SESSION ONE: At Home With Rose

As a preamble to my show tomorrow morning, I want to quote part of a review of PseudoArcana's compilation, The Tone of the Universe (= The Tone of the Earth) on Pitchfork:

“Drone is liturgy. Since its mid-century installation in the repertoire of experimental music, drone has been coded with naked aspirations: people looking to the holy East; people looking to the archaic; people looking into deep space, into the pure machine, into the stranger mind. Drone has always been enamored of the faraway. The sacred, as always, must be imported from there.

“Its devotees are few but fervent. But the faith has always seemed strangely incommunicable: It doesn't seem to get many converts, just initiates and infidels and no commerce between them. Missionary work is a slog. Those who have made stabs at evangelization know the response is usually incredulity rather than hostility. Minimalist classics have been returned to me with a blankness bordering on incomprehension, as if I'd handed out videotapes of television snow and demanded an assessment of character arcs.”

Drone is not to everyone’s taste - that's a given. When I first listened to drone and noise, I found I could only take it in bursts. Sometimes there was some that I just didn't “get” in the least. It's taken a while to get to the stage where I can happily listen to a couple of hours of back-to-back noise and drone. I think that what drone has done for me has helped me find the “music” in the everyday. The sound around us everywhere. The divine noise of life. Listen to the words used in the quote: liturgy, fervent, converts. I went to see the final performance of Birchville Cat Motel in Christchurch and there's such a hush, such a feeling of communion, that you could feel you were in a church. There’s a feeling of reverence at a noise gig. Noise and drone have opened up my aural appreciation, my aural senses. It's helped me to “listen” and it has a meditative quality. Pauline Oliveros uses a term “deep listening” that I rather like.

My playlist is (and will be every week) solely New Zealand. Every other week I'll be playing other NZ music – a mix of genres, but generally away from the mainstream. Radio23 is international, so I want to get some NZ music out there that I'd like people to hear.

I hope it all works according to plan because the station is still in Beta mode and this is a test run for me.

Tracklist for my first session:

‘Metal Feathers Can Fly’, Peter Wright, Invisible Pyramid: Elegy Box , 277 seconds, 2005, Last Visible Dog
‘Lull’, Swung, Voice and Key, 130 seconds, 2006, Pseudo Arcana
‘Junkshop Rainbow Superserpent’, Birchville Cat Motel, Second Curved Surface Destroyer (Disc 2), 1739 seconds, 2008, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon
‘Hong Kong Abracadabra’, Birchville Cat Motel, Second Curved Surface Destroyer (Disc 2), 1189 seconds, 2008, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon
‘Use’, 1/3 octave band, Sub Lumina, 870 seconds, 2006, Humbug
‘Antarctica Download (Edit)’, Seht, The Tone Of The Universe (=The Tone of the Earth), 421 seconds, 2005, Pseudo Arcana
‘Mem’, Swung, Voice and Key, 137 seconds, 2006, Pseudo Arcana
‘And Where The Colored Planes Are Rafts’, Antony Milton, Sirens/And Where The Coloured Planes Are Rafts, 252 seconds, 2005, Last Visible Dog
‘Amber Eyed’, The Nether Dawn, The Tone Of The Universe (=The Tone of the Earth), 212 seconds, 2005, PseudoArcana
‘Catchpool 01’, Seht, Invisible Pyramid: Elegy Box , 815 seconds, 2005, Last Visible Dog
‘Requiem For John Fahey’, Seht, The Voice Of The Taniwha, 657 seconds, 2003, Last Visible Dog
‘Dudi’, Swung, Voice and Key, 265 seconds, 2006, Pseudo Arcana