:Episode Two Hundred One: 9.18.2020

* Not on Spotify:
Nothing this week. Sometimes, they really do have it all.

Description

NOTE: The station's equipment ate this week's show, so I'm afraid it's Spotify-only. All the rock, none of the talk.

Among this week's highlights:

I've speculated before about what Julian Cope's follow-up to Krautrocksampler and Japrocksampler might be: Swederocksampler or Italorocksampler are my educated guesses. But an overview of Germany's and/or Japan's psychedelic/avant-garde scenes of the 80s/90s (which are now as far in the past as the 60s/70s were when the original "sampler" books were written) might be in order. Even if that era didn't produce another CAN or Flower Travelin Band, it was still rather fecund, creatively speaking. This is made evident in the catalogs of Bureau-B and Black Editions, which document, respectively, the latter day Krautrock and Japanrock scenes. In the opening set we hear samples from two new releases by Black Editions, both short-lived side projects of Acid Mothers overlord Kawabata Makoto originally released in 1995: the distorted free-rock experimentation of Musica Transonic and the lo-fi, folk-influenced, avant-garde weirdness of Toho Sara. Each retains the scuzzy, lo-fi freakiness of the hippie era, despite being recorded in the midst of Japan's glitzy, digital-age boom years.

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith (originally from Orcas Island, which every summer quarantines bored middle-school-aged kids from mainland western Washington in its many sleepaway camps) is responsible for two of my favorite albums of the year: her own, and the new compilation Breathing Instruments, out on her Touch The Plants label. Since the press material for the album is particularly well-written, I'll let it explain: "The directive for the composers featured on Breathing Instruments was, in effect, to accentuate the ways in which instruments sound like they are breathing. Some have recreated the literal experience of feeling or hearing the human breath. Others take a more abstract approach, where 'breathing' is more motif than object of emulation." I play three tracks: an 80s-Japanese-ambient-influenced number by Fools; some classically new age-y ambience by Constant Shapes; and the Kosmische-y pop ambience of Bana Haffar.

An interesting development in the ongoing 4th World revival has been its hybridization with other genres, particularly Kosmische. In fact, the two go so well together it kind of amazes me that there wasn't really anyone blending the two in the early 80s, when both of them were originally in vogue. One of the knocks against Kosmische is that it's a bit homogenous, texturally, a problem solved by incorporating the field recordings, hand drums, indigenous instruments, and other earthy, wholly analog elements of 4th World. The Russian synth wizard X.Y.R. is one of the artists in the vanguard of... 4th-smische? Kos-world?... and has recently given us a new EP, from which I play a track that sounds like a relaxing trip down a tropical river on a boat with someone who fortuitously brought along a portable modular synth.

Plus, a head (sleepily) nodding new single by dronelords Carlton Melton; the Iranian dark ambience of Siavash Amini; the avant-electronic meandering of Lucrecia Dalt; and recently reissued by Superior Viaduct, the French Kosmische one-off Fluence, featuring Richard Pinhas.