Palindromes are Recursive

Hitchhiker Main Theme - Michael Rubini Incident - Urawa The Fifth Claw - Broadcast Consumed - Mario Diaz De Leon (MEGAN IS MISSING excerpts added by tomaxxamot) Thirsty Animal - Skullflower Blue Flame - Author and Punisher Avatar - Swans Silver Nile - Rangda Live Killer Duet - Jarboe featuring Backworld Roland, I Feel You - Get Well Soon Iggy Pop has a quote about how trying too hard to be dark usually results in "coming off like a hamster." Yep. Episode 9 was conceived a little over a year ago, in the wake of 1.) spending one of the most depressing and unsettling 1.5 hours of my life watching Megan is Missing on Netflix Instant and 2.) stumbling across the "You Will Never Find Me" video on You Tube. The former is an above average shot-on-video horror movie using the found footage conceit to document a pair of teenaged girls who end up abducted and murdered after talking to the wrong person on the internet. The second is speculated to have been part of a never-completed ARG but when seen without any context _almost_ looks like a serial killer's anonymous gloat/confession. The combination of the two stuck in my mind, and gave me the idea of a mixtape/podcast that had a vague hint of narrative arc. The end result barely spanned 30 minutes and basically consisted of squiggly monster voices strung together. Editing it into something I wasn't embarrassed by was never going to be easy, and when technical circumstances forced me to switch from Garage Band to Audacity mid-project, the whole thing crossed the line into pain-in-the-ass and I shelved it. After a few months of inactivity the idea of returning to it gained more and more prominence. Almost a year later, I finally got the tone to something I was happy with after adding the Jarboe track (which happily, took the piss out of all the D--A--R--K--N--E--S--S I was otherwise wallowing in) and was able to edit most of the imperfections into something acceptable. The end result is what you have now, which isn't my favorite episode but probably is the one I learned the most doing. With any luck episode 10 won't take 17 months. Talk to you then. - txxt

Trust in Daddy - Human Resources You (Cassettes Won't Listen remix) - Gold Panda Away - To Rococo Rot Sleep Dealer - Oneohtrix Point Never Phrenesia (Holy Strays Mix) - Holy Strays Motorcyle, I Love You - Moon Duo Afterburners - Robedoor Serra - Mugstar Mother of All Living - The Myrrors If you listen to the brush drum beat at the beginning of "Mother of All Living", it sounds a lot like the beginning of Hary Nillson's stoner-ific 1971 track, "Lime in the Coconut". That god damned similarity became episode 8's white whale. ;) This podcast has been done since early December. I delayed it and delayed it and delayed it because I really wanted to get that beat match down. Sadly of course, the tracks are off just enough that it was never going to happen. While the reality is that's probably for the best, it did at least provide me with a relatively inspired episode name. Enjoy the episode and as always, thanks for listening. - txxt

Par ep 7 - a hazy summer with an abrupt conclusion Peaking Lights - Tiger Eyes (Laid Back) Rangers - Zombies Ennio Morricone and Giallo Trailers (YouTube) - The Fifth Chord (Unofficial Trailer) Sun Araw - Horse Steppin' HEALTH - Goth Star Public Image Limited - Warrior Turzi - Buenos Aires Black Pus - Police Song Axolotl - Kingdom of Ends Mouthus vs Mikis Michaelides - Armies Between/Get that Snitch I've never had the kind of summer imagined by Peaking Lights, Rangers or Sun Araw. They're hazy and tranquil, like a more illicit variant of an Anette Funicello/Frankie Avalon movie. There are moments where I can almost feel them - when I'm driving down the Pacific Coast Highway without another car in front of me or through the Sierras with the faint smell of three-week-old forest fire still filling the air, but they're ephemeral - seconds of time you try to hold onto so you can relive them in March when it's cold and wet for the sixth straight month in a row. The frantic, harried noise of Black Pus, Axolotl and Mouthus is more familiar, though thankfully, it's been twenty-plus years since I deliberately put myself in that kind of mental state. I'm not entirely certain if mashing up Mouthus with the Mikis Michaelides song from the Attack the Block soundtrack works, but it's been stuck in my head for most of the summer and I felt like I had to do something with it. The HEALTH and PIL tracks in the middle are aimed to tie the two pieces together. In the case of PIL, it was an excuse to use one of my favorite songs by my favorite post-punk band, with HEALTH, it was a good song with a great name that came along just as I was putting the episode together. Thanks to the anonymous episode requester - the show was only about a week out, but getting confirmation that someone who (to my knowledge) i didn't know personally wanted to hear more got me to put this out a week earlier. I'm more or less pleased with the result and will try to have episodes eight and nine both done sometime before the end of the year. - txxt

Unearthing (Introduction) - Crook&Flail All the Colors of the Dark - Grails Some Velvet Morning - Firewater I wish I was a mole in the ground - Blixa Bargeld Red Herring - ADULT Within - Neurosis featuring Jarboe Song Heard in Dream - polyphasic My Lonely Scene - Wagon Christ Panther Hiss (Power Pill Fist vs Raj Rajarat mix by txxt) - Power Pill Fist Ross Downs - Rangers Mexican Grand Prix - Mogwai Payoff - Holy Sons XuluX - Lumerians Episode 6 opens with a segment of the soundtrack Crook&Flail did for Alan Moore's excellent Unearthing. I listened to this while driving back from California to Oregon on I5 last January. My sixteen year old shih tzu, Bear, sat beside me, and had just started succumbing to what would ultimately prove to be a fatal illness two weeks later. I'm sure that most of why this music has stuck with me so much is that it reminds me of him, but the story of an aging comic book writer finally finding love with a woman who might be a goddess and might be in his head helped pass the time and the miles on its own merits too. It worked much better as narration than it would have in print, and the music managed to be simultaneously melancholy and (naively?) hopeful. From there we go into the always excellent Grails, Firewater covering my favorite bit of sixties psychedelia, and Blixa Bargeld, ADULT and Neurosis/Jarboe each out-spookying the next before getting into something a bit more soundscapey with polyphasic, a band whose album I bought after 5 minutes of listening-booth-listening at Anthem Records. polyphasic segues into Wagon Christ and in turn into the BMSR side project Power Pill Fist overlaid with an audio recording from the Financial Times of Venture Capitalist/White Collar Criminal Raj Rajarath talking to a co-conspirator. That transitions into Ross Downs by Rangers (who, along with Gold Panda, seems to suddenly be everywhere), which becomes Mexican Grand Prix off the new Mogwai album, Payoff by Holy Sons, and finally, my current favorite song of the year, XuluX by Lumerians. This episode's whole is probably weaker than the sum of its parts, but there comes a point where you need to cut your losses and post something, and I crossed that point 2 or 3 weeks ago. As such, the sixth episode, warts and all, is here. I hope you enjoy it. - txxt

Assault on Precinct 13 - Zombie Zombie The Light 3000 - Schneider TM This Room Seems Empty Without You - Dead Letters Spell out Dead Words Hoylake Mist - Forest Swords Bull Lore - Rangda Christmas - Jesu Auditory Spirits - Aidan Baker and Tim Hecker Sheep - Gonjasufi E Assim Falava Mesfistofeles - O Bando Il Cielo in Una Stanza - Mondo Cane ------------------------------------- It's a pattern at this point - I'll have 65% of an episode mapped out as a playlist on my iPod at least two months before the remaining third finally clicks. This time, said click came when I downloaded Justin Broadrick's Christmas EP from the Avalanche Store a couple of days ago. That mapped into the Aidan Baker/Tim Hecker track (which may have some skips as I head to merge ten separate ~20 second mp3s into a single whole) which segued into Gonjasufi, O Bando (a Brazilian band from Rio's late 60's/early 70's psych scene) and Il Cielo in Una Stanza off Mike Patton's Mondo Cane album. All in all, I'm fairly happy with how this flows - going from gloominess to manic cheer over the course of the episode wasn't a conscious choice, but I'm happy to pretend it was to anyone who doesn't read the episode notes. While I'm toying with the idea of posting the mix I did for the Spartacus Roosevelt swap as an episode 5.5, in all likelihood, this is the last episode of the year. Whatever holidays you do or don't celebrate, I hope they're good, and as always, thanks for listening. - txxt