CD Esoterik

A year end celebration with the larger circle.

The theme: Terrifying in a beautiful instead of a dangerous way.

We start the episode under the icecap. We celebrate life in a subaquatic hydrophone terror attack by ghosts who remind us of the life-giving force of death in a connected world.  It sounds joyful. 

The Book of Revelation, written by stylophone, with no consonants, only vowels.

Intentional connections that open onto unintentional ones, via over-modulated saxophones.

We spend time unpacking "destitution", then Mark brings the esoterik cannon, full stop. Mahler leads to criminally neglected spiritual visitations from the Chicago dollar bins.

Solo unknowability ensues. Jacob drinks a huge milkshake. The other way of making music. 
The fundamental music: The one person with their instrument once the energy grid collapses.

Neon hunks fashioning Flemish dance-folk stringed instruments on homesteads. Moskos suddenly appears. A very slow computer processing in a yurt, creating a virtual Borzeix. You don’t show up? You get represented anyway.

The world moves in predictable ellipses: Michigan > Africa > Montreal. The servers run hot making sound design from the future. Roger brings the now sound by looking backwards and forwards at the same time.

Octavia Butler-style benevolent aliens oversee the episode and monitor the controlled feedback.

Finally, we visit that guy in a basement at GRM for 25 years still trying to make a computer play like Charlie Parker.

2025: Strange resonance and bloody fingers.
2026: Things Have Got to Change!

We listend to:

1. Chester Beachell – Orcas and Belugas (excerpt)
2. Eyeless in Gaza – John Of Patmos
3. Sarah Clausen – Intro/Cry
5. Robert Lippok – Close
6. Donny Hathaway – I Love the Lord, He Heard My Cry
7. Tal Coal – Cruèla
8. A Magic Whistle – My Cuckoo/We Fly/Secret Spring
11. Refuse Stealing Band – Ndirande (OJPB's Stealth edit)
12. Server Farms – With Fake Beach, Fake Sun
13. Archie Shepp – Things Have Got to Change

Shouts:

Chris Wrench, always

A phone call from below the arctic ice

MF. 10-11: Covid empty city recordings

Audre Lorde – Coal
RLW box set – Tulpas

Blastitude best of 2025

Refuse stealing band original clip

DJ PICA PICA PICA (aka EYEEEEEE)

This is not what I signed up for, this is exactly what I signed up for.

Legendary experimental film maker and the perfect person to be on any podcast, Mark Loeser, shows up at all the usual tables, in a t-shirt that says Aztec camera. 

Enthusiasm beats considered intellectualism every single minute.

We learn through lost super 8 cartridges that fascination is the root of all suffering. Yet, anything is possible! Love, sure, is a good example. Another is Alice Coltrane’s visitation by Stravinsky’s ghost to be told about Jacob’s episode pick... not to mention the wire and light John Coltrane.

Truly we are living in the best of all possible worlds.

We start the show with foot fetish snuff films. This leads through some pzm mic cables to an understanding how the things that attracted you become you. 

Vancouver in the 90s: 

Feldman tapes stolen from the Pofi bar while the holes get drilled in spoons.

Japanese noise at Edison electric

Dance club bass leakage into Dixieland inns makes microsound better while the glasses sway and free jazz combats

Plus... toilets on the Fourth of July.

Eastern zero's counterpoints:
Cinemontas delivered up spiral staircases.  

Projections on parketts, projections through mirrors, projections on canadian tires. 

The drugs hitting too hard too fast / crickets on the Ohio Speako Wio

Neighbours learn suffering as the first step on the paths of enlightenment.

JAPAN shows up to prove that Maher is the greatest punk of all. Fuck ingenious efficient results based chaos we want real ego death!

CAIRO shows up to bring the post punk infinite fire. 

To end, Saint George appears as the collective warmth- a power greater than itself - to close with the sound of the cosmos.

Musicians reckoning with life: Where does listening start, what it transforms. The only way to end is the fade out. 

Perfection = the thoughtfulness of the organizing principle and the looseness with which it is applied.

Or as Sam Shalabi asks: “are you guys musicians…actually?”

We listend to:

1. Uncredited artists – Canceling Stamps At The University Of Ghana Post Office
2. Jean Guérin – Triptik 2
3. Cyril Scott – Lotus Land
4. Good Horsey – Delighted
5. Dj Carhouse &  Mc Hellshit – Air Rappers
6. And the Native Hipsters – You Sleep I Dance
7. Bernard Fort – Fractal i
8. Destroy 2 – Standing Piss is Legal
9. Tori Kudo – 目を瞑って歩く夜道は
10. Ahmad Adaweya – Mawwal Ya Betaa El Tofah
11. George Lewis – Homage To Charles Parker

Shout outs
TMU motion picture lab

Enrico Pacella
Viennese Actionist Museum 

Bill Eggeleston lost his shoes in canton! 

Indiamore Chassol 

Esoterik says: Sign up for the blast stack! 

Shane Ehman, good horsey album artist 

Tori Kudo’s bandcamp 

62 Rachel, again.

Geroge lewis homage live at moers

And because everyone needs it at least once in their life:

SPECIAL EXCLUSIVE BONUS FEATURE
Complete Fuck Super Neighbours playlist!!!

Another early Sunday.

Leon asks the infernal 8-ball what’s up. Flipped over, it says: go both speeds at once.

When we take its advice, the sun is driven poorly by the wild son. The earth scorches. The father smites the son. The cycle continues—through the Iraq War, maybe all the way to 2025.

We move to frozen Canada and double down on the vowels.
The CD Esoterik exclusive track hits the sweet spot where the snake eats its own tail, and recursive logic extrapolates toward its ultimate goal: ecstatic ghost hum production.

Beginner’s mind is the key to keeping the Kaoss Pad unlimited.

The universe explodes into so many layers of simulation— and then: Whitney Houston confetti, powered by a nuanced critique of the colonialist anthropological instinct.

We close our trip to the Canadas in the ultimate hall of Kierkegaardian expensive cassette mirrors, to look at some paintings somewhere near Niagara Falls. 

Back to Brooklyn for delicate shredding and something new with guitar.
You can do it still!

We visit Japan for the hollow sound, where the dishwasher brings the responsible vocal shred. Something short shows us the bubbles we live in.

And: New York hates you.

Finally, a convincing case that live music is better than recorded music can ever be.

Episode warning:
Do not listen while driving or operating heavy machinery.
We want problems. We don’t want peace.

We listend to:

1. Ian Crause – Phaethon's Call
2. Christof Migone – ooooo (demo)
3. Michael Snow – Si Nopo Da (By What Signs Will I Come to Understand)
4. Chris Wind ft. Jurgen Rodriguez – Paintings 7
5. Chuck Roth – Twister
6. Hako Yamasaki – Wandering
7. Milan Grygar – Akustická kresba A15
8. DEATHBYSHEEP – DEATHBYSHEEP PRESENTS- BLUNTED POSSE SAMPLER MIX 2022-2023 PART 2 (excerpt)
9. Josephine Foster – All I Wanted Was The Moon (live at MeetFactory, Prague, May 16., 2024)

Shout Outs:

Le Laps one of many Marie-Douce St Jacques' awesome endeavours.

Rest in epic strangeness, Brian Catling
Hollow — B. Catling

Michael Snow! thank you!

Chris Wind's excellent website

Marie Brassard’s film Le Train
Microclimat Films — The Train

Another Mark Loeser shout.

Penelope Spheeris — The Decline of Western Civilization (Parts I-III)

1. Part I
2. Part II
3. Part III

In which we are joined by one of the OG inspirations for Esoterik, esteemed blogger, substacker, brilliant writer and legendary ear-having proprietor of Blastitude, Larry “Fuzz-O” Dolman.

We discuss the economics of the 30-600 split, Utopias and Distopias. The openess of open access. Cassandra Miller vs Cassandra Wilson. 

The 80% (corrected) EPA scale delivers short form long form. We get over the Robert Wyatt hump by mineralizeing Leon. Fishing with a sausage, an apple and a sandwich lands a Ukrainian architect tipping the Zulawski meter into the red. The vibe shift clause is invoked leading us back to the trucker funk, down the deep history of the ugliest edits to the perfect bpm. Jeff Mills shows up, as he does, to complicate the narrative. After that, we hit the tornado coffee shop bringing the go-go back. We close on the hopeful resilient shimmering pickled herring of 1989.

As usual we get 1/91st of the way to the 6000 cassettes in the kiosk,

It is what it is. There’s no changing it.  

Finally, we ask the eternal quesiton: Was RollerDerby 1.95 or 2.95 per issue?

We listend to:
1. Shutaro Noguchi and the Roadhouse Band – Olympic 3.5
2. Bill Orcutt – The Four Louies II
3. Robert Wyatt – Biko
4. Ihor Tsymbrovsky – Bilya Morya (By The Sea)
5. Ron Hardy –  Live at the Music Box, 1985 (excerpt)
6. Jeff Mills – Memory Reset 9
7. Reaction Band –  Coffee Shop
8. Оселедець – Хто поблагословив незрячі очі

Shout outs:
Gridface's Ron Hardy archives
Arthur Magazine's Jay Babcott's substack
Roller Derby's Lisa Carver's patreon

Violence is easy. Nostalgia, complexity, they all are easy to make a case for. The beautiful? It’s impossible to approach. Yet, we try, without intending to, because it’s Sunday morning and music speaks directly on Sunday morning, and absolute unmixed attention is prayer.

Melody. That singer from orang, what’s her name? Simone Weil. So much control over something uncontrollable. The nations foremost player bowing instead of plucking. How rawness affects the opening of ears. Fractal sand that egress the vibes to create the oyster and the pearl. Then, a short sailing trip back to the gradient. What about tomorrow?  We got up in the morning and we had to eat again. It’s a disaster by god. 

Too short soulful collage from a small little country.  Better. Richer. More complex sonic youth cover closing the gradient in perfect tone but still getting hurt by songs with drums recorded miles away. Beauty kills. Beauty is the murderer.

What we learned: To speak better: Talk less. Make music more.

We listend to:
1. Henryk Górecki feat. Beth Gibbons, Krzysztof Penderecki – Symphony No. 3 Final Movement
2. Cassandra Miller – I cannot love without trembling
3. Hwang Byungki feat. Hong Sin Cha – The Labyrinth (Excerpt)
4. Tom Johnson – Combinations for String Quartet III
5. Gary Marks – Sailing
6. Ziad Rahbani feat. Jospeh Saqr – Esmaa Ya Reda
7. Collage –  Halb Sirp (Bad Sickle)
8. Silvia Tarozzi – La sostanza dell’affetto
9. Marnie – Songs Hurt Me

Shout outs:
Watch Beth Gibbons singing Górecki with Krzysztof Penderecki conducting
Domenico Caliri guitarist on the Silvia Tarozzi track (she is also listed so it could be her!)

Amazing sound artist, label runner, contextual one-time author, unlandlord and friend since Esoterik days Anne-F Jacques joins us for our tenth (TEN!) episode. We start with 2-3 notes and the inimitable pacing of Mo Tucker, then go pure timbre and tape when actually it’s lots of notes and no melody.

• Lots of space between notes makes the notes feel less note.
• Ellen Fullman ditches long strings and creates rainbows in Poland. Boiling speakers bring the montreal rains.
• We discover that China is a big place and there is a lot of good stuff happening there right now. Rotterdam however is boring as hell. And so is the internet as a means for discovering culture. 

Can things just be allowed to be things? 

Contraptions! 

• The power of patience. 
• The heart of the speaker. 
• We meditate. we destroy. 

What’s going to happen next?

Episode lesson: Teenage suburban metal bands are essential in creating the material conditions for experimental music 

We listend to:
A. Intro theme
1. Glorias Navales – Carta a Maureen Tucker - 01 Lado A (excerpt)
2. Joris De Laet – Envelopes
3. ake 阿科 – mismatch 不合
4. Ellen Fullman – The Gardner (Excerpt)
5. Zhao Cong – home recording 1
6. Atsushi Tominaga – 013
7. Leandro Barzabal & Céleste Gatier – Sans titre 1
8. Eliane Radigue, Ensemble Dedalus – Occam – Hepta I
Z. Outro theme

Shout outs:

https://metaphon.be/ for all your tape music needs
Shawn at Bar L'Hémisphère Gauche for keeping the neigbourhood tight
WrK records Japan for the colour photocopies
Zhao Cong for the toys

In this very special episode one of our hosts is transmogrified in Prinzendorf. Another is levitated multiple times, raised into the air!  We discuss the relationship between the thing-in-iteslf, knowing the thing as represented, and the thing-as-experienced. 

A lot of blood. A lot of fruit. A lot of entrails.

Plus: 

• Dandelion Magic!
• The best way to find a virtual therapist
• Nitsch at Bayeuruth 
• Mekas with colour commentary 
• Kubelka at dawn
• Loud sneezes and the red wine tastes like blood for weeks. 
• Gardens of stone. Gardens of delicacies.
• Indissoluble binomials. 
• The ascendant power of poetic translation of song.
• Justin finally plays a short track. Sensational! 
• Special bonus lathe cut: anarchists impressions: “Empire!”

Tip of the week: Homemade Magma t shirts get you gigs

We listend to:
A. Intro theme

1. Hermann Nitsch – Orgien Mysterien Theater 25.Aktion – Untitled IV

2. Mariolina Zitta & Patricia Meyer – Il Giardino Delle Stelle

3. Wolf Vostell – Il Giardino Delle Delizie – Fluxus Opera (excerpt)

4. Walter Maioli & Nirodh Fortini – Suoni ottenuti soffiando dentro due gambi di taraxacum (do e fa) registrati in un prato con sottofondo di suoni d_insetti (brano n.3). Suoni successivamente rallentati di velocità

5. Denis Wize – Celestial Cungo Dub

6. Jerome Rothenberg – Horse Songs

7. Marion Brown played by Paul Bley – Sweet Earth Flying (Pt. 1)

8. Sensational & Unbuilt – Erques
9. Eric Schmid – Giorgio Agamben (excerpt)

Z. Outro theme

Shout outs:
Blake Hargreaves
Mystical Knights of the Taiga Spa, Wien
Server Farms
Rosi Braidotti

Special thanks / Rest in power

Cortical Foundation / Gary Todd

Transversal musician and Esoterik kin Olivier Borzeix, whose venn diagrams scantly overlap but go deep regardless, joins us in today's episode. Henry Flynt is identified as the central node of all astral collapse. Leroy Jenkins appreciates the sun city girls but he doesn’t understand them. Lamonte Young almost kills someone dear, but a small dose of possession does an internet affected body good. James Tenney, erotic film star, tortures violinist's fingers.

The internet connection changes quality. You can’t stop it. Chrome kills as a source of band names.

Content warning: Balloons!!

Overall moral lesson:
Don’t just sing when flexitone virtuosity can abound. 

We listend to:
A. Intro theme

1. Henry Flynt – Violin Strobe

2. Uncredited – Ketjak: The Ramayana Monkey Chant

3. James Tenney – Koan

4. Judy Dunaway – Live 2016 (Twister Balloon) (watch the amazing footage here)

5. Karen Krog – Images in Glass

6. Karen Krog – Meaning of Love

7. Kengo Iuchi – 九月の空に忌

8. Abstract Nympho – Silver Machine

Z. Outro theme

Shout outs:

Dream House in Mexico:

https://casadellago.unam.mx/nuevo/evento/dreamhou

RIP: Marianne Zazeela

Neighbour Loulou
Mark Loeser, AGAIN!

Emerald Cloud Cobra

Thanks Angie for the episode artwork
Matts Guffstason
All the good record stores that don't just move units

In which we forgo discussing the state of the world but then play a whole ton of music that discusses it better than words do. Fuck dancing about architecture, make music to set the heart of the world on fire. 

Special thanks to the persistent Felquiste energy for episode inspiration. 

Godard actresses and actors. Deleuze reading Neitzche over prog. Renaissance double agents, crying babies/screaming babies, Byron Coley being shy, pis le meilleur fucking disque jamais fait icitte au Québec.

We listened to:

A. Intro theme
1. Catherine Ribeiro + 2 Bis – Lumière Écarlate
2. Richard Pinhas Heldon – Le Voyageur (Ouais MArchais Mieux qu'en 68)
3. Rato Mobio Venance - Min Mmi
4. Jean-François Pauvros – Mon homme
5. George Clinton – Bangladesh
6. John Downland – Unquiet Thoughts
7. Whine – Gauntlet
8. L'Infonie – Mantra
9. Scream Baby Scream – Untitled
Z. Outro theme

Shout outs:
There, whom Leon keeps calling Them, and Dime
Tyler Knight and Francis Amireault dream rhythm section
The Wall of Stockhausen
Mark Loeser Again!
Greg & Brian, keep your eyes peeled for the new Pump Up the Volume location!
And because this podcast is an astral collapse generator, this episode is published on Brian and Leon's  birthday, happy birthday Brian!

Renowned sound-artist, theorist, and professor Christof Migone joins us for the long haul down the Toronto–London xpressway. Everyone records with actual microphones. No spacesuits. No fishtanks. Just words and music.

Confessions. Absolutions.
Men who can’t see far enough.
Young cousins wake suddenly, speaking perfect Polish.
Moths swirling around a lightbulb.
100% nocturnal, until the electric Bozambo dawn.

Above all else: Godard.

We listened to:

A. Intro theme
1. Christina Kubisch – Night Flights
2. Peter Rose – The Man Who Could Not See Far Enough (Witness – excerpt)
3. Jean-Luc Godard - King Lear (excerpt)
4. "Blue" Gene Tyranny – A Letter From Home
5. Tibor Szemző – Tractatus
6. Roy Ayers Quartet – If I Were A Carpenter
7. Bozambo – Viva Bozambo
8. Offering – Love In The Darkness
Z. Outro theme

Shout outs:
BBB / NOW TIME - https://boot-boyz.biz/
Alex St.Onge https://www.alexandrest-onge.com/
Peter Rose

Special thanks:
Thank you Christof Migone of https://squint.press/
Thank you, Roy Ayers (1940 – 2025)