
 

Originally published 11/22/2014

Over the last eight months I’ve conducted a multi-tiered experiment to develop a complete system of music discovery on the web.

The first stage of the experiment analyzed the top aggregate metadata websites to see which yielded the most productive media recommendations.

The test began with one of the longest-established contenders -

STAGE ONE - LAST.FM

I provided 25,367 scrobbled tracks between March 20th and November 22nd, (an average of 102 tracks per day) to build a viable sample set of my listening preferences.

The case study -

LastFm breaks your recommendations into genre tabs, which is a plus-3 for organization.

The resulting artists, however are far from enlightening. Nearly every result was either an artist already in my play history, or a token “poster-boy” artist for their genre.

For electronica (a terrible term we're still trying to bury,) the top suggested artists were Faithless and Orbital.

For jazz, it suggested Charlie Parker, Eric Dolphy, Lee Morgan, Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor (appealing to the free and avant-garde jazz trends of my listening)

And for modern classical avant-garde, Pierre Schaeffer, Terry Riley, Kronos Quartet, Pierre Boulez, Michael Nyman and Arvo Pärt.

There were no surprises among them, which I suppose is to be expected from a popularity-contest recommendation system. I don't fault LastFm for using this method; it's simply not a resource I would utilize to find anything new.

STAGE TWO - STREAMING SERVICES

Sites evaluated:

RDIO - Rdio

SPOTIFY - https://www.spotify.com

RHAPSODY - Rhapsody - Music Streaming
SOUNDCLOUD - https://soundcloud.com

GROOVESHARK - http://grooveshark.com

8TRACKS - 8tracks internet radio | Free music playlists | Best app for music

After repeatedly giving these sites a try over this past year, I've been disappointed every time by the lack of user control, the low bitrate of their streams, the advertisements, and most of all the universally abysmal selection of available tracks. The fundamental flaw with these services is that if the rightsholder(s) of any particular record haven’t worked out a deal with these services, you won’t likely find their content any time soon.

And furthermore, there's an excellent editorial from this user who gave up on Spotify after 400 days of compounding problems.

STAGE THREE - MUSIC BLOGS

A few years ago, I subscribed to a handful of absolutely exceptional music blogs. But one after another, these sites were taken off the web for claims of copyright violation. Most were sharing massively obscure content not available for purchase anywhere on the web, but by the end of the last year all of my favorite blogs had been taken down.

Still, new blogs are born every day, and sites like Hypemachine and NPR track the most active and best-ranked blogs at the links below.

Hypemachine's searchable index of 800 blogs - Index of Music Blogs / Hype Machine

NPR's most-recommended blogs - NPR Music: New Music, Music Reviews and Music News : NPR

And the ever-popular GORILLA VS. BEAR

But if you're more interested in a daily, up-to-the-minute feed of new and interesting tracks, perhaps this guide is more your style.

STAGE FOUR - A GUIDE TO GENRE SUBREDDITS

This list organizes the most active and most popular subreddits for every genre you can think of. It also includes composite lists grouping related subreddits together into a single stream.

One of the better subs is r/vintageobscura which has strict policies for its users -

- Under 30K Views on Youtube video and related videos by the same artist.

- Under 50K listeners on Last.fm.

- Recording dates ranging between 1930 and 1980

They're looking for space age bachelor pad music, early electronic, proto-punk, library music, jazz, chamber pop, exotica, krautrock, ambient, and space rock - all of my favorite things.

Vintage Obscura also has a web radio station on radd.it - radd.it!

STAGE FIVE - RATEYOURMUSIC

But if you want simple, hands-down, best-of-the-year/decade/genre/artist/etc lists - rateyourmusic.com is the answer.

The rateyourmusic site is an online collaborative metadata database cataloging 1,026,663 artists, 3,065,684 releases, and 37,955,810 user-contributed ratings as of April 2015.

Search their index here - http://rateyourmusic.com/lists

(Or browse by category at the right of your screen at the link above)

Custom user-defined charts - http://rateyourmusic.com/customchart

Or start from scratch here - http://rateyourmusic.com/find/

And The GNOD Engine

Or if you prefer a down-and-dirty text-based artist cloud, mapping related artists by proximity, check out Music-Map - The Tourist Map of Music.

They also have a recommendation engine called Gnoosic - Discover new Music.

These just scratch the surface, but will introduce you to more music than you could hear in several lifetimes.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
PUTTING ALL THIS DATA TO WORK

From pp35-46 of
The Innerspace Library Reboot Manual
2014 Ed. v2.75

All right, so you've found a new microgenre or an artist you really dig. What do you do with all this data?

Here is the official Innerspace Guide.

1. Discover something which would be of value to the archive.

2. Research the history of genre, historical/social context, etc.

3. Read the Wikipedia entry for the genre and log all relevant artists.

4. Read related literature (e.g. Mark Pendergast's The Ambient Century in the case of ambient music, The Penguin Guide to Jazz, all related manifestos, the Rough Guides series, biographical texts, etc.)

5. Check for essentials Collages of the genre on the world’s largest private tracker. Download all as reference material.

6. Generate a Custom Chart at rateyourmusic.com with the following parameters:

TOP + ALBUMS + ALL-TIME + ONLY INCLUDE GENRES: + [GENRE] + SUB-GENRES + AS RATED BY RYM USERS

7. Log the top 20 entries / albums with a score of 3.5 or higher.

8. Cross-reference Collages, Wiki recommendations, literature highlights, and RYM Top 20 to find recordings named in 3 or more sources. These are the albums you should pursue first.

9. Obtain all box sets and compilations related to genre.

10. If there is a label directly associated with the genre, pick up a complete label archive (such as Ninja Tune, Warp, Ohr, Nonesuch, Deutsche Grammophon Avant Garde, Command, Chess, Philips Prospective 21e siecle, FAX +49-69450464, et al.

11. Pick up all albums, EPs and singles from the artists within the top 20 release map.

12. Structure %album% tags and folders chronologically by date of release: "[%year%] %album%" and uniformly tag the %genre% value to populate as a chronological autoplaylist of the genre as a whole in MediaMonkey or a similar player with dynamic playlist support.

13. Construct a tier of standard playlists:

A. ~60-100 disc map of albums best-representing the genre.

B. Record label playlists (if applicable.)

C. A top 10 essential albums set (as determined by metascore.)

D. Separate playlist for featured artists with 50 or more albums in their discography.

14. Listen to recordings, beginning with albums from step 6, followed by the top 10 essentials list, and then first 2 LPs from each artist, and so on.

15. As most of these recordings will likely be decades out of print or have never been produced in a digital format, you will not be able to purchase (or even preview) these albums from commercial sources like iTunes. Utilize other resources to acquire these albums, explore and discover the ones which resonate most with you, and purchase original issues via Discogs and your local shops specializing in rare and import vinyl.



CLOSING THOUGHTS

While this methodical and systematic approach to musical discovery may appear somewhat “clinical,” it is an efficient and refined means of employing the rich systems of metadata available and the largest assembled music databases in the history of recorded sound. This should prove particularly advantageous for the music scholar faced with the daunting challenge of poring over decades of rare recordings.

By no means do I intend to downplay the critical role your local used record shop owner plays in the search for new music - no amount of metadata can match his or her years of experience living the sounds you seek. But for the eager listeners who do not have access to such a shop, there are multiple resources like those described above which return a wealth of information you will never find on popular streaming services like Spotify, Rhapsody, or Rdio.

Through this system of discovery, you can combine the available information from blogs, literature, RYM, the Wikipedia, trackers, box sets, label archives and your local record gurus and organize the resulting data in an accessible fashion which will inspire many rewarding purchases for your library.

Happy hunting!

Innerspace Milestone!
 

http://i.imgur.com/RWXOdU4.jpg

A big thank-you to the entire MB community - I'm delighted to have found a corner of the web for thoughtful discussions of music and other impassioned interests.

My journal's first nine months have been very active, and I thank Trollheart for all his hard work keeping up with the Weekly Member Journal updates thread.

Thank you to all who read and enjoy my content. It's wonderful to have a community of musical peers.

But full-speed ahead and on to new content! It's curious - and I'd love to hear MB's expert input on the subject -

What Lies Ahead for the Future of Music Blogger Journalism?

Chuck Von Rospach wrote a piece in March titled The Future of Blogging is... Blogging in which he examines the global trends of the blogosphere. He addresses the "Post-Blog Era" discussed in a feature on SixColors.com and the conflicting opinions as to the present state of blogging in general.

A user in Reddit's Let's Talk Music subforum called 2005-20013 the "peak-blog era" when discussing the future of music discovery. This proposed date range corresponds with my own music blog's peak readership. In 2012 I had 23,000 annual views, but year for year this has steadily declined to 14,700 views in 2015.

One possibility is that my content has simply become too specialized for general audiences. Whereas in 2012 I posted acquisitions of autographed Parliament/Funkadelic LPs, by 2015 I had moved on to discuss trends in socio-musical culture and technology, and focused onseveral milestones of early electronic music.

But some of these recent articles and threads suggest that blog readership worldwide is in decline. Still others proclaim this a renaissance for long-form blog journalism in the content-rich vacuum created by the explosion of listicle articles from sites like Buzzfeed.com.

Another factor affecting the music blogging community is the prominence of streaming services like Spotify. Listeners less-inclined to read a longform article will surely opt instead for the convenience and immediacy of these services' content.

Statista has some interesting numbers to contribute to this conversation. Looking particularly at Wordpress performance over the years cited above, it appears that pageviews have steadily risen each year from 2007 to the fall of 2014.

http://i.imgur.com/4y2a1DV.jpg

What do you think? Will readership continue to rise into the next generation of listeners? Or will a social media focused community of listicles cause the longform article to fall from favor?

UPDATE: A fellow blogger offered the following in response to this entry:

To which I responded:

A sound perspective. I too think this will be the case. For my own blog, I don't count it as a loss, as those who favor instant gratification are unlikely to be among my readers in the first place. But it does concern me for the welfare of society and internet culture at large.

It's the classic dystopian struggle - Network all over again. And passive media consumption has been a hot documentary topic of late, with Zeitgeist producer Peter Joseph's series, Culture in Decline, Adam Curtis' The Century of the Self, and the free documentaries hosted by Metanoia-Films.org such as Psywar (the real battlefield is the mind), Plutocracy, and Human | Resources : Social Engineering in the 20th Century.

These films examine the post-industrial era problem of goods surplus and product efficiency and how they spelled doom for modern capitalism. Together, a reprogramming of western culture to consume goods and information passively and ceaselessly, and the implementation of planned obsolescence ensured that the capitalist dogma would remain intact.

I see the effects of this system in media outlets like the increasingly-commercialized internet and in the way western culture consumes it. All of the elements above - cultural reprogramming, consumerist propaganda, and an increasingly commercialized internet - these foster consumers' desire for "fast food journalism."

He also offered an excellent article for further reading - Is Google Making Us Stupid?

What Music Takes You To Church?
 

Revisiting a few familiar favorites this evening.

Every listener has a few - one or two exceptional records which transport them to a metaphysical beyond, or one could say, records that take them to church. One unparalleled example is Glenn Goins calling down the Mothership at Parliament Funkadelic's performance in Houston in 1976.



But my personal favorite out-of-body musical experience is Spiritualized's Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. The entire album is a neo-psychedelic gospel noisepop anthem and one of the finest and most cohesive works of the shoegaze genre.
J Spaceman and his band are accompanied by Dr John on the piano and the Hammond B3, as well as the voices of The London Community Gospel Choir. There are touches of hammer dulcimer, autoharp, accordion, string and horn sections, and pedal steel making for one brilliantly-refined heroin-inspired masterpiece.

The 17-minute closing epic, "Cop Shoot Cop" is a monumental performance. The track's foundation is a simple gospel blues oscillation between two fundamental chords. J's understated half-spoken vocals usher the listener through a series of verses varying on a primary lyrical theme, each punctuated by twelve bars of distortion pedal punching noise which culminates after the final verse with 6 minutes of an unrelenting eruption of cacophonous clamor. Impressively, the hyperactive electric bass which has been walking up and down scales for the duration of the piece slowly introduces and repeats the root note of the track and guides the performers through the fog machine and wall-of-sound pandemonium back to the familiar gospel structure for a few minutes of meditative peace while Spaceman repeats, "and I will love you... and I will love you..." for the album's finale.

This is a record best-experienced in your finest pair of circumaural headphones, and bested only by the 3-disc UK Expanded Edition.

Ladies and gentlemen... we are floating in space.

Just When You Think You've Heard it All!
 

This was a night like any other night. I returned home from work and put on a familiar favorite record. A quick skim of Facebook and a forum or two are part of my routine method of relaxation before I get in to the evening's project. But, as fate would have it, this would not be just any ordinary evening.

I'd felt disheartened of late, fearing that my obsessive exploration of 20th century music had exhausted all possible niche and microgenres and that there were no real surprises left to experience. I understood each of the major artistic musical shifts which had occurred aligning with the ever-changing social identity and value set of each generation. It was a melancholic notion - that perhaps I'd heard it all.

But this evening, something caught my eye as I scrolled passively through my Facebook feed. WFMU had shared an image from Alex Ross' website. (Ross is the author of the ultimate guide to the music of the 20th century - The Rest is Noise.) The image was a print advert which appeared in the Village Voice on June 19, 1969. The ad reads:

Well that certainly grabbed my attention. I jumped over to RYM and looked up Partch's most celebrated work, which was Delusion of the Fury. Cross-referencing the title at Discogs.com revealed that a 3LP box set edition was issued in 1971 with a book featuring the unique instruments featured on the recording as well as a bonus LP showcasing each instrument.

http://cdn.discogs.com/iREm-vD7fhsyg...-4111.jpeg.jpg

Only the album's opening track was available on YouTube, so I queued it up and was wowed at first-listen. Before the track had completed, I tracked down a clean copy of the deluxe edition for my collection and it is presently en-route to my address.

Thank you, Mr. Partch for dispelling my silly fear that I'd heard it all, and thank you WFMU for waving the 1969 advert in front of my face.

December will be a month of microtonal bliss.

:yeah:

http://i.imgur.com/iTfrWvK.jpg?1

Harry Partch is amazing. Glad you discovered him.

30GB of Lost Cassettes From the 80s Underground
 

As many of you have undoubtedly heard, whether from FACTMAG.com, AJournalofMusicalThings, eTeknix, or WeAreTheMusicMakers, Archive.org has delivered yet another windfall of lost music. Hot on the heels of Attention K-Mart Shoppers, Mark Davis' personal collection of KMart muzak cassettes, another user has uploaded a massive archive of independently released obscuro cassettes from the 1980s.

The tapes were originally digitized by noise-arch.net and donated by former CKLN-FM radio host Myke Dyer in August 2009 and includes cassettes ranging from “tape experimentation, industrial, avant-garde, indie, rock, DIY, subvertainment and auto-hypnotic materials”.

Jump on this 30GB treasure trove - it's what all the hip vaporwave kids will be sampling in the weeks ahead. ;)

Here's the torrent direct from The Internet Archive.

:afro:

http://i.imgur.com/4faTQaV.jpg

As Foretold in the Prophecy
 

JUST ARRIVED: The aforementioned Harry Partch - Delusion Of The Fury - A Ritual Of Dream And Delusion

I could not be more ecstatic about receiving this deluxe box set in the post today! I heard Partch for the first time three days ago and instantly knew I had to have his work in my library.

This 3LP set includes the 2-disc Delusion Of The Fury, composed using octaves of 43 unequal tones, and a bonus disc showcasing each of the instruments Partch invented for the piece.

This copy was purchased by a music professor, cataloged with a label maker and shelved in mint condition back in 1971. AND as an extra surprise, the copy came with Partch's obituary write-up from Time Magazine when he passed in 1974.
A proud addition to my collection!

https://i.imgur.com/z7ibZC6l.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/M2JMXQhl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/xjzL1dFl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/L22GR5nl.jpg

I stumled across the collection just now as well - interesting stuff. All the MP3 files I've found so far have rubbish bitrates, but I'm totally still grabbing them.

Delusion of the Fury is one of my favourite modern classical pieces. You might want to read his book, Genesis of a Music. It has some really interesting perspectives on the music world and it delves into the creation of the 43 tone scale (although this part gets into some serious math that's a little thick to get through).

A fellow member of a private listening group also recommended the text. Minutes into the BBC documentary on Partch's life I was awestruck by the similarities between his own outsider philosophy and rejection of the status quo and the anti-authoritarian characters like Number 6 and Number 48.

Instantly ordered a copy of the text. Thank you - I'm really looking forward to reading it!

This is the Word of the Space Pope
 

A reading from the book of Giraffa Pontifex.

- The Space Pope, 12-08-12

http://i.imgur.com/TThSvTl.jpg?1

The Sound of Silence
 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am proud to declare Project Catacomb a fantastic SUCCESS!

My server now occupies the subterranean depths of my home. The cool, dry environment will help the shelf lives of my HDDs, but more importantly, the insanely loud behemoth will no longer torment me with its cacophonous clamor drowning out my modern classical recordings.

Ahhh, sweet sweet silence. I've missed you, old friend.

http://i.imgur.com/QN78k3W.jpg?1

Happy weekend everyone! A wonderful book arrived at my door this afternoon - a copy of the second and final printing of Harry Partch's Genesis of a Music!

Originally published in 1949, the 1979 expanded edition was issued just after Partch's death. The text is essential reading for any student of the 20th century avant-garde.

This copy is in magnificent condition. The binding is tight with absolutely no lift to the covers. It appears I will be the first to read it since its publication 37 years ago. I feel honored!

Thank you, Frownland for recommending the title.

http://i.imgur.com/1IqTrc5.jpg?1

Beyond Big Cable: Millennial Viewers Ditch Network Packages and opt for Greater Value
 

http://i.imgur.com/7qmkCKjl.jpg

For as long as we can remember there has existed a well-established monopoly whereby consumers have little or often no choice between high-priced cable packages offered by a small handful of national providers. Broadbandnow reports that five major companies provide service to nearly 250 million customers in the US. And Comcast dominates the market with a staggering 113 million customers in 40 states. The resulting market is one of ever-increasing prices, preposterous service fees, and abysmal customer service, all at the expense of the consumer.

Fortunately, if current media consumer trends are any indication, none of that matters anymore.

“Cord-Cutting Is Accelerating!” proclaimed the Wall Street Journal this month, citing that, by 2018, 21% of U.S. Households won’t pay for traditional TV. The feature includes a foreboding line graph with a plummeting projection of cable subscription rates in the years ahead.

http://i.imgur.com/HDW1w3k.jpg

And honestly - who can blame consumers for jumping the sinking ship of traditional TV when a streaming cruiseliner comes sailing by?

To set the stage for this sea change of service subscriptions, let’s look at the market as it stands today.

A Few Pricing Facts From Big Cable

The National Average for a Cable Package in the US:

Starter packages run $50-$65/mo while premium packages run $68-$127/mo.

Add to that $6-$8 per mo. in fees for your HDTV cable boxes. An HD DVR receiver will cost you another $10-$16 per month. Service to additional rooms or outlets range from $7-$10 each. And if you want the premium channels you’ll have to shell out an additional$10-$15 per channel per month.

That quickly adds up to a whole lot of money for a passive-feed of non-interactive, commercial-loaded content, which is precisely what Thomas Pecoraro of Western NY thought in 2003 when he was shelling out $130 a month for cable and HD premium channels with Dish Network. “I really wasn’t using 90% of the content,” Tom explained. In 2006 his growing dissatisfaction would inspire him to explore the then brand-new concept of streaming media from AOL/Time Warner’s In2TV.com.

In2TV was an ad-supported stream of content from the Warner Brothers archives. Tom quickly realized that he could patch an S-video cable from his laptop to his CRT television and enjoy this web-sourced content on his television set. “The early 5-14Mb/s broadband was not a reliable connection,” noted Tom. “You could play what you want when you wanted it, but there was heavy pixelization and frame drop abound.”

That same year, WB.com began offering similar free retro cartoons and sitcoms. It was the early days of streaming, and networks were testing the technology with archival content that they couldn’t otherwise capitalize upon at the time. “What a lot of consumers don’t realize,” Tom noted, “is that Time Warner’s IN2TV streaming service was the precursor to Netflix.”

In 2007, Netflix added streaming to their DVD rental subscription service, and by 2008, they made a deal with Starz to expand their catalog. “They had Give Me a Break, Charles in Charge and a variety of other programs,” said Tom. “It was exciting to revisit my childhood shows on demand.”

The Next Step: Roku

“As soon as Roku was launched in 2008 I bought the very first model,” said Tom. “It made it so much easier to access media content.” At the time he had both Netflix’s DVD and streaming packages for a total of $16 a month. With the ease of accessibility Roku offered, Tom quickly cancelled the DVD portion of his subscription and kept the streaming service for $8 a month.

“The beauty of Roku,” Tom explained, “was that it was an affordable, one-time investment.” That same year Tom purchased a Google TV, but the service faced challenges. “It had a keyboard interface and a browser to search various networks for streamable content. Many offered programs at the time, but when the networks realized that Google was accessing and distributing their media for free, they unanimously decided to block Google TVs from receiving their media.”

“Roku approached access rights differently. They steered clear of network content. Roku made deals with providers, podcasts, and with Archive.org to ensure that there were no issues with the content. That’s a big contributor to why Roku came out on top.”

Hulu Enters the Arena

Hulu was the next step in an experiment of networks streaming their own content on their own terms. It began as a web-based portal of content where networks could supply old and new content without worry of maintaining multiple websites while simultaneously introducing a new avenue of content distribution, so they let anyone sign up to watch the content for free.

But as new streaming boxes and "media PCs" premiered on the market, each pointing to online content (such as Google TV and Boxee Box), the networks became frightened at their loss of control of distribution. They began blocking IPs for Hulu and other non-computer devices. Hulu created "Hulu Plus" for Roku, smart TVs, DVD/Blu-ray players and game systems (and any other market offering competitor Netflix’s content).

“Individuals like me who watched the web version of Hulu saw Hulu Plus as a joke and a scam,” noted Tom. “Why pay for Hulu Plus when you would see ads running on their service? After years of this nonsense and the fear of SlingTV, HBO and others entering the ring, Hulu Plus rebranded Hulu for both the web version and the streaming boxes introducing a new $12 ad-free tier as well as a premium tier for movies from the usual suspects - much like the market of the early years of cable.”

Dish Network - Too Little Too Late

In early 2015, Dish Network launched their SlingTV service (not to be confused with the SlingBox). The basic package offers 19 channels for $20. Marketed as "The Best of Live TV," SlingTV features general interest content like food, sports, and travel. And, like its competitors, SlingTV also offers premium tiers for children’s programming, sports, and movies for an additional fee. But it’s passive live streaming, just like regular TV but distributed over the internet. The basic $20 package gives you access on only a single device, and it’s riddled with commercials. There’s really no reason to explore this option unless you’re satisfied with passive content. “SlingTV exists solely for members of the older generation who wish to break free of their cable contracts but want the familiarity of traditional television,” Tom observed.

Amazon Prime - Great Value For Its Price Point

In the early days (to compete with Netflix), Amazon offered a simple rental plan of $4 a movie. They later launched Prime with free streaming of older video content. If you order products with any regularity from Amazon then Prime already pays for itself in the money you save on shipping. Today’s annual rate of $99 is still a great value for their library of content.

Adding It All Up - Streaming vs Traditional Cable

Tom has tried every major streaming service available in his area since the advent of streaming in the early 2000s. Today he has subscriptions to several content providers, making his monthly bill an excellent case study for a comparison of old services vs new.

Tom kept Hulu for $8 a month because they offer Japanese and 70s sci-fi content that he would otherwise spend far more to purchase outright.

He also utilizes the free ad-supported Crackle service on Roku which offers a variety of movies, TV shows, and anime. “It’s a one-stop shop for great content,” said Tom.

An avid fan of Japanese programming, Tom also pays for 3 premium anime services via Roku - Funamation ($8), CrunchyRoll ($6), and Anime Network (also $6). Together, these services provide a wealth of content both old and new from Japan.

Tom also enjoys content from numerous other providers catering to niche interests. Services such as:

• TwitCh - for Gaming
• <>.TV diamondclub.TV - a community of fan-based content and a video podcast channel
• Frogpants - similar to diamondclub
• TuneIn - free radio
• Livestream - for live broadcasts
• IHeartRadio - free radio and music stations
• Archive.org (a third-party unofficial channel) for their unparalleled library of public domain content
• Presto - the best of HBO and Showtime for a low monthly rate
• the Google Play Store
• and PBS
• The one-time purchase of the Roku and annual $99 Amazon Prime fees aside, Tom’s total monthly cost for all this content is $35. All of the media is on-demand and much of it commercial-free. Compared to his $130 Dish Network cable contract, cutting the cord was a no-brainer.

A Nationwide Trend

In Oct 2013 Statista.com reported that 43% of users age 18-36 opted for Netflix while 46% utilized traditional cable packages. I asked Tom whether he believed there will still be a market for cable in 10 years’ time.

“It’s not a black or white Netflix question,” he answered. “It depends on whose stats you read. But in 1979 networks were frightened about the new concept of cable television. It’s the same scare now. They’ve always been slow to change and the technology shows no sign of slowing down for them.”

I’m curious, as I know my readers span a variety of ages and demographics. Have you cut the cord as well? To my younger readers - did you grow up with an entirely post-cable experience?

And what is your media center interface of choice? Do you prefer XBMC? Plex.tv? Or Roku?

Whatever you use, it is wonderful to see consumers empowered by a new era of media technology.

Confessions of a Meta-Hipster
 

I’d like to take a moment to discuss a subject very near and dear to my heart… ME.

Now hear me out - I hope that this will actually inspire some thoughtful conversation about our socio-cultural and individualistic natures.

A bit of context for the unfamiliar - I was raised in a closed environment outside of traditional society, and once I became an adult I found that I preferred the familiarity of that cultural isolation. I rejected staples of global culture such as religion, mass media, and the majority of pop culture, (particularly its music). I had a great distaste for contemporary mass-produced goods and clothing. As I’ve mentioned before I left television, radio, magazines, newspapers and shopping in stores all behind nearly 20 years ago. Instead I became a cultural custodian and media archaeologist - digging for great cultural treasures and building an archive of the most inspiring works I could find. And when I did make a purchase, whether it be electronic, a book, LP, hi-fi equipment, or a textile product, I always sought out exceptional antiques, or enlisted an artisan to create it for me, or I built it myself.

Wardrobe is one of my favorite outlets of creative self-expression. The way a man dresses himself speaks volumes of his character. And socially, it identifies an affiliation with a facet of a particular subculture and its respective value set.

Cultural scholar Simon Reynolds summed it up exquisitely in his book, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past where he writes -

“Remember the Pop Boutique store in central London with its slogan 'Don't follow fashion. Buy something that's already out of date'? Just as vintage can have an undercurrent of recalcitrance towards fashion, similarly it is possible for rock nostalgia to contain dissident potential. If Time has become annexed by capitalism's cynical cycles of product shifting, one way to resist that is to reject temporality altogether. The revivalist does this by fixating on one era and saying: 'Here I make my stand.' By fixing identity to the absolute and abiding supremacy of one sound and one style, the revivalist says, ' This is me.'”

I’ve always opted for fantastical fashion - period clothing with a touch of class and a dramatic and extravagant flare. Now at 34, I have a respectable career where, thankfully, the CEO delights in my disco-era fashion and I am free to dress as I like (within reason) at the office.

But at this age, social circles dwindle and recede to a few life-long friendships. Former cohorts and fellow mischief-makers settle down and occupy themselves with more pressing matters like those of work and family. Curiously, I find my own social sphere expanding as of late. I am forming friendships with cafe owners, baristas, fellow scholars, artisans, and members of the residential cooperatives in my area. Whereas my world previously comprised only the 3 coworkers I encountered from my walks to and from the office, these new friendships have lured me from my curmudgeonly hobbit hole and given me a glimpse of society for the first time in decades. I’m becoming a mainstay at area haunts like used book shops, antique shops, cafes, and at a local diner.

And this is where the problem is presented. Unfamiliar with contemporary fashion trends, I performed a brief survey of modern-day apparel and quickly warmed up to the comfortable, relaxed, but artistically-savvy stylings of the NYC metrosexual neo-bohemian. The style incorporates characteristics of the shabby-chic gypsy, the California boho artist, and the intellectual sensibility and literate edginess of Ginsberg-era hipster culture. This was certainly something I could get behind.

Unfortunately, like all subcultures, the laymen distilled the essence of the neo-hip to a laughable, haughty, post-postmodern rejection of all things mainstream, heavily-doused in ironic cynicism. (Though really… have I not been guilty of precisely that practice for the last 20 years?) Paradoxically, my incorporation of knit caps, thick glasses, and genital-suffocating trousers is perhaps the ultimate act of irony - an individualist’s sacrifice of his own identity at the altar of social-belonging.

I wish it were so simple to say, “to hell with the masses!” and to disregard their foregone conclusions of the nature of my character. The impediment so squarely fixed in my path is that I am not the island I fetishize in my utopian dreams. There are unequivocal consequences to the inability of others to take a man seriously. What uniform, then, might one don if he wishes to walk free from such criticism?

Perhaps the dilemma is purely etymological. For a man to champion individualism with his attire, and to visually assert freethought and intellectualism, the error is in the word, “uniform” itself. By its very definition, enrobing oneself in (effectively) the flag of another cultural subset is directly antithetical to the value of the individual.

It would appear that my engagement in fashion extremes (like the costumes of my last 20 years) works to undermine my present goal of meshing with society while retaining my unique identity. The trick would be to concoct a subtle and smart blend of nuanced characteristics from each of the microcosms of culture that I favor. Complementary accessories, colors, fabrics, and footwear which speak to the world in a rich and refined tone, rather than to shout at it from the sidelines.

It is an intriguing challenge, which I shall embrace fully in the months ahead. I am fulfilling my destiny to become… the Meta-Hipster.

http://i.imgur.com/Vczpj3bl.jpg

Geekin' with Style
 

A quick bit of fun - My fiance had a wonderful idea last night. She'd gifted me a set of 1" pinback buttons of my favorite ambient and kosmische musik album covers for Christmas, but we'd yet to find a place to sport them.

I'd also previously make a set of 24 of my own 1 1/4" buttons for my record tote, but my tastes have become so specialized that the majority of my purchases have been imports from Germany, the UK, and the Nordic nations.

Her solution - dress up my desktop! The result is a blend of DIY punk culture (the pinback aesthetic), with a touch of academic sophistication, (mathematically-designated equidistant positioning paired with 20th century minimalist and experimental music subject matter).

Fun fact: Pressing the "Vinyl kills the MP3 industry" button turns the monitor on and off.

Hi-res for the curious

http://i.imgur.com/tXRVSL4l.jpg

Are those Bitches Brew and Absolutely Free bottles beers? Because that's ****ing awesome if they are.

Score. Superman is a bonus.

That's right, they are. I particularly enjoyed the Brew.

Superman is a $9 USB novelty USB drive I've loaded as an Ubuntu Live Drive. He's come to my rescue more than once. :)

Also dig the commemorative Bitcoin round from the Anonymous Mint at the center of the shot.

http://i.imgur.com/5eFb30il.jpg

Confessions of a Meta-Hipster Episode V: Nostalgia Strikes Back
 

Welcome to the next installment of my whenever-I-feel-like-it series, Confessions of a Meta-Hipster. I sincerely appreciate all the positive feedback I received from Episode 1: The Hipster Menace, so I’ve decided to give it another go.

The goal of this new fashion project is to establish a unique identity by way of appropriation - individualism-through-collectivism - the epitome of my own neo-bohemian ethic. What better execution of the post-modern "meta" than to hold a consciously-"reflective" mirror up to the hipster culture and to the other affiliations I cited, as a continuous, living work of performance art?

Upon further examination of my newly-proclaimed meta-hip mantra, I quickly discovered that looking forward was not in the spirit of the hip ensembles I sought. Rather, as Reynolds described in his aforementioned work of cultural criticism, Retromania, all I need is before me.

So I began to survey my my wardrobe for previous incarnations of this newly-discovered theme. It quickly became apparent that I’d been executing this mantra all along. (I’m so meta I was doing it before I thought of it.)

One example of such a cultural appropriation is this bohemian gypsy ensemble I sported on August 6th, 2015. I dubbed this look, “The Artful Dodger.” The outfit comprises distressed flare jeans with a pair of Beatle boots, a fitted brown tee portraying a silhouette of the gravel-throated demigod Tom Waits smoking a cigarette, a threadbare brown velvet jacket worn in all the right places, and a thin dark purple scarf with reflective elements nearly reminiscent of Steven Tyler or Robert Plant. The outfit is finished off nicely with a similarly-tattered velvet top hat, weathered from the 15 years I’ve worn it proudly since it was gifted to me by my oldest friend. Accessories include a few black leather bracelets, a number of costume jewelry rings, and my Ben Franklin spectacles. All together, the ensemble celebrates the thrifty lifestyle of the neo-bohemian gypsy, the bold and independent flare of the retro rocker, and a touch of audiophile retro-symbolism and steampunk funk with the amplifier tube necklace. The outfit proclaims confidently that “I’m here to have a good time.”

http://i.imgur.com/14MqFQal.jpg

But on to the more recent fashion statement already in progress…

After piecing together some versatile elements I immediately fell in love with a simple fashion formula (previously pictured), consisting of a fitted black custom-printed tee, black skinny jeans, a charcoal slouchy beanie, thick black glasses, black fingerless gloves, a black cowl neck sweater, and one of various Keffiyeh scarves I procured from Amazon.

In a pretentious effort to out-indie my hipster brethren, all of the tees I’ve interchanged with this basic formula are on-demand one-off direct-to-garment prints of my own designs via Redbubble. Their shirts are ethically-sourced and sweatshop-free, appealing to the socially and environmentally conscious millennial demographic, and the slim-fit super-soft cotton is on par with textile wholesaler American Apparel (right down to the nylon rectangular copycat tag). Better still, using my own art gives me complete control of my under-the-radar subject matter, and aligns well with the DIY element of the artisan culture.

Color Palette:

Basic black (like my soul). The color is indicative of my “hip-New-Yorker-who-knows-his-way-around-a-turntable” urban sensibility while the earthtone accents and accessories are reflective of my eco-conscious values and rustic mountain man aesthetic. (See also: beard.)

Footwear:

I considered a pair of Converse All-Stars but I really think the whole return to the graphic tee universe is a venture far enough into “I’m still in my 20s” fashion. I’d like to be taken a little more seriously than I would be in a pair of Chucks. My Chelsea boots / Winklepickers don’t quite fit with the relaxed image so I’ll likely land somewhere in the middle in a black pair of 1990s-era Doc Martens. Their classic 8-eyelet 1460 boot is the ultimate blend of durability, function, and style. Just remember - buy them in black. You don’t want to be mistaken for Eddie Vedder. (Waist-tied flannel optional.)

Accessories:

Vintage typewriter key rings add a subtle touch of industrial and steampunk influence, but wear no more than one per hand to keep the effeminity to a minimum. (You’re already a small-framed coffeesnob dressed in black… that’s more than adequate.) A custom ring fashioned from a coin sourced from the Principality of Sealand stealthily communicates my pirate pride to those savvy enough to notice. It’s a wonderfully covert way to identify my sort in the wild.

The slightly-tattered pair of black fingerless gloves speak of my gutterpunk-spirited affinity for thrift-economics, while simultaneously serving a practical function of keeping the ever-present artisanal coffee from burning my sensitive-artist hands. (Cue the King Missile track.)

The Epiphany:

I had tremendous difficulty searching Google and Pintrest for the style I was wearing. It wasn’t quite hipster. It was too polished for gutterpunk, nu-grunge, or rocker. It wasn’t goth or any number of other trends. But this evening, I happened upon a link in my search for bohemian fashion which landed me on the video for The Dandy Warhols’ “Bohemian Like You.” And a few clicks later, I had it. INDIE. How could I have forgotten the music scene of my college days? Upon entering the term into Pintrest, I was met with a flood of fashion ideas. A graphic tee can be dressed up with a nice velvet sports coat, or down with a cardigan and wool cap. Below are snapshots of my favorite fella and lady from my “indie” search on Pintrest.

http://i.imgur.com/5RrnM3tl.jpg

In a sweet moment of nostalgia, I felt a rush of artists come back to me - records I hadn’t spun in years. Ass Ponys, Afghan Whigs, A Band of Bees, Album Leaf, American Analog Set, Andrew Bird's Bowl Of Fire, Azure Ray… (and those are just a few of the “A”s!)

It’s really been some time since I rocked out to… well… rock. Other than frippertronics I seldom make time for music featuring a guitar so I’m going to revisit my college radio days this winter. Maybe break the shrink on the sealed Elliott Smith LP I picked up at the Goodwill.

Cheers everyone!

CENTVRY I: Early Music Masterworks
 

January has been a busy month so far! 77 new albums were introduced to the library this month and I'm going to get right into them.

After neglecting a title which repeatedly surfaced on ambient charts over the years, I finally experienced Edward Artemiev's 1972 score to Andrei Tarkovsky's Russian masterpiece, Solaris. Originally released in Japan in 1978, the album finally found an American issue in 2013 on the Superior Viaduct label. True to my usual form, I was difficult and went after the Russian 2013 issue on the Мирумир label, as it was the only edition to feature the dramatic Italian movie poster artwork on the album's cover.

http://i.imgur.com/31lbnNul.jpg

Eduard Artemyev - Solaris OST (1972)

The Solaris score is haunting arctic ambient music evocative of the loneliness and isolation of deep space. I now understand why the recording so persistently surfaces on lists of great ambient music.

Also pictured above is Ethan Hayden's contribution to the 33 1/3 book series. I was lucky enough to witness Hayden's performance of his electroacoustic vocal composition, "…ce dangereux supplément…" at the University at Buffalo, which you can hear for yourself by clicking the title of the piece. As an expert on linguistics, I can think of no better artist to write on the subject of Sigur Ros' ( ) - an album whose vocals are in an entirely fictional language.

But on to my next avenue of exploration. After falling in love with the microtonal music of Harry Partch this winter, it seemed a fitting next step to begin to survey early music of the first century and beyond.

After about 30 minutes of research, I compiled quality collections of these musics.

Some quick research on classic choral music revealed several quality performances I quickly picked up:

• Monteverdi Choir - Bach's Mass in B Minor
• Moscow Choral - Russian Orthodox Music (conductor Hiermonk Amvrosiy)
• BBC Symphony Orchestra - Mozart's Requiem
• The Orthodox Singers - Basso Profondo From Old Russia

And from the legendary Tallis Scholars:

• Russian Orthodox Music
• Missa si Bona Suscepimus
• Spem in Alium
• The Best of the Renaissance (2-disc set)
• The Complete English Anthems
• The Three Masses
• Victoria Requiem
• The Palestrina 400 Collection (4-volume set)

From there I delved deep into Early Music, and identified a label well-known for their works in this field.

Harmonia Mundi has two box sets I knew I'd need:

[Harmonia Mundi] Sacred Music: From the Middle Ages to the 20th Century (30-volume set)

http://i.imgur.com/4R9l0FFh.jpg

[Harmonia Mundi] Early Music From Ancient Times to the Renaissance (10-volume set)

http://i.imgur.com/Z29LIFmh.jpg

I was also interested in sampling an assortment of Tuvinian Throat-Singing albums, so I picked up:

Deep in the Heart of Tuva (Mongol Strupsång)

http://i.imgur.com/rU1MY07h.jpg

Horekteer - Tuvan Throat Singing Virtuoso

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Huun-Huur-Tu - The Orphan's Lament

http://i.imgur.com/0qrORHuh.jpg

Shu-de - Voices from the Distant Steppe

http://i.imgur.com/OvAiIfLh.jpg

Tuva- Voices From The Center Of Asia [Smithsonian Folkways]

http://i.imgur.com/iGYvgdFh.jpg

Tuvinian Singers & Musicians - Chöömej - Throat Singing From the Center of Asia

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...as well as a related selection - David Hykes' Hearing Solar Winds - an album of harmonic choral overtone music.

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If these 64 discs weren't sufficient to begin my exploration of Early Music, I happened upon some fantastic vinyl box sets of Gregorian, madrigal, and music of the Middle Ages.

Delightfully, the first two I came across bore the Harmonia Mundi logo of the digital albums I'd found online. It will be wonderful to hear several selections from the label both in lossless FLAC and in their original vinyl formats.

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The next two set I found were collections from the Musical Heritage Society (MHS), an American mail-order record label founded in 1962 . Each set included lyrics in both Latin and in English. These sets were issued in 1974-5 on LP and on 4 cassettes.

http://i.imgur.com/VyP5Anrl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/J9GeWQfl.jpg

I found one final set in today's travels - The Everest label's Treasury of Gregorian Chants - a 4LP box set from 1967.

http://i.imgur.com/lS1y0Dkl.jpg

Featuring the Trappist Monks' Choir of Cistercian Abbey, Monks of the Benedictine Abbey. and Bennedictine Monks of the Wanderille de Fontenelle Monastery, the release was the winner of the French Grand Prix du Disc - a prize later awarded to Jean-Michel Jarre ‎for his classic Oxygène LP.

And best of all - all of these collections were in clean, like-new condition with no visible wear from play or handling. And where else can you find all this beautiful music for $11 cash?

I'm looking forward to months of enlightening listening experiences.

No exploration into throat singing is complete without Oidupaa Vladimir Oiun's Divine Music From A Jail.
It's not entirely traditional, since he accompanies himself with a bayan, a type of russian accordeon. His singing is pretty special as well, Oidupaa style is an actual recognized term. There is something very raw and heartfelt about his music. It's also pretty monotonous and samey, but in a good, hypnotic way.