Feature: The Pencil-Case and Chromadrift

Etheric Currents
Etheric Currents
Feature: The Pencil-Case and Chromadrift
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This episode features a new-to-me artist, The Pencil-Case, who combine spoken word, electronica, and a whole lot of other influences into a unique sound of their own on their album, Euclidean Fractales, described as “a blend between electronica, breakbeat, ambient, [and] abstract-hip-hop, with a post-rock sensibility”.

Since this gave us only one hour of music, I’ve paired it with an album by Chromadrift, The Story So Far, to fill us out to the second hour.

Lots of beats, and a nice wind-down in the second half. Enjoy!

Podcast listeners, we’d love to have you join us, either in Orlov in Second Life, or on our Discord server at radiospiral.chat. Etheric Currents broadcasts Mondays, 6-8 Pacfic time, on radiospiral.net.

Featuring: 4T Thieves

Etheric Currents
Etheric Currents
Featuring: 4T Thieves
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This episode features the music of 4T Thieves — a great blend of electro beats and ambience.

4T Thieves (Nik Racine) is the founder of the Kavhvi Collective netlabel, one of the best places to find great electronica, and has been around since back in the Amiga demoscene in the ’90’s, with releases on Kavhi, Zenopolæ, Mahorka, Monotonic, among many. Racine has “semi-retired” from music making, concentrating on photography at the moment, but has produced a great catalog of releases; we’ll be listening to a selection from a number of different albums on this episode.

Kick back and let the beats wash over you. As always, support the artists by picking up albums from Bandcamp if you can, or from archive.org if you can’t — and pass it on!

Details – Circles – Halcyon Days – Glass – Electronic Tonalities – Electro Cool – Is Anybody There? – The Journeyman Project – The Singles – The Beginning – The Digital Lagoon – Winter – The Abyss – Fulcrum

Abandoned/Disremembrance/Monorails

Etheric Currents
Etheric Currents
Abandoned/Disremembrance/Monorails
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This week’s episode features three albums from the Bumpfoot netlabel.

Abandoned mixes sampling, electronics, and ethnic percussion into music that is reminiscent of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Based on a set of photographs taken in Vanatau in 2014, this EP (one wishes it were longer!) “…explores abandoned places and their broken dreams. The fractured beauty of abandoned places can tell wonderful narratives.” The artist is Timeofhex (Cissi Tang), and this is (so far) her only available release.

  • Abandoned
  • The Spirits Are Restless
  • Persistence of the Sea
  • Light and Shadow
  • The Spaces Beyond

Second up is Kevin Bryce’s Disremembrance, a more traditional electronica album covering a wide range of styles, from Boards-of-Canada-like dreaminess to Berlin School sequencer pulse. It’s a concept album, tracing the life of a young boy, from walking at night in a field, to grown up to be an astronaut, and launching into space.

  • Rye in BC evening suns
  • A walk in the forest
  • Venus Plus Y
  • The Decaying and the Painted
  • AM/FM
  • Disremembrance
  • Spas N Junk
  • I Make You a Spaceman
  • The Road to Mars

Last is Tracy Chow’s Music for Monorails, an intriguing shoegaze/electronica mix; its ambient roots are a nod to Eno’s Music for Aitports.

  • Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Skies
  • Myakka
  • Linlithgow
  • Honour With a U
  • FC Start
  • Nil
  • We Are Groot
  • Voyage to Vinland

This episode is a bit shorter, but the three albums fit together so well that I didn’t feel that shoving in another unrelated fifteen minutes would really make things better. Enjoy!

Kahvi: Ringworld

Etheric Currents
Etheric Currents
Kahvi: Ringworld
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A short episode this week, only one hour, as Equinox had an early-morning appointment and had to stop early.

This episode features the new Kahvi compilation, Ringworld. It’s an eclectic mix of tracks, and the episode is a selection from the two hours plus of music. We’ve chosen mostly beat-oriented tracks, but there’s a little abstract electronica mixed in.

  • Pridefool – Dystopian
  • Ideall – Faex Optim
  • Avatar – Astrobotanist
  • South West – Andrew Gatenby
  • Unklar – Notstandkomitee
  • Endorphin – O.donm
  • Doppler Shift – Stellaterra
  • Mofo (Full Monty Mix) – Bassoniq
  • Mowk – 3 Mint
  • High Up in the Sky – Kunds
  • M.u.d – Tony and Eileen’s Wedding
  • Crying Dream – The Oracle Model

Forrest Fang: Forever Cascades and More

Etheric Currents
Etheric Currents
Forrest Fang: Forever Cascades and More
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On this episode of Etheric Currents, we’ll be hearing tracks from Forrest Fang, featuring his new album, Forever Cascades.

He says,

“Though my walks near the San Francisco Bay were initially a way for me to clear my head, I also found myself drawn to the cycles and cadences of tides and aquatic life that shifted gradually from season to season. I was seeking a similar underlying cadence or pulse in these pieces that would evolve over time.”

He has also been publishing (on Facebook) a series of photos taken during his walks; if you’re on Facebook, I recommend checking them out.

We’ll hear a selection of tracks from this album as well as a number of others from his discography. If you’re not familiar with his style, Fang combines Frippertronics, Asian instruments, gamelan, and heavy studio processing to build lovely headfuls of sonic sculpture. His titles reflect his interests in mathematics and his love of the natural world.

Tonight’s show will have fewer beats than usual, but plenty of rhythms. It’s a more lean-back-and-close-your-eyes episode this time –take a deep breath, let it out, and let’s listen.

Electro-cool: Nameless Dancers, Lavoura, and more

Etheric Currents
Etheric Currents
Electro-cool: Nameless Dancers, Lavoura, and more
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This week’s episode is featuring music that combines many genres: jazz, electronica, latin, Bollywood, drum and bass, and whatever else the artists felt like into a nicely chilled mix that, for lack of a better word, I’m calling electro-cool.

In the first half we’ll be hearing from Nameless Dancers, Damare, Nienvox & 813, and Duis. Nameless Dancers features afro-beat percussion, tasty keyboards, a full-up brass section, and an outstanding drummer and bassist. Damare tilts more toward electronica, with excellent keyboard work, both electric and acoustic, and heavily manipulated samples. Nienvox and B13 conbines jazz and trip-hop into a dance-oriented mix, and, last, Duis mixes heavier electronics, jazz, and funk into a fascinating and unpredictable mix.

Due to unforseen circumstances, I had to push my break to a little later in the show, so I played a couple of unannounced tracks from Lavoura, a great band from Brazil, with their updated take on bossa nova and Latin jazz.

A minor emergency caused me to cut the second set a bit short, but the podcast episode will have the tracks we missed live: more Lavoura, a few fusion tracks from Martin Lowack’s SlowDrive, and then a last couple tracks from Lavoura and Nameless Dancers to round us out the the full two hours.

Massimo Discepoli’s Nheap: Ambient Jazz

Etheric Currents
Etheric Currents
Massimo Discepoli's Nheap: Ambient Jazz
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This week’s episode features a new-to-me artist, Massimo Discepoli. Massimo wears a lot of hats: incredibly accomplished drummer, teacher, multi-instrumentalist. Nheap is the monickker under which he has released several CC-licensed albums, which allows us to play them here.

We’ll hear from the albums Skymotion, Clouds Under the Table, The Ambient Sides, Flying and the Silence, and Realight. All are available via Bandcamp, and can all be picked up for less than $5 US — a real bargain.

Nheap combines electronica and sophisticated jazz into a delicious package, with plenty of beats and a large helping of cool. I was stoked to have found these releases, and I hope you’ll find them as much fun as I.

Netlabel space beats, on Wavelike, Dusted Wax, and Kavhi

Etheric Currents
Etheric Currents
Netlabel space beats, on Wavelike, Dusted Wax, and Kavhi
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Tonight’s episode features tracks that evoke space, space travel, or spaceflight, from several different netlabels, some more obscure than others.

Since this was a themed episode rather than a “selected tracks” one, we have a lot more links for you this week:

Many hours of great music on those releases — enjoy!

Kahvi: Playing Guess-the-Synth with One Synth I and II

Etheric Currents
Etheric Currents
Kahvi: Playing Guess-the-Synth with One Synth I and II
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This week’s episode has music from the Kahvi Collective’s One Synth and One Synth II releases, plus a few tracks from their Tangents release to make up the full two hours.

The One Synth releases have a gimmick: each track is done with a single synth, multiracked as necessary, and because we have a fair number of musicians (and a synth expert in the form of Mr. Spiral himself), we played a bit of Guess the Synth in chat and in Second Life, which you’ll hear a bit of in the voiceovers.

Gimmick aside, these are great tracks by excellent performers, and I think you’ll really enjoy this episode.

Juta Takahashi’s “Miyabi” and Dusted Wax Chill

Etheric Currents
Etheric Currents
Juta Takahashi's "Miyabi" and Dusted Wax Chill
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This episode premieres Juta Takahashi’s new release, Miyabi. It is a patient meditation on repeating sequences, subtly orchestrated to change over time from one for to another, like seasons changing from winter to spring, and will give you time to settle in and be with the changes as they unfold.

Miyabi has its intense moments, but they evolve naturally as the music flows quietly and calmly, moving inevitably forward like time itself. Miyabi is available from Juta’s website, and I highly recommend picking up your own copy (support our artists!).

  • Stellar Light
  • Miyabi
  • Rêve Lucid
  • Devotions

https://jutatakahashi.bandcamp.com/album/miyabi

The second half of the show features two EPs from the Dusted Wax netlabel, Jazz One’s 1995, and Ego Dome’s Neurocentric.

True to the artist’s name, 1995 spins jazzy loops and hip-hop rhythms together to build laid-back beats — imagine Monk getting recruited for a mix by Public Enemy.

  • Goodie Goodies
  • 95
  • Sebajun
  • Slick Rick
  • Brainstorm
  • True and Livin’
  • The Beatnuts – Do You Believe (Jazz One Remix)

Neurocentric uses a different timbral and rhythmic language, energizing and relaxing, like listening to an android singing its own version of jazz standards in a smoky club.

  • Lounge Track
  • Me and My Shadow
  • No More Clouds
  • Scatterbrain
  • Intergalactic Sesh
  • Zephyr
  • Shadow of the City
  • Trust Yourself
  • Summer Night’s Dream
  • Valium
  • Momentary Bliss

It’s an episode to wind down with, and I hope you enjoy it as much as our listeners did.