:Episode One Hundred Sixty-Five: 11.22.2019

* Not on Spotify:
Everything! You're going to have to actually listen to the show recording, I'm afraid.

Description

A couple of notes about this week's show: first, once again, due to a technical issue at the studio (namely, the internet going out - you'd think an internet radio station would have a secure, stable internet connection. You'd think.) there's about a five minute gap in the show that occurs around the end of the second song. Second, this week's show is a sequel of sorts to one I did back in April, in honor of 4/20 (about which I said at the time: while I do not think pot or other psychedelic drugs are at all necessary to enjoy psychedelic music (just to enhance it, in the words of Otto Mann), 4/20 is, for better or worse, the closest thing we have to a psychedelic holiday) that celebrates one of the highest (no pun intended) forms of psychedelic and/or avant-garde music: the extended drone. (Also, the earlier show, from April 19, is still available on my show page on the HoS website **UPDATE** And now it's a Spotify playlist, as well.)

The opening set begins with the title track from Church of Anthrax, one of the best avant-rock albums ever made, by two titans of late-20th century experimental music, Terry Riley, and John Cale. It's an record that, given the relative renown of its two composers, you'd think would be more well-known. Yet I have, on multiple occasions, met people who were big fans of both who had no idea it existed (and were subsequently blown away when they heard it). Next we have a staple of The Space Program, Expo '70, with a track from Mystical Amplification, one of their more low-end-heavy, Sunn O)))-ish albums (that was just repressed on vinyl and is available now - Justin Wright, Mr. Expo '70 himself, is still recovering from a rather nasty mishap, involving a power saw and his hand, that he suffered last year, so any cash you throw his way I'm sure is appreciated). The set concludes with another title track, from Ariel Kalma's groundbreaking first album, Les Temps des Moissons.

The middle set starts with maybe the most brilliantly dumb pop song ever written, Faust's "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl." It's a reductio ad absurdum satire of pop music's most noxious elements - insipid lyrics, uninspired instrumentation and structure - that is also, at the same time, incredibly fun and catchy... just like pop music. This is followed by Perde Kaldirma, a piece of Sufi ritual music meant to accompany whirling dervishes, that comes from one of the most psychedelic world music compilations I've ever encountered (other than those released by Sublime Frequencies), called simply Trance 1 (released in the mid-90s, before "trance" became established as a subgenre of electronic music) that I picked up in a thrift store in the early 2000s. Also, if you're looking for a slightly abridged version of this song, Master Musicians of Bukkake recorded one for their 2010 album Totem Two.

Leading the final set is a song that I played for the first all-drone show, The Heavenly Music Corporation, from Fripp & Eno's masterful No Pussyfooting (that, like Church of Anthrax is also oddly overlooked), but, this time it's... backwards. The 2008 CD-only reissue of the album contains completely reversed versions of both songs (and a half-speed version of Heavenly Music Corporation), as a "tribute" of sorts, to legendary BBC DJ John Peel, who accidentally played it that way on his show when it was released back in 1973. The set and the show then conclude with some Gnawan healing music performed by one of Morocco's many musical brotherhoods, taken from Trance 2, which, as you might guess, was the sequel to the above-referenced Trance 1.