Sonixcursions:025 Podcast

Sonixcursions 025 Podcast

It’s been a while. To say that 2023 has been pretty much a disaster for me so far would be a massive understatement. Thankfully there’s plenty of amazing music floating around to help me get by. I wanted to get this out for the holiday weekend here in the US, and the extended track list should fit the bill nicely.

Track Listing

Holy Wave “Nothing in the Dark” (0:00) – from the album Five of Cups

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Sonixcursions:024 Podcast

sonixcursions podcast 24

Join me for a mix of the latest Outersounds that will help you escape reality for just a little while. In this episode I’m playing some of the music that’s been spinning around here this past summer, from soaring guitars to lazy electronic haze.

Track Listing

The Asteroid No.4 “Emma” (0:00) – From their most recent album Tones of the Sparrow. They will be touring the UK and the EU in October and November this year so check out their website for details.

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Sonixcursions:023 Podcast

sonixcureions podcast 23

2022 has been an amazing year for music so far. For this round, the mix flows from summer camp hauntology to analog synths to ambient slide guitar, so find a comfy place or go for a long walk and let the sounds unfold.

Track Listing

Pneumatic Tubes “Joyous Lake” (0:00) – off an album I still can’t stop listening to, A Letter from TreeTops on the Ghost Box label.

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Sonixcursions:022 Podcast

sonixcursions podcast 22The existential dread meter is running high these days, and listening to music is one of the only things that can take my mind off the news. Here’s a half-hour break from the daily grind with a selection of kosmische, ambient, electronic and radiophonic tunes pulled from the latest releases.

Track Listing

The Soundcarriers “At The Time” (0:00) – their first new music in eight years, from the album Wilds.

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Sonixcursions:021 Podcast – Favorites of 2021, Part 2

sonixcursions podcast 21

Here it is, finally – the second half of my favorites of 2021. So far this year has been quite a whirlwind. With day job workload and the general daily grind, finding time to wrap this up has been challenging, but I wanted to close the loop on this since some of my absolute favorites of the year are in this mix.

Track Listing

The Voice of Saturn “Winston” (0:00) – the solo work of Travis Thatcher, one half of the duo Personal Bandana. This track is taken from the release Gratitude, on the Woodford Halse label.

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Random Orbitings – January 12, 2022

Field Lines Cartographer supercluster

Hard to believe we are already 12 days into the new year, and so far 2022 ain’t looking much better than last year. As always, my solace in this crazy world is music that lets my mind wander and relieves some cognitive load. For 2022, I am restarting these Random Orbitings posts, and will share more of the mind-expanding music that has been flowing through my headphones.

I recently posted part 1 of the Favorites of 2021 podcast episode, with part 2 following in the next few days. For now, here are three new releases to kick off the year.

Field Lines Cartographer

Approaching from space, Field Lines Cartographer delivers five long-playing cosmic voyages clocking in at an average time of 11 minutes. The Woodford Halse label released Superclusters last week, and it was recently featured on Bandcamp for best-selling compact discs sales across the entire electronic music category (one of those CDs was mine.) If you are lucky and happen to be in Liverpool in early April, catch FLC open for the venerable Marconi Union.


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Sonixcursions:020 Podcast – Favorites of 2021, Part 1

Sonixcursions podcast 20

Welcome to part one of my two-part favorites of 2021 episode. As we wind down this insane year and look toward 2022, I’ll be playing 10 tracks on this part one and 10 on part two, so relax and enjoy the finest outersounds of the past 12 months.

Track Listing

All India Radio “Don’t Turn Around (feat Yin)” (0:00) – the opening track off of one of my favorite albums of the year, Afterworld.

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Sonixcursions:019 Podcast

Sonixcursions 19 Podcast

It’s summer here in the northern hemisphere, and things are slowly opening up after the long pandemic lockdowns. This episode has been a few weeks in the making, and includes new and upcoming retrofuturistic jazz and electronic music, a smattering of ambient and soft synth arpeggios, and closing out with the dramatic post-rock of veterans Fly Pan Am.

Find an easy chair and let your mind unwind.

Track Listing

D Rothon “Eight Million Miles High” (0:00) -from the new album entitled Memories of Earth on Clay Pipe Music.

The Pattern Forms “The Scenic Route” (3:14) -a project from musician Jon Brooks that integrates the sound of harpist Tom Moth – not something you hear very much of these days.

Concretism “Red, Green, Blue” (7:50) -from the album Tellifusion – “an homage to the obsolete television technology that has faded into history” – on the Castles In Space label.

Colleen “Revelation” (12:30) -from one my favorite new releases, The Tunnel and the Clearing on Thrill Jockey.

Ishmael Cormack “Yellowstone” (18:22) – an electro-acoustic sound artist from England, from his latest release Many Wild Things on the Slow Music Movement label.

Light Humidity “Autumn’s Refuge” (21:40) -a joint venture between musicians Jason T Lameroux of the Corrupting Sea and Paul Rhodes of Your Gaze. From the upcoming release Liquid on the Somewherecold label.

Fly Pan Am “Body Pressure” (26:10) – classic Montréal post-rockers who’ve returned from an extended hiatus. From their latest album Frontera.

As always thank you for listening. Sign up for the email newsletter to get updates on these and other bands featured in the episodes. I’m working on a new format for the newsletter with more frequent updates on new releases, so stay tuned!

If you enjoy this episode or have any suggestions, send me a message and share your thoughts. All listener feedback is appreciated and helps build a better podcast.

Stay sane out there!

Sonixcursions:018 Podcast

Sonixcursions 18 Podcast

Spring is in the air here at SonixHQ, and with things opening up again it feels like a new beginning. This episode is mostly guitar-based, from the swirly psychedelics of Magic Castles to the cosmic country soundscapes of the Howard Hughes Suite. Though I’ve thrown in a few electronic tracks from Dolphins of Venice and Survey Channel to balance things out.

Track Listing

Magic Castles “World of Time” (0:00) – kicking off this episode is the latest from Magic Castles, from their long-awaited album Sun Reign.

The Green Kingdom “Sol 1” (5:30) – an artist who has shown up on this podcast several times now, this is from the recent album Solaria on the Sound In Silence label

Survey Channel “Vitamin Mind” (9:10) – Buffalo, New York-based electronic musician Survey Channel, off the latest album Silent Graphs.

Dolphins of Venice “Golden Day” (12:34) – a collaboration between Tim Koch and Adrien Capozzi, from their recent Autoschediasm EP.

Sansyou “Eyes Front” (17:00) – the long-time musical project of David Nicholas returns with the familiar “reverb drenched guitars” mixed with keyboard atmospherics courtesy of new member John Mark King. This is the title track from their latest EP.

The Howard Hughes Suite “Undertow” (20:26) – a cosmic country sound taken from the recently released album Smoke From a Future Fire on the Slow Music Movement label.

Billow Observatory “Red Morning” (23:40) – an ambient collaboration between Jonas Munk of Causa Sui and Jason Kolb of Auburn Lull.

Tristan Welch “Legislative Morality” (28:40) – from his latest album Temporary Preservation. I recently interviewed Tristan for the blog if you want to find out more about this musician who’s got a lot to say.

Black Brunswicker “Wake Me Up When This Is Over” (33:00) – lo fi acoustic soundscapes from the album Temple of Spring.

As always thank you for listening, and sign up for the email newsletter to get updates on these and other bands featured in the episodes.

If you enjoy this episode or have any suggestions, send me a message and share your thoughts. All listener feedback is appreciated and helps build a better podcast.

Stay sane out there…

Tristan Welch: Undertaking Ambient

Ambient instrumental music is notoriously abstract and nebulous, making reference points and context hard to determine or convey. If a musician is trying to make a social statement or commentary, it’s usually done through lyrics or spoken work. Guitarist Tristan Welch creates expressive ambient music for thinking people that comes coupled with a message: all is not right with our economy and society here in America. He’s an outspoken musician with a sardonic take on modern human existence, and has just released his latest album Temporary Preservation—a concept based on his experience as a funeral director. Tristan is the most fascinating musician I’ve met in a long time, and I had to get in touch with him to find out more about the ideas and personal history behind his sound.

Backdrop

tristan welch undertaking ambientI started off by asking Tristan how he got started creating music and got a brutally honest response. “I’ve been playing music for a long time”, he says, “I grew up on punk stuff and hardcore, that was what appealed to me when I was younger, but I was never very good at it. And any band I had would fall apart for various reasons. And through a lot of that, truthfully I was on drugs. Like it was bad, so that would kind of take over.”

Recovering from drugs and addiction would form the basis of a personal rebound, but not without first abandoning his musical aspirations. “So around like 17, 18, that was my frame of mind, and as I mentioned before, I had a real bad drug addiction, so just really fell apart. Various jails and institutions and things for years. I sold everything I had or pawned it.”

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