Idyllic Music Podcast | Trip Hop - Downtempo - Electronica

This week, we'll explore the belief that all that we know of God can just as easily be attributed to the sun. Of course, sun worship is as old as civilization and even in an Old Testament context, the sun can be just as punishing or life sustaining as God. So rather than worship, we'll marvel at the hope and happiness, love and warmth we get from the sun with help from Adam and Alma, Artemis, Blear Moon, Massive Attack, SackJo22 and Sunspot and Sect23

This week, we'll welcome the cleansing power of fire. It's a concept so broad as to include ancient elements of Egyptian, Christian and Druid rituals as well modern ideas about the birth of the universe. On a personal level, Fire can lead either to brilliance or devastation. As Tennessee Williams noted "We all live in a house on fire".

This week, we'll look at abbreviations and acronyms. You see them everywhere from texts and license plates to government forms and love notes. They might be cute and clever or confusing and inscrutable but these brevis or shortenings have become the bane of writers and lovers of language everywhere. We'll hear from six artists, PDQ, who use them in name and title only. LOL. They are 2 percent, The Reverend Shortboy, WEED, Alien S, Alec Troniq and Rho.

This week, we'll breathlessly await a world of possibilities. The future is more open, blended and diverse than it was even a generation ago. That means there is more opportunity for progress and enlightenment even in the face of retrenchment. The tide is inevitably against the forces of the status quo. It's called progress and it's not limited to the macro. Everyone has the possibility of growth.

This week, we'll look at the unbearable sadness that marks the end of relationships. Whether the result of the discovery or admission of infidelity or the euphemism of 'growing apart', the cold numbness deep inside of those unaware and most pained lives on in a hundred ways. Its never about them as protested but the left behind deal in anger and recriminations, self-doubt and what-ifs. It is a sadness that lessens over time but never heals. Seven heartbreaking tales are offered up this week by Delgarma, Garmisch, Cobrider, Billy Cote and Uniit Carruyo, Tumc, and Full source.

This week, we'll try to fathom the hidden world of Esotericism. It's a fool's errand; really, because the point is certain things are kept by a narrow circle of the enlightened or initiated away from the rest of us. The most obvious are in the government or religious arena but the idea cascades down to much smaller things like school or office politics. Holding the torch whilst we search the catacombs are the x-structure, Tang Kai, Dive Index, Sister Overdrive, Sekotis and Secret Archives of the Vatican.

This week, we'll look at the wars men wage with all its glory and tragedy. How something so awful can be a source of honor and how Napoleonic ego can lead us into horrific conflict. It's the story of mankind for better or worse and war's moral paradox largely defines the human race. Informing us in ways large and small are Kate Martin, Drifting In Silence, Jelle, Bill Laswell, CC Asia and Peter Gabriel.

This week, we'll lay back and take in Camus' invincible summer. In times of ambiguous environments, artificial seasons, climate controlled offices and 24 hour shopping malls, its nice to revel in the easy season. Summer. Its sprinklers, beaches, vacations and slower pace.

This week, we'll look at Promises and Lies. When Ali Campbell sang of the sorrow and pain from the serpent's song of a lovers deceptiveness, he also implied that acknowledging those lies led to hope and healing. Setting down that road this week are Sabian, Vela, Null Device, Wordless Poem and Lucky Cat.

This week, we'll marvel at the plant world. Turning the sun's energy into life from nutrients in the soil and atmosphere is so fundamental to our existence that it is hard to believe we would do anything to disrupt it. Taking us through the first trophic level are Rho, Hands Upon Black Earth, Analog Fury, Sitchin, and Seth Master.

This week, we'll look at tall tales. Stories and fables of exaggeration and entertainment some fantastic and others with morals. They often contain a morsal of truth spun out to the absurd across every culture but reaching a zenith in 19th century American folktales like Paul Bunyan, Brer Rabbit, Little Babaji and John Henry. Ixtlan, Erosops, Refrag. Sounda, Botany Bay and Capt. Beefheart.

This week, we'll look at migrations and aspirations. For millennia, people have moved from one place to another seeking better lives. Whether it was for better hunting, soil or jobs the migration was like rivers to the ocean, constant and inevitable. The sorrow of leaving behind the old and struggles to establish the new have marked every one of us. Immigrant and resident alike.

This week, we'll look at at the sweet and lowdown. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. Ellington knew it and Irving Mills codified it but many of today's singer-songwriters from Jack Johnson, John Mayer, Nora Jones and notably Amos Lee's "Sweet Pea" have taken it to heart. From it's pre-war origins, swing music's rhythmic style based on a triplet subdivision of the beat was what moved hips out on the dance floor.

This week we'll scan the skies of high altitude air travel. Nothing strikes the imagination like following contrails left behind a jet aircraft in the late afternoon sky. Who is on board? Where are they going? Are they beginning an adventure or heading home? Looking up can bring a touch of envy. Providing the lift for us this week are The Twombley Spiders, The Atomica Project, Ray Garrido, Metastaz, Boneshaman and Innereyefull.

This week, we'll examine the drought. At any one time a goodly part of the world experiences Meteorological Drought with consequences measured in tens of thousands or even millions of lives. The images of drought, the cracked and barren soil, the dust clouds and snapshots of fishing boats stranded in a dry lake bed speak to the loneliness of emotional drought. So too do the 6 songs on this edition of Idyllic Music.

This week we'll look at chapters. Readers know how an author uses them to pace a story, setting up cliffhangers, jumping storylines and setting natural breaks at the end of a sitting so you can go to bed but chapters are even more apparent in our life stories. The titles of the 7 songs we'll hear on this episode of Idyllic Music simply sound like chapters and, perhaps, they are.

This week we'll look at life along the world's great rivers. Despite the fact that nearly every major inland city is located along side a major waterway, life down on the banks is often rough, hard scrabbled and often dangerous. McCarthy's Cornelius Suttree personifies the descent from sophisticated urban living to the hand to mouth life along the river. He's not alone.

This week, we'll celebrate Idyllic Music's 150th episode by looking forward. Fifty shows ago we offered up two CD ready mixes of the best vocal and instrumental tracks of the previous 100 programs. This time around we enter the new decade having kicked over the last and not looking back.

This week we'll look at beauty and terror as seen in the mythology of women. Stories though out history mostly told by men of power and tragedy, love and treachery featuring the likes of Aphrodite, Xi Shi, the Gorgon Medusa and Goddess Kali. These tales are endlessly fascinating yet rarely illuminating of the lives of actual women.

This week, we'll look at five artists making deeply layered dense and hypnotic electronica. In the early part of the decade Minimalism, glitch and even chiptunes were a reaction to what became a pretty predictable set of recordings featuring 4 chord progressions and pedestrian beats. Now finding a new mix of drama and subtlety are Ed Drury, Melorman, Northcape, Bitbasic and Wordless Poem.

This week we'll look at known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. For several weeks, half a dozen great songs have lingered on the desktop as I've looked for ways to include them on the show. They are by unknown, unsigned artists, well known indie bands and arena popular stars. All podsafe. This week I'll string them together and let you guess who they are. Film at 11.

This week, we'll look at the downcast and sorrowful. Baruch Spinoza defined sadness as the transfer of a person from a large perfection to a smaller one. All the songs on the show this week have an underlying sadness. They are small vignettes of personal loss and helplessness and yet they are not uncomfortable or painful. There is a soul cleansing purging quality that makes you feel raw and renewing.

This week, we'll look at the final day. It's something we all have in common. The fact that everyone of us will die. To some it's simply a transition from one world to another. While others see it as the moment our atoms are dispersed back into the universe. How we choose to approach the final day defines almost everything we do in all the days that precede it.

This week, we'll look at enormity and scale. Whether it's astrophysical or personal, size and distance is often difficult to gauge. Everyone has seen artist renderings of the solar system depicting the sun and planets but the scale of those drawing can't begin to reflect the actual distance between those satellites. The same is true with opinions and feelings. Often we feel so distant when in fact we share much more in common with each other than not. Other times not so much.

This week, we marvel at the July 20th 1969 landing on the moon. Although this achievement took place 40 years ago and great strides have been made is subsequent years on furthering our reach into the stars, It continues to awe and inspire. Celebrating with us this week are Canola Tenderfoot, the silk demise, Makaras Pen, Anonymous Horses and Gabriel.

This week, we'll examine the Phoenix. The Firebird, Feng-Huang, Ho-oo, Benu, or Yel. The myth of this self- rejuvenating bird cuts across almost every ancient culture often symbolizing death and rebirth. The Phoenix is said to consumed by fire every 500 years only to be reborn from its own ashes. Aphone, Eigenheimer, The Orientalist, Phour Trakk, Hands upon Black Earth and Ecovillage

This week, we'll look at Angels and derivations, warnings and votaries. These nine artists are unafraid the bare the unvarnished, emblazon their influences and balance the devilish with the angelic. Some of the tracks are complete others remain ideas to be fleshed out but all compel. We'll hear from J.S. Marti, Idyllic, Will Kriski, Tronic Koi, Scarlet Hideout, Half Past Sun, The Flavor Foundation, One Blue Nine and Jardin Solar.

This week, we'll look at the increasingly antiquated idea of old world versus new world especially in music and art. Cultures measured by millennia rather than centuries are borrowing and incorporating sounds and instruments in ways unthinkable in the past

This week, we'll look at the human tendency to put off until later what we could do today. It is the period of time between when we can exercise influence over events and that moment when they are decided for us. That fine line between free will and fate.

This week, it's world studies as we look at education and educators from around the world from ancient Greece to the local school down the street. The syllabus is wide open as we hear from Bangguru, Nobara Hayakawa, Artemis, Jikjax, Elam, PiliPili and Bruce McCosar.

This week, we'll look at memories and the way we twist them inside out sometimes to serve our own purposes. Looking back on this episode of Idyllic Music are 46 Bliss, Pierre the Moon, MoVox, Screenatorium, Classic SciFi and Catsauce.

This week, we'll look at the great American art form as it finds its way into the 21st century. Jazz continues to evolve in ways that are both striking and familiar. Just as Charlie Parker and Charlie Christian took popular music and stripped it to its core before radically making it their own, today's musicians are taking the cut and paste technology of hip hop and using it to disassemble, rearrange and rethink the process of improvisation.

This week, we'll look at solids. The two hardest things to grasp about them are that objects that appear to be solid are made up of molecules that are never actually in contact with each other and that because solids have thermal energy, their atoms vibrate. Firming up this concept for us are Mujaji, Proviant Audio, The Orb, DJ Limpet and Dr. Ektoplazmic.

This week, we'll look at the shortcomings and foibles of the post modern character. Not nearly the deadly sins but some common universal human weaknesses we all can recognize. Pointing them out to us on the episode of Idyllic Music are Band of Mad Women, Margareds, Mat's,Gosprom, Stockfinster and Line.

This week, we'll look at the unlikelihood of finding true love. Not that it doesn't happen all the time, it's just that's it's amazing that it happens at all. Bookstores are filled with attempting to explain how and why relationships succeed or fail. The odds of finding someone with whom you are truly compatible with is daunting. Taking the plunge anyway are Cris Tanzi, Prototype 68, CDK, The Reverent Shortboy, Steen Throtrup and iambic

This week, we'll look at the many aspects of melancholia. In particular, German Renaissance master Albrecht Durer engraving of the same name. We can linger over the many symbols of mathematics and alchemy portrayed in the work but ultimately it's all about how one feels. Expounding and deflecting for us this week are All India Radio, Plastik Joy, Matisse and Deeper Sublime, Eskazed, Blind Divine and Gate Zero

This week, we'll look at the life giving and restorative power of water. While water is the most abundant molecule on Earth's surface and nearly 60% of the human body is water, we often take for granted is enormous importance. Since all water is essentially the same, it is what is dissolved into it that accounts for the differences we consume whether our freshwater comes from deep in Lake Baikal or from the muddy Mississippi. And so the show is all about water. Drink up.

This week, we'll look at the need to move beyond our troubled pasts and embrace hope for the future. Each of these tracks evokes a specific moment particular to American political history. We'll hear from Downliners Sekt, Naoned, Sans Edge, Tryad and Silence.

This week, we'll look at the path to redemption. Waiting to hit bottom to know when to climb back up often ignores the notion that the journey may well be circular. Redeeming them selves for us this week at Owen, DigiTube, Argon 40, Vate, 33Canales and Babbaracos.

This week, we'll look at the mind expanding possiblities of travel. Whether global or microbiological, it the movement of bodies, objects and, ultimately, ideas, that allow us the benefits of progress. And so We'll hear from enLounge, Victoria Mosley and The Sublimes, Indidginus, Null Device and Electric Salmon.

This week, we'll look at a human weakness. Whether physical, emotional or spiritual, we all make blunders and mistakes. It's what we do afterward that counts. We'll hear from five artists who realize this and take the next step toward growth and healing. We'll begin with something new from Peach Stealing Monkeys.

This week, we'll look at what's underneath. Not necessarily inferior, lesser, or subordinate but from the unique perspective of looking up. Gazing upward are Dive Index, Alikproject, Under, Asa Zen Sei and Nenes.

This week, we'll take a look at idea that the visible world is pervaded by invisible forces or spirits, which affect the lives of the living. It's a belief that predates most mainstream religions and remains in many ways we may not immediately recognize. Much of today's electronic club music employs many techniques shared by shamanism. The beat, repetitive vocal samples and binaural beats. There is a reason we call it Trance.

This week, we'll look at Strange Overtones. It's not only the title of a new collaboration between modern music Giants, David Byrne and Brian Eno but also in a harmonic sense, it's a complex and intriguing musical tone. We'll hear from six artists who take this familiar but different approach to their sound. There is Dikital, Cling, Lesley Dodd, David Byrne and Brian Eno, J-CLX and Vincent Wood.

This week, we'll look at cosmetics or altering the appearance without affecting the body's structure or functions. It's by definition superficial but can change perceptions of oneself and others often for the better but not necessarily. Musical remixes are in essence cosmetics but so are tattoos and eyeliner. Setting the foundation for us are Pipo Pegoraro, Obedientbone, Mavro, ElodieO and Crystal Palace.

This week, we'll listen to the percussive side of World Music. Seven bands will add subtle electronics to the inherently primitive act of striking a note. Providing the variation for us are Sub Dub, Conduct Unbecoming, Fraud Fix, Lendi Vexer, DJ Diganta, Queenie and Siberian Newspaper.

This week, we'll look at the essential symbiosis of independent artist and podcaster. This mutualism is best put forward by an association of cooperative relationships. In particular, an Association of Music Podcasting. Visit myspace.com/musicpodcasters to learn how artists and podcasters can help each other in a world of tight play list and tighter labels. We'll hear from Anneke Laurent, Yimino, Gilo, Nihaya Tree and Annie Goliath.

This week, it's the many flavors of America's great art form. Jazz. For more than a century this style of music has refused strict categorization. From Bop to Rag, Funk to Swing the cool sounds of Jazz are always mixing with and attaching itself to other genres. Today the polyrhythms, syncopation, and blue notes blend seamlessly with electronic beats, bass and melody.

This week we'll try unlikely pairings. Nowhere are they more readily accepted than in music. When Joe Venuti's violin first played jazz, or Kraftwerk hit the top of the charts with computer music, listeners nodded and said "Yeah'. When Kate Bush brought the mystery of Eastern European harmonies to the west or the Beatles covered Little Richard new rock n' roll music, the world got a bit smaller, less separate and more inclusive.

This week, it's feedback and reverb, the mathematics of sound and physics of music. Looking into this super symmetry are Way, The Stringed Theory, postscript, Roll Film and Ronan Dec.