Shipwreck Radio - July 4

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.

JULY 4 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME TWO

The opening chimes splutter and there is just the barest hint of the customary welcomings, then the song moves into a low grumbling tone. A sliver of a ringing tone lurks below the choppy growling that dominates the track. About four and a half minutes in a disquieting whistling joins the track, breaking through the chop; woeful and piercing. The whistling wails above the low bass rumble of the base of the track, threatening to tear into it two tones, and around seven and a half minutes the song begins to be broken up by infrequent electronic glitches that break the soundscape for just a fraction of a second at a time. Near the nine minute mark, the whistling does finally spit into two shrill tones, a distressing duet gliding above the clangorous base. 

At eleven minutes the whistling seems to crack again—almost shredding into a dozen tones before it begins to stutter, less shrieking as it pulses now, the high constant tone broken into a fraying rhythm. The whistling continues to pulse along, broken and fractured, but less screeching until there's another break in the song just before fourteen minutes and then the whistling pulse doubles on itself becoming frantic and fast, reminiscent of violin stabs in a horror soundtrack before it fades away to the end of the song. Easily one of the more difficult listens of the Shipwreck Radio recordings, but no less rewarding for anyone who wants an arresting meditation

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