Shipwreck Radio - June 22

It’s that time of year when a (no longer) young man’s thoughts turn naturally to the Sonic Structures and Enigmatic Episodes of Shipwreck Radio. Read the introduction to this series here.

JUNE 22 - SHIPWRECK RADIO: FINAL BROADCASTS

The first track we get to from, and coincidentally the first track off of, Final Broadcasts, it opens with the opening welcomes and chimes echoing wildly between the left and right channels. Then a ringing builds and pulls in a roar with it—the two samples, the ringing and the roar, almost vocal at times, swirl and play off each other, before they’re joined by a tone that’s almost like a crashing wave. Here are the three main components of the track, a simple audio palette that becomes something much greater; its hard not to picture a starlit walk, a little too dark to be truly safe, along a seaside cliff, the waves crashing below. At times you can almost hear voices calling out in the roaring wind, and as the ringing returns to cut through the nocturnal roars and crashes, it begins to sound more and more like an alarm. The night is dark and full of terrors, and as your mind roams with the track, the dark depths hinted at by the sounds here seem almost tempting, a call to a darker place, just hinted at, as the roars and howls of the sampled sounds, the ringing alarms, all seem to herald a darkness that would be cliché in a metal song. Here is a sense of the sinister that pulls us back through the eons, to that primal base of our brain which fears the gloom of the moonless night and thrills at it as well. 

Around the 12 minute mark, the roaring becomes more claustrophobic, seeming to echo down a murky tunnel. A low, profundo tone building in the background—a rumbling drone, like the deep drawn out moan of a demon cast up from the depths. The ringing reemerges slowly as well, building gradually until it’s overwhelmed by the roar, nearly a scream and then the tones of the track become more ragged. As we near the fifteen minute mark, it’s as though we’re caught in a tempest, thunder boiling in the distance, winds howling around us, the ringing calling out an alarm. There’s a gentle and soft rain-like sound that comes in after the 16 minute mark, but it’s quickly overwhelmed by the alarum of the ringing, insistent and blaring before it fades, leaving us with the moaning wind before it bursts in again, loud and disquieting, before fading back. This repeats again, the ringing more muddled as the track passes the 18 minute mark, nearly becoming a scream, the ringing sample stretched nearly to breaking as it cries out, ebbing a little, but lasting over a minute until the profundo drone in the background is left to carry us along. 

The ringing tries to return several times, bubbling up in the background, is joined by a metallic scraping, but can’t quite break above the boil of the bass tone of the background until 20:30 when it seems to crash into the low towns, a churn of the ringing and hissing swirling together, the moaning voices tossed up momentarily out of the seething. It fades away near the twenty third minute, only to return, more sibilant as the hissing dominates, then giving way to metallic wails. The wails fly above the low oceanic background tones and by the twenty six minute mark almost fade away, taking a place in the background as the ringing returns, lower, sounding at first like a crashing wave, then growing slower and lower as the track settles into a descent, the last winds of a storm rushing away, light on the horizon as the clouds crack and break, leaving one with the impression of a danger just passed, but knowing the danger could someday return.

Shipwreck Radio - June 20

It’s that time of year when a (no longer) young man’s thoughts turn naturally to the Sonic Structures and Enigmatic Episodes of Shipwreck Radio. Read the introduction to this series here.

JUNE 20 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME ONE

The deceptively simple, final track of Volume 1: it opens with a drastically slowed down version of the welcome and chimes, then starts in with a slow and gently rolling tone. Like lapping waves, the slowly building tones swell slightly, the higher tone slightly metallic and the lower tone rumbling like thunder at the edge of the horizon. After about four minutes, the melody begins—a simple and repetitive clanging, that gradually increases in volume as the tones beneath it slowly shift. The track continues its slowly metamorphosis, the melody clinking along while the tones provide a meditative base, the changes in the sonic structure small and imperceptible to the casual listener while rewarding an engaged listener who is willing to give all their attention to this hauntingly mesmerizing song.

 

Shipwreck Radio - June 19

It’s that time of year when a (no longer) young man’s thoughts turn naturally to the Sonic Structures and Enigmatic Episodes of Shipwreck Radio. Read the introduction to this series here.

JUNE 19 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME TWO

A track from the second volume of Shipwreck Radio, the opening charm and welcome are drawn out, then sped up—announcing this as highly processed track. There’s a low and lowing electronic tone, then jangling metal adds to the eeriness. There is a moaning sample that is folded in as well, then another, and more jangling metal. After two minutes, we get the haunting calls of gulls, as a thudding echo is added as, then a shuddering beat enters with a ringing behind it building into a groove that takes over the track. After a few minutes a second beat enters, developing into a groove reminiscent to that of June 15, with some of the same tempo irregularities and seeming skips, but where the groove of June 15 was noisy and industrial, this groove stays just a bit sinister in its sonic structure. 

There are more ghosts from June 15 in this track, with the Lofoten Deadhead returning with “Lean back, you know, if the day has been hectic you just put on a record” being brought in after 7 minutes. But where June 15 seemed to invite you to relax, June 19 manages to take many of the same sounds and make it feel hectic and claustrophobic. Near nine minutes, a rushing metallic sheen slices through the track, a paranoiac cutting intruding before the groove seems to double in on itself and resume. As it returns after the ten minute mark you catch the edge of gull caws in it as the beat almost collapses like a heart beat in an arrest before the drawn out gull sheen begins to swirl, drawing the listener into the sonic whirlpool as a female vocal sample of “okay, okay” begins to repeat, the Lofoten Deadhead being drowned out by gulls that build an overwhelm the track like a scene out of birds, the groove continuing to chug unevenly along. In the last moments of the song, the Lofoten Deadhead sample begins to build again, layered over and over at faster and faster speeds until the track dissolves into a thinning colony of gulls, leaving you almost tempted to cast your gaze to the sky and make sure they’re not swirling above you.

Brick Wall Mix - Volume 1

 

A reoccurring feature in Drew Magary's Jamboroo articles is the "Pregame Song That Makes Me Wanna Run Through A Goddamn Brick Wall" which I thought of immediately the first time I listened to Herzschlager's "Unstoppable Herz". So of course, I had to put together a mix of songs based around songs that make me feel like I could run through a Goddamn Brick Wall. Calling this Volume 1, since I'm sure I'll remember/discover more songs and have another volume in the future.

#	Artist	Track
1	Herzschlager	Unstoppable Herz
2	Violet Cold	Working Class
3	The Lion’s Daughter	Neon Teeth
4	Alec Empire	Uproar
5	Sister Machine Gun	The Antagonizer
6	Stelliferous	Drowning Fascists
7	Andrew Liles	Kosmologick
8	Panopticon	Moth Eaten Soul
9	Pig	Contempt
10	Killing Joke	Walking with Gods
11	Foetus	Behemoth
12	Revolting Cocks	Stainless Steel Providers (Live)
13	Boris	Just Abandoned Myself

Shipwreck Radio - June 17

 

It’s that time of year when a (no longer) young man’s thoughts turn naturally to the Sonic Structures and Enigmatic Episodes of Shipwreck Radio. Read the introduction to this series here.

JUNE 17 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME ONE

This track follows June 15 both chronologically and on Shipwreck Radio Volume One, but it couldn’t be more different. The opening welcoming starts with a droning “emmm…” that recalls June 15 but then the track brings in the sounds of birds and snapping twigs (perhaps a fire?). It’s nearly ambient, seeming to be just the unprocessed sounds of an arctic island. As you start to hear gulls, you can also make out, faintly, a droning electronic hum in the background and here and there you catch subtle audio glimpses of sound manipulation, just enough to keep you aware that this is not unprocessed recording. For the listener who is not taking care and paying attention though, it might sound simply like one of the cheap “sounds of nature” CDs that one could get at Rainforest Café or wherever the veneer of hippiedom was subsumed and swallowed by crash commercialism. Then around four minutes, you start to hear pops, almost like a struck tennis ball, rubbery and round noises that leap out beneath the deftly processed sounds of sea birds. The snapping begins to change, sounding at times more like dripping water than cracking twigs, as the chorus of seabirds and an eerie hooting carries the track along.
A rolling electronic tone emerges, as more and more bird calls are added to the sonic structure, the rubbery popping still bursting now and then, punctuating the soundscape. By the eight minute mark there is no mistaking this for just another gimcrack sounds of nature CD as the bird calls—the hoots and honks, the chirping and caws, continue but are echoed by electronic noises, so that here and there you can hear just the hint of how the natural sounds could have been twisted into the electronic noises they float above.
By the eleven minute mark, that background crackling or dripping has now become rain, a summer shower that drenches the track, portending, naturally, a change of weather, as it were, the electronics surging over the bird calls as the water droplets pound the song. The more you listen, as the “rain” builds to a crescendo, the less it sounds like rain, and suddenly it’s become uneven and the bird calls fade away, a hint of a crowd’s whistle breaking what is now applause. Then the roar of the crowd builds at the fifteen minute mark, there is an introduction of a song in Norwegian, and then a slowed sample of an orchestra rehearsing, coughing, chatter, the rustling of paper as we leave that natural setting for a human one, the call of a lone gull there to guide us, sounding much like the squeal of a child, before there’s a cymbal-like crash and then metal scraping. A nearly human laughing repeats with the metal scraping before the track breaks into noise and the crash again, then water gently splashing against a boat. The boat motor providing a background hum, the pops returning, then bird calls, then children as the track shifts from the slow mutation of the first half to a more protean sound, the audio channels switching off and on, the metal crashing returning and then droning into a drumbeat as the orchestra returns.
Like the bird calls earlier, an incautious listening may not catch all the processing that the orchestra recording has been treated to, though then it is drawn out, slowed and made to glitch, the brass and woodwinds made to sound almost like slow and shrill beats, before we hear a child ask questions in Norwegian, to which either Steven or Colin from NWW answer “I don’t know, I’m English, I can’t speak Norwegian” and the track begins to develop this conversation into a meditative mantra, over a wavering electric tone and gull calls. 

The “I’m English” bit is drawn out into a stuttering confession, with a normal speed repetition of “I can’t speak, I can’t speak Norwegian I’m English” paired with the gull calls. Here is the groove then that the track settles into for the last third of the track, the electronic tones rising and falling behind it. After a few minutes there are additional vocal samples added with a Norwegian repeating “Nope. Nope” as NWW asks “Can you actually speak English, can you nearly speak English, do you know any words?” as the track explores the mutual unintelligibility, a theme that probably resonates with many people who attempt to listen to Nurse With Wound but find it baffling—simply seeming only to be noise and nonsense and missing the elevation of both.

Mittwoch Mix - Only Castles Burning

 

As previously mentioned, I am an immense fan of cover songs and have lists of artists that I'm slowly accumulating well-done covers of their songs until I have enough for a mix. The first artist where I reached the sweet-thirteen was Neil Young, so for the first single artist cover mix I present ONLY CASTLES BURNING.

#	Covered By	Track
1	Lung	Don’t Let It Bring You Down
2	Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld	Hey Hey, My My
3	The Mission	Like a Hurricane
4	Shy Violet	Heart of Gold
5	Low + Dirty Three	Down by the River
6	Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds	Helpless
7	Julie Karr	Rockin' in the Free World
8	Easter Teeth	Cinnamon Girl
9	Everyone is Dirty	Old Man
10	Screaming Females	Cortez the Killer
11	Breakfast in Fun	Cripple Creek Ferry
12	Chris Connelly	Fuckin’ Up (Live)
13	Thou	Don’t Let It Bring You Down

Shipwreck Radio - June 15

It’s that time of year when a (no longer) young man’s thoughts turn naturally to the Sonic Structures and Enigmatic Episodes of Shipwreck Radio. Read the introduction to this series here.

JUNE 15 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME ONE

When you’re not listening to the Shipwreck Radio Sessions in “chronological” order, this is the opening track of Volume One and the introduction to Shipwreck Radio. And what an introduction it is…after the a drawling “ehhh” that prefaces the opening greeting and chimes, we get a sample of a man’s voice saying “Shipwreck Radio” and then the track launches full bore into a churning industrial groove. Crunchy bass beats with a metallic ringing melody over them. But this is Nurse With Wound, so it’s not quite that simple, in a hint of what’s to come the groove seems to glitch or skip several times in the opening thirty seconds before it settles in. Gradually a second, deeper, dirtier groove emerges from beneath the first; crashing into it as the song churns, the tempo fluctuating, unsteady, staying just off-kilter enough that you can never quite settle into it. The “shipwreck” radio sample returns, floating up to the boiling surface off the track as the groove gets filthier and filthier, each beat seeming to accumulate more sonic debris, the ringing metallic melody overwhelmed at times. 

At times it seems as though the track will glitch or skip, as it did near the beginning, the structure seething like turbulent waves. An almost roaring noise enters in, pairing with each beating, rising and falling as the song continues it’s never quite steady commotion. The “Shipwreck Radio” sample begins to become more insistent as the track passes the eight minute mark and the beat becomes tinnier, the bass dropping out as it becomes just crashing metal then almost guitar like, a low rumble building beneath it that I would swear is a re-processing of the drawling “ehhh” from the opening before it becomes almost a grumbling and after 10 and a half minutes the opening chimes return, winking at the shift in the song to an entirely new sonic direction by reminding those who are familiar with Shipwreck radio that this is a sound of beginnings. 

The beat fades out and sped up vocals introduce a drawling male voice, possibly slowed down, possibly not, the low grumbling sound contrasted with the helium high sped up vocal bursts. This drones on until for over a minute until a high, possibly female vocal sample enters saying “Kinda like thin slices of, um, a cross between… well it’s very livery, um, not very fishy, maybe liver, tuna…”. This new vocal sample repeats, describing what sounds like a possibly acquired taste, starting to be cut and processed more and more until we hear the sound of footsteps echoing on a wooden dock and then at fifteen minutes there is a dragging sound and then a crash of wood and then metal, like a dropped box that a spanner falls out of, and the third, final and shortest section of the song begins. Now we get a conversation between two males, one Steven Stapleton or Colin Potter, the members of NWW at the time, and the other, the Lofoten Deadhead, after whom the bonus disc for Shipwreck Radio Volume One is named. The droning male and higher vocals continue, keeping the sound muddy but the conversation, the heart of the song, I’d argue, still comes through.

NWW-“So, why the Grateful Dead?”
LDH-“Cause the Grateful Dead is the ultimate band (sigh); you know, it’s been my all-time high since the late sixties. I, uh, it’s the perfect kind of music to relax to and, you know, if the day has been hectic, you just put on a record, lean back and, well, there you are, rather a long and strange trip.”

This conversation repeats as the other sounds drop away, so that “well, there you are” becomes the last word on the track.

Here then is the genius of Nurse With Wound, the inspired working that goes into these Shipwreck Radio tracks. We start with an electronic, noisy groove that people expect when they imagine there is a genre called ‘Industrial Music’, but done extremely well and left as a convulsing beast, never settling into a predictable or clichéd rut. Then, it’s nearly impossible not to connect the muddled and mixed description of the livery tasting fish to the way NWW mixes and muddies genres, creating a taste, that while it may need to be acquired, is like nothing else. Finally, we get the Lofoten Deadhead, a short bit of conversation so inspiring to Steven and Colin they named the bonus disc after him, and well, you know that I’m going to argue that Shipwreck Radio is actually the perfect kind of music to relax to, and well, there you are.

Shipwreck Radio - June 12

It’s that time of year when a (no longer) young man’s thoughts turn naturally to the Sonic Structures and Enigmatic Episodes of Shipwreck Radio. Read the introduction to this series here.

JUNE 12 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME TWO

The opening welcoming and chimes are clean and crisp, then a mellow warbling tone sets in. Compared to the last two tracks I've reviewed (June 6 and June 9), June 12 is much more meditative. Tones build and crest like gentle waves behind the warbling, evoking a calm shore. They slowly swell, as if a tide was coming, minute by minute, nearly imperceptibly, until around six minutes when a metallic ringing emerges from the pulsating tones, to grow along with the warbling. Then around minute nine the ringing begins to warp, merging with an echoing and windy sound, like that of wind blowing over a pipe, if you manage to strip away the processing. The track fades away abruptly, bringing an end to the undulating littoral drones of this pensive and relaxing track.

Shipwreck Radio - June 9

It’s that time of year when a (no longer) young man’s thoughts turn naturally to the Sonic Structures and Enigmatic Episodes of Shipwreck Radio. Read the introduction to this series here.

JUNE 9 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME TWO

The opening welcome is muddled and muddied, then the opening chimes give way shortly to a wavering and distorted sample of a woman discussing a documentary. This is interrupted by a clanging sample, then the discussion continues before it is interrupted again. The clanging begins to repeat, followed by a metallic melody that begins to fade almost as it's introduced, the clanging sample becoming more frequent and fragmented while a low tone builds imperceptibly in the background. The end of the clanging sample is caught; turned into a chittering and abstract line that floats above the low tone and below the still distorted clanging that continues to return and repeat. The chittering becomes almost a buzzing, burrowing into your ears, as the clanging gives way to a fuzzy, almost gong like sample, metallic in its own way, but gentler, sounding above the chittering. Around minute seven an insistent, accelerating rhythm comes in, followed again by the metallic melody from before, a little slower, that dances in and out with the chittering and gongs. Without warning,  the sampled female vocals return, manipulated into incoherence, with the insistent, accelerating rhythm returning and the gongs becoming harsher, the low tone in the background providing an uneasy surface for your mind to float upon as the female vocals return again with a recognizable refrain of “I'm not sure... about the artifice”. There are few other phrases that sum up Nurse With Wound as well as this, except perhaps for the “Categories strain, crack and sometimes break under their burden”...(perhaps the "But I'm not sure about the artist" fragment of vocals near the beginning of the track which cannot help but take on more significance upon an informed second listen). Clearly the track means to address the very heart of Shipwreck Radio—the artifice of taking samples recorded in the remote Norwegian district of Lofoten and turning them into something both uncanny and recognizable, when you encounter the samples or similar sounds in an unprocessed setting. Say, when you can recognize the accelerating rhythm as that of a stick being run along a fence or perhaps a length of ribbed metal tubing. The song doesn't belabor this point though, quickly letting the vocals fade away again, to return to the chittering, clanging and gongs; the sounds of Lofoten re-purposed, until a male vocal line enters around minute thirteen, cut up to sound like glossolalia. The last minutes of the track meander to it's conclusion, the gongs and metallic melody being the last to fade away, as it leaves you to your contemplation.

Shipwreck Radio - June 6

It’s that time of year when a (no longer) young man’s thoughts turn naturally to the Sonic Structures and Enigmatic Episodes of Shipwreck Radio. Read the introduction to this series here.

JUNE 6 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME TWO

The opening welcome is echoey and slightly tinny; after the beeps the track goes silent or nearly silent, then the soundscape slowly bleeds back in. First a ghostly and wavering tone, then a slowly building, cyclical plastic rhythm. On top of that, around three and a half minutes in, a second and more metallic melody is folded in, to complete the base of the song. It’s pure Nurse With Wound, simple in its components, yet rich, mesmerizing but still slightly unsettled and unsettling. Just after 5 minutes the next ingredients are added, first a juttering, mechanical sample that crashes through the tones and plastic rhythm in varying volumes, then another, more sinister tone that comes to lurk in the background, complementing and complicating that first ghostly tone. At some point you realize that something like a muted string line is also hiding in the background, building and emerging around the ten minute mark, as the mechanical juttering becomes more frequent and insistent, becoming nearly constant in the next minute, then fading again. The plastic rhythm starts to seem insectoid, the string like tone threatening to crest the surface of the song as the thirteenth minute arrives and then slipping back below the surface again. Now the plastic rhythm floats, chitinously, and nearly alone above the still spectral tones, until the song begins to fade, the juttering machine making several muted returns, but never breaking through as it did before, though it takes the plastic rhythm with it as it exits, leaving the uncanny tones that opened the song to wane again into silence as the song finishes. A phantom silence to end the track as it begins, an uncertain quiet, almost pulsing with the imagined tones of what came before.

Shipwreck Radio - June 5

It’s that time of year when a (no longer) young man’s thoughts turn naturally to the Sonic Structures and Enigmatic Episodes of Shipwreck Radio. Read the introduction to this series here.

JUNE 5 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME ONE

Another ghostly track off Volume One, though less sinister than June 3. It begins with the welcomings slowed down and pitch dropped slightly, then gives way to a tinny warbling with a pulsing and resonant tone building up in the background to lurk just behind the metallic warbling. This pulsing reverberation bubbles and mutates until it’s joined in the fourth minute by a growing buzz that swells to cut up through the warbling, the ghost of the clattering we’ve heard in other Shipwreck radio songs waiting, just barely audible at the edge of our awareness. The song remains meditative, though in a brooding fashion, and as we approach the seven minute mark we hear the chittering we’ve heard before. Here again, one can be amazed by how Messrs Stapleton and Potter repurpose the sounds of Lofoten, as the sound drones on. A note, here, to say that I mean drones on in the best possibly way, a drone to lose your ego in, to give your full attention to a deceptive simplicity, the changes in the track small enough to lull you in, yet never becoming flat or monotonous. The chittering is almost a purring by the tenth minute, the clattering rising up through the other sounds of the track but unable to reach the surface, the pulsing tone become sharper at its peaks, nearly tinnitus-like at times. By the thirteenth minute the song seems to begin to ebb, as the tone becomes piercing, the clattering more insistent as it struggles to break through the soundscape, chugging along until the pulsing reaches its biting tinnital peak as the song approaches its fifteenth minute and then fades into quietude as all the tones and noise drop away to leave you pondering as the sounds rattle around in your brain.

JUNE 5 - LOFOTEN DEADHEAD

Here it is, the secret key of Shipwreck Radio, twenty five minutes of Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter wandering the arctic isles of Norway and recording the sounds they'd manipulate and twist (strain, crack and sometimes break?) into the Sonic Structures and Enigmatic Episodes of Shipwreck Radio. Without the other songs before, the clips of seagulls, rocks thrown into water and so forth would be trivial, but listened through the lens of Shipwreck Radio as a whole it's enthralling to hear someone walking on a creaking wooden walkway and think of how that was used in the other songs and likewise, after you've listened to the track you'll hear the other Shipwreck Radio songs differently as well. There's no manipulation until after twenty minutes, where laughter echoes into what could be electronic processing, but also could just be the nature of the location where it was recorded. Then in the 26th minute there's a discussion with some Norwegians about singing a song about Lofoten Cod that breaks into mirthful laughter which is then layered and twisted for the remainder of the track. It's not the most interesting ending, which could explain why this was released on the bonus Lofoten Deadhead disc and not a main Shipwreck radio volume, but the track as a whole provides a sonic map to the world that was deconstructed and rebuilt by Nurse With Wound when they created the incredible structures and episodes of Shipwreck Radio.

Shipwreck Radio - Introduction and June 3

 

It’s that time of year when a (no longer) young man’s thoughts turn naturally to the Sonic Structures and Enigmatic Episodes of Shipwreck Radio.

Shipwreck Radio is a series of albums by Nurse With Wound documenting their residency in Lofoten, Norway during June and July 2004. Invited to stay in the unofficial capital, fishing village Svolvær, Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter were commissioned to produce 3 radio broadcasts per week for local station Lofotradioen of music constructed from whatever they heard or could find around the island. The project was instigated by Anne Hilde Neset and Rob Young of The Wire and by Kunst I Nordland, an organisation committed to bringing contemporary art to county of Nordland.

The duo created 24 broadcasts in total, each of either 15 or 30 minutes duration. Each broadcast was preceded by a jingle of a male voice saying "Velkommen Til Utvær" followed by a female voice saying the English translation "Welcome To Utvær", Utvær being the most remote island in Lofoten, with no permanent residents but 2 lighthouse keepers on hand. Many of the broadcasts treated or manipulated the two introductory voices with one consisting of nothing but such manipulations. 20 of these transmissions have been made available by Nurse With Wound across a number of separate releases with all tracks listed only by the date of original broadcast. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipwreck_Radio

I have been obsessed with these albums since I first encountered them in 2007 when I was collecting and consuming as much as I could of Nurse With Wound. The series consists of three main albums: Volume One, Volume Two and Final Broadcasts, and two bonus albums: Lofoten Deadhead and Gulls Just Wanna Have Fun.

During the market crash of 2008, I was working in brokerage ops opening self-directed trading accounts for fools who thought they could cash in on cheap stock trading, often working 12-14 hour days, six days a week and these albums were on heavy rotation, helping to keep me sane.

Each track on the three main albums, as well as Lofoten Deadhead, bears the date of its original broadcast, and for the last five years I've had a tradition of listening to each track on its namesake date.  There are twenty tracks associated with nineteen dates between June and July, and for each I'll be provided a descriptive review of the track for that date, or two tracks, in the case of June 5. All the tracks are available to stream for free on Bandcamp.com, so my hope is that this series will encourage readers to discover these eerie, meditative and haunting soundscapes.

JUNE 3 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME ONE

Here is one of the ghostliest of the Shipwreck Radio tracks, the introductory chimes and greetings so stretched and spectral as to be nearly unintelligible. They give way to a short-lived silence, then a low reverberating hollow sound that becomes the phantasmal base the song is built upon. After a minute, the low hollowness is joined by a dull and irregular thudding that lingers at the edge of the track, as well as a wraithlike melody, that is almost brassy. The bass reverberations build up and sound like the deep echoing growl of some nocturnal predator hunting in a pitch black cave. At three minutes a thrumming mechanical noise joins and the clatterings come more to the front, becoming sharper. By the five minute mark the thrumming has metamorphosed into something like a door creaking in the basement of some sinister house built too near the cliff’s edge, though it remains too deep for that, remaining uncannily on the edge of any number of noises that might cause you to shudder in the dark, as the phantom melody levitates above the rumbling bass at the base of the song. Around eight minutes, a melody emerges enough to sound voicelike– a nearly mute banshee wailing on a moonless night, gloomy and meditative. The soft but ominous track dares you to try and find comfort in it, to let yourself to be mesmerized and taken in by its inky beauty. Here is another track that is easy to dismiss when you give it only cursory attention but which is captivating and fathomless when you dive into it with your full attention.