eV's Underground... and a New Year's message...

[pheloniusfriar]

On December 14th, I did a fill-in show for eV's Underground: "Melodic metal, goth, hard rock, and more. Home of the Creepysweet - 5 hours of sonic seduction." This is a weekly show that runs from 2AM to 7AM on Tuesdays. The host was under the weather and she was looking for people to help out by taking shifts. As always, I thought I would have wrapped up everything I needed to wrap up by the time the show rolled out, but that just didn't seem to be the way anything worked out this fall :(. Either way, it was an honour to be asked (her show has something of a following, esp. with late night DJs and bands looking to fill their ears with something interesting after they're done playing), and quite the challenge — five hours is a lot of time to fill! In the end, I went in with a few well defined sets, a couple if ideas on anchors for other sets, and then had to "wing it" from there. Overall, I was quite pleased with how it turned out, and some bits were quite good (special thanks to kallisti for keeping me company, joining in, providing the Men Without Hats and Ministry's "Jesus Built My Hotrod" for me to play on the show, and selecting the Hawkwind/Prong/Blondie vs. The Doors set).

I opened the whole thing off with a reading from a particular XKCD comic that I keep pinned to the wall of my kitchen:

When did we forget our dreams?

The infinite possibilities each day holds should stagger the mind. The sheer number of experiences I could have is uncountable, breathtaking, and I'm sitting here refreshing my inbox. We live trapped in loops, reliving a few days over and over, and we envision only a handful of paths laid out ahead of us. We see the same things each day, we respond the same way, we think the same thoughts, each day a slight variation on the last, every moment smoothly following the gentle curves of societal norms. We act like if we just get through today, tomorrow our dreams will come back to us.

And no, I don't have all the answers. I don't know how to jolt myself into seeing what each moment could become. But I do know one thing: the solution doesn't involve watering down my every little idea and creative impulse for the sake of someday easing my fit into a mold. It doesn't involve tempering my life to better fit someone's expectations. It doesn't involve constantly holding back for fear of shaking things up.

This is important… so I want to say it as clearly as I can:

FUCK. THAT. SHIT.

The summary I wrote for the show's playlist page was: "Everything from XKCD (strip #137) spoken word to Voivod, Ministry, and chill ambient. Spotlight on the band The Hunger". One interesting thing that I did was a "live mashup" (first time I've even tried anything like that) of two pieces of music and I thought it worked out pretty frickin' well if I do say so myself. The two pieces I mixed were The Hunger's "Shock" and an unlikely pairing (through a happy accident as I was listening to stuff for the show) with Robotiko Rejekto's "Injection". You can try yourself if you want, lol: start with the Robotiko Rejekto, then play the Hunger track (with volume a bit lower) a few seconds in (right after the first "crash"), and repeat the Hunger track when it's over and fade it shortly after the Robotiko Rejekto track is done... note, it might take some effort to sync the tracks just right, just click pause/play really quick. Here is the playlist:

Emily Haines, Knives Don't Have Your Back, "Crowd Surfing Off A Cliff"
Men Without Hats, Folk Of The 80's (Part III), "I Sing Last/Not For Tears"
Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, Architecture & Morality, "Maid Of Orleans"
Telanas, Death Metal Rooster EP, "Death Metal Rooster"
Ministry, The Matrix (Soundtrack), "Bad Blood"
Whale, We Care, "Pay For Me"
Gnawing, Gnawing EP, "Kashow"
Eisenfunk, 8-Bit, "Pong"
Sister Soleil, Soularium, "Hit Me"
Omodaka, Unknown (Japan), "Kyoteizinc"
Narc, This Is What We Do!!!, "555-1212"
The Clay People, The Clay People, "Awake"
Voivod, The Best of Voivod, "Korgul the Exterminator"
TV On The Radio, The Apple Tree (video), "Red Dress (Glitch Mob Remix)"
Evil Nine, The Apple Tree (video), "All The Cash (Glitch Mob Remix)"
Nalepa, The Apple Tree (video), "Monday"
edIT, The Apple Tree (video), "Chunk de Gaulle (Instrumental)"
Boreta, The Apple Tree (video), "Bubblin' In The Cut"
Iszoloscope, Beyond Within, "Raudivian Device (Ah Cama-Sotz Remix)"
Crash Test Dummies, Give Yourself A Hand, "A Little Something"
Tubeway Army, Replicas, "Are 'Friends' Electric?"
Foo Fighters, Songs In The Key of X, "Down In The Park"
Sub.bionic, You I Luv, "Hush"
Exploring Inner Space (X.I.S.), Voodoo Roux Deux, "Sun Walker"
The Hunger, Demo, "Leave Me Alone"
The Hunger, Leave Me Alone, "Cut The Skin"
The Hunger, Devil Thumbs A Ride, "Vanishing Cream (live)"
The Hunger, Finding Who We Are, "So Lost"
The Hunger/Robotiko Rejecto, Cinematic Superthug/Robotiko Part 2, "Shock/Injection (live mashup)"
Hawkwind, DOREMI FASOL LATIDO, "Brainstorm"
Prong f. Ray Manzarek, Strange Days Soundtrack, "Strange Days"
Blondie vs. The Doors, N/A, "Riders vs. Rapture"
Yello, One Second, "Goldrush"
X, X-Files: The Album, "Crystal Ship"
Kevin Arsenault, King For An Hour, "The End"
Art of Noise, The Seduction of Claude Debussy, "The Holy Egoism of Genius"
Tomas Dvorak, Machinarium Soundtrack, "By The Wall"
Tomas Dvorak, Machinarium Soundtrack, "Clockwise Operetta"
Stendeck, Faces, "The Day I Saw You Cry For The First Time"
Stendeck, Faces, "Beneath Wonderlands"
Stendeck, Faces, "Like Falling Crystals"
Qntal, Impudent Simian, "Ludus (Tin Ape Remix)"
Whale, We Care, "Hobo Humpin' Slobo Bitch"
Green Jelly, 333, "Orange Krunch"
Ministry, EP, "Jesus Built My Hotrod (Redline/Whiteline Version)"
Rod Zombie and Alice Cooper, Songs In The Key Of X, "Hands Of Death (Burn Baby Burn)"
The Clay People, The Iron Icon, "Pale God"
Sister Soleil, Soularium, "Torch"
Crash Test Dummies, Give Yourself A Hand, "Keep A Lid On Things"
U.N.K.L.E. f. Moby, Self Defence, "In A State/God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters"

The show also featured the radio debut of Canadian artist Kevin Arsenault's cover of "The End" (produced by kallisti), and just 'cause he was showing off his talents, I couldn't help but slip a remix that I had done a while back for Qntal's track "Ludus" (which can be heard on acidplanet.com under my "band" name of Tin Ape).

And I will leave you with a video for one of the tracks that I played... I consider this one of the hottest (and likely scariest) videos ever made. Cia Berg is terrifying and sexy (she does a too convincing job methinks). I actually like quite a bit of what Whale did, way back when:

P.S. It's not on the official playlist, but I slipped this in there as well, lmao: Looking For A House in Barrhaven (a cautionary tale... you just need to type Barrhaven into YouTube to find this, fyi). P.S. Suburbs make my skin crawl... ;)