This week's set starts off with Crystal Castles. Generational difference here: I hear Crystal Castles and think of the old school track ball video game; the group is actually named after She-Ra's home. The Crystal Castles CD is chock full o' glorious 8-bit sounds that bleep, sputter and fart their way into an amazing collection of songs. I absolutely love this CD and I am really glad Last Gasp got back in touch with me about playing it.

Peeesseye is a great band I was totally unfamiliar with until I heard that they were freak noise folk like I have grown to love recently. This latest CD is great and has so many lofi noisescapes, it makes a great typing CD. I love when music creates a space and this CD does that.

This week's Flashback Track comes from Show 18. Paavoharrju is an amazing band on Fonal Records, the home to so many of my favorite noisemakers. I absolutely fell in love with this strange and beautiful CD when I found it three years ago. Since I originally played this track, I have gone on to get permission of Fonal and Paavoharju to play their stuff. The countdown to show 100 is the perfect time to bring this track back. The new CD by Paavohaju is due in the next couple of months.

Bracken is a UK noisemaker that is signed to the US aberrant hiphop label Anticon. I have not been totally sold on the regular releases, but the Remix CD is amazing. This is the only instrumental track, but I love the pulsing and beat. Definitely makes me want to relisten to the other CDs.

Back in the late 90s I was sent a stack of CDs from the Israeli electro label Faction. There were several CDs of minimalist drone and ambient glitch type of material that were really pretty interesting. Yair Etziony was part of this Faction Records scene and when I saw this CD I recognized the name and picked it up. It definitely sounds like a modern treatment of the Faction sounds I was familiar with. It is good to see this growth of the scene though the label may be gone.

J. Spaceman is Jason Pierce who has recorded as an integral member of Spaceman 3 and THE integral member of Spiritualized. When I saw that he (along with the legendary Sun City Girls) had created the soundtrack for the new Harmony Korine film Mister Lonely, I went seeking it immediately. Very spacious and sparse score music for the most part, and this track is typical of the sort of created space that is involved.

I love Mike Paradinas' Planet Mu, so my first instinct is to pick up any release on Mu that I see. The Doubtful Guest is the project of Libby Floyd and she has a distinct somewhat chaotic style. The form is there but seems barely kept in check by the sounds percolating through it. The whole CD seems ready to disinterate at times, but still maintains a structure. I wish more electronic music had this sense of organic creation and growth.

Warhammer 48K is a group I know very little about except they share some members with the phenomenal band Cave that I played a couple of shows ago. I found their last CD Uber Om on emusic and gave it a go. I can hear some of the Krautrock influences that are Manifest in Cave, but their is a sense of bludgeoning heaviness here that Cave is missing. Excellent CD.

I have played a couple of tracks from Blues Control's self titled debut on Holy Mountain before and when I saw that their Puff LP from last year was released on CD, I had to get it. Blues Control feels like it comes from the same psychedelic rock background as many of the bands on Holy Mountain, but feels more of a deconstruction on that psychedelic stomp. Very spacious and atmospheric, yet still a rock record. I love their self titled release, but find Puff even more engaging.

A few months ago, I had an add from the band Nurse With Wound on MySpace. I already had added the NWW profile that had on been MySpace forever, so when I got the new add, I thought that I was just adding another fan site. It turns out this particular MySpace profile was the official one with Stapleton's official blessing. So I corresponded with the him by proxy and got permission to use older NWW stuff. I already had the blessing of Beta Lactam Ring stuff from the label, so to get his blessing on the older World Serpent stuff was great. This track is from the excellent Who Can I Turn To Stereo?

The Octopus Project is becoming one of my favorite more traditional bands. Of course, I think few other people in the world would call OP traditional. This track from Hello, Avalanche popped up twice in shuffles lately, earning itself a place of honor at the end of this show.

Collections Of Colonies Of Bees have been doing very precise rock music for a decade now. While the tracks on their latest CD may seem very improv oriented, CCB is apparently very precise with highly planned and arranged material that seems more chaotic than it is at its core. When the riffs emerge from the swaths of noise, their precision hooks in. Excellent CD.

What are the rules for which releases you can play and which you cannot? There's a new Autechre out that's surprisingly good. Far better than Draft 7.30.

I was really disappointed with the vocals (ie. toneless screaming) in the Crystal Castles album. Except for that the album is good. And clearly Crystal Castles is referencing the C64/Atari game of the same name starring Bentley the bear collecting dots in a pseudo-3D world. How can it be otherwise?

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I played a track from the new Autechre a couple of episodes ago. I have a contact with Warp that has let me play several things. It is really good.


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According to wikipedia (grain of salt) it is a reference to She-Ra's castle, not Bentley Bear's game. I like the Crystal Castles CD a lot, though the vocals work more on some tracks than others.