Midnight Radio

Here in the Middle West, we’ve already enjoyed two excellent snowstorms, which augurs well for a proper winter. Although the year is winding down, the future is still coming fast and dumb. The people in charge are hellbent on giving us artificially intelligent colleagues and companions, and they’re banking on a heavy assumption: that we value the sense of a relationship more than a living person. That we will privilege the feeling over the fact. They might not be wrong. For the past year, C. and I have been playing with a scenario that gives this fork some teeth. Read it here.

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The first seven songs are table-setting for Me-Sheen’s “Sonic Lullaby,” one of the most beautiful songs in my canon. I came across it in 1997 on one of those ponderous “Excursions in Ambience” CDs with hellacious cover art and it’s been living in my head ever since. But first we kick off with Julianna Barwick’s “Prizewinning”, a song that’s somehow lulling and thrilling at once. It never fails to leave me cheering and C. plays it all the time, so it’s definitely a winner. There’s also a spiritualized vocoder workout from Matchess, a nugget of AM radio gold, and a powerful burst of dub techno from Vril—I hope to be reincarnated as the low-end whir on “Infinitum Eternis Anime” and join the rings of Saturn.

And tonight there’s plenty of reverb to carry us into the holidays, along with fragments of some 1950s Welsh miners singing carols because I’m feeling festive.

1. Julianna Barwick - Prizewinning
   The Magic Place | Asthmatic Kitty, 2011 | Bandcamp
2. Matchess - Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes
   Sacracorpa | Trouble in Mind, 2018 | Bandcamp
3. Vril - Infinitum Eternis Anime
   Anima Mundi | Delsin, 2018 | Bandcamp
4. Air - Le Soleil Est Près de Moi (28% slower)
   Premiers Symptômes | Parlophone, 1997
5. Eagles - I Can't Tell You Why (20% slower)
   The Long Point | Asylum Records, 1979
6. Voices From the Lake - Max
   Live at MAXXI, 2015 | Bandcamp
7. Me-Sheen - Sonic Lullaby
   Electronic Membrain | Reflective, 1995
8. Rhos Male Voice Choir: Psalm 23 / Holy Night + Vril loop
   Carols From The Welsh Mines, 1958 | More

For upbeat holiday music, please attend last year’s Professional Holiday Party.

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Like my thoughts on egg foo young and tornados, tonight’s broadcast is all over the map—but I’m increasingly fond of intensely personal playlists that ratfuck the algorithm. We kick off with a Breakfast Club anthem pitched down into Sisters of Mercy gloom, followed by a heavy slice of Detroit electro I bought in '95 and played to death, entranced by its bottomless growl. Years later, I heard this track on a compilation CD and realized it was meant to be played at 45rpm. This might be the godhead of my passion for slowing things down, and the ritual continues with a song from ’74 that reminds me of my parents’ kitchen and the big romance they had when they were young. Then comes a dub techno staple that sounds like a beautiful machine at 40% speed, which gives way to a Swans track I love. It came to mind after reading Adam Greenfield’s delightful piece about wanting to eat God while watching them perform—and I discovered “Leaving Meaning” degrades into a lovely ambient song if you fiddle with the equalizer and douse it in reverb. Then we head to heartbeat city, here we come.

1. Simple Minds - Don’t You Forget About Me (38% slower)
   The Breakfast Club | 1985 | More
2. Will Web - Spacewalk (30% slower)
   Cosmic Driveby | Direct Beat, 1995
3. The Hollies - The Air That I Breathe (20% slower)
   Hollies | EMI, 1974
4. Vladislav Delay - Huone (46% slower)
   Multila | Chain Reaction, 2000 | Bandcamp
5. Swans - Leaving Meaning (20% slower)
   Leaving Meaning | Mute, 2019 | Bandcamp
6. Pole - Hafen (40% slower)
   2 | Kliff/Matador, 1999 | Bandcamp
7. Aphex Twin - #1 (Cliffs) (42% slower)
   Selected Ambient Works II | Warp, 1994 | Bandcamp
8. The Cars - Jacki (31% slower)
   Heartbeat City | Elektra, 1984

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An ode to Michael Clayton and the giddy renewal before death. Read the full post.

"I took a deep, cleansing breath and I put that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself, As clear as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe I have witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time. And Michael, the time is now."

So the hour has come for some Tom Wilkinson and George Clooney interlaced with five pieces of profound bass and machine grind. And plenty of amniotic, embryonic reverb.

• Try to make believe this is not just madness because this is not just madness.
• Richie Hawtin + Thomas Brinkmann - 96:12/24:00 VR
  Concept | 1998 | Bandcamp
• As potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe I witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time.
• HTRK - Poison (Mika Vainio Remix)
  Ghostly International, 2013 | Bandcamp
• Yes, the nudity in the parking lot was a mistake, I admit it. It was wrong. It was lame. It was obvious. And therapeutically, it was completely useless.
• TM404 - 202/303/303/303/606/606
  Kontra, 2013 | Bandcamp
• Is that the correct answer to the multiple choice of me?
• Tropic of Cancer - Stop Suffering
  Blackest Ever Black, 2015 | Boomkat
• What makes this feel good is that I don’t know where this goes.
• µ-Ziq - Peppermint Aero
  Manzana | Balmat, 2025 | Bandcamp
• You think you got the horses for that? Well good luck and god bless.

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The clocks roll back an hour tonight, and it’s my favorite moment of the year. Not only does it bring the night closer, it reminds me that if we can rearrange time, we can do anything we want. Invent new colors. Remove days from the week. Reset the internet to 2009. Have a functional government. Changing the clocks should be the year’s biggest holiday with fireworks, parades, and gift-giving.

Tonight’s soundtrack harmonizes with this idea of time. Over the past several weeks, I’ve been smudging my favorite mid-century vocals across a heartbeat drum and some loops that were trapped in my delay pedal. The result is an hour-long soundtrack composed for Grace Wang’s photography exhibition, The Heart Has Not Stopped, at Clark Centre for the Arts in Toronto.

“Through dreamlike, layered images created with in-camera multiple exposures on film, Wang evokes fleeting moments of memory and time—an intimate meditation on a world both beautiful and unknowable.” The show runs through November 30. (If you can't make it, you can look at some of Grace's photos here.)

Grace’s images combine the haze of memory with the shock of color and unexpected overlays that edge toward the spectral. I tried to capture this sensation by letting bursts of Patsy Cline, Rebekah Del Rio, Nancy Sinatra, The Platters, Yao Su-jung, Roy Orbison, and other familiar voices gradually unfurl. In addition to these samples, the final track was built from tape loops, pitched-down field recordings, and a couple of selections from the excellent Echospace sound library.

Thank you for listening.

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I spent my high school nights making cassette loops, hunched over the guts of a disemboweled Maxell, splicing bits of brown magnetic tape and piecing everything back together with a jeweler’s screwdriver. I remember the purple-black energies that burbled at the back of my mind, the shimmery thoughts that take hold while intently making something.

Thirty years later, I suppose I’m doing this again with Midnight Radio, only now I’m stitching together songs in an overheated and disembodied world I wouldn't have recognized back then.

Read the full post.

We kick off with some slow-motion Slowdive. When I asked my friend S. if it sounded cool or cursed, he said "Both." Then comes a slow variant of a track from Belong's stone classic, Common Era, which towers above Loveless and Souvlaki when it comes to gazeability.

Autechre's "Bronchusevenmx24" sounds like the heat shimmer on the horizon when the pavement warps and boils, a mirage that Italian sailors called vecchie signore che balla: old ladies dancing. The ladies are even more visible when it’s slowed down. 

And moving through the shimmer to fourth century Ethiopia, liturgies in the Christian church were accompanied by the benega, a stringed instrument "given to king David by God, and brought to Ethiopia by Menelik I, together with the Ark of the Covenant." But the singer's voice is the true instrument here, offering a fragile melody that brings to mind the thoughts of a kid taking apart cassette tapes. And finally, a chilled cup of stone tea with an excerpt from one of Stephen Hitchell's hour-long excursions before we wind down with some drowsy My Bloody Valentine.

1. Slowdive - Machine Gun (50% slower)
   Souvlaki, 1993 • More
2. Belong - A Walk (22% slower)
   Common Era • Bandcamp
3. Slowdive - Mousakka Chaos (20% slower)
   Souvlaki, 1993
4. Autechre - Bronchusevenmx24 (25% slower)
   Garbage, 1995 • Bandcamp
5. Sosena Gebre Eyesus - Save Us From Our Death
   The World Is But a Place of Survival: Begena Songs from Ethiopia | Bandcamp
6. cv313 - Depths of Perception (Excerpt)
   Depths of Perception, 2022 | More
7. My Bloody Valentine - Only Shallow (45% slower)
   Loveless, 1991 | More
8. My Bloody Valentine - Instrumental B
   1988, featuring a Public Enemy sample | More

Dusted with static and murmurations from Spiritualized, Dean Martin, and always and forever, Nancy Sinatra. 

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It’s the first of October but the weather is all wrong. Here in the Middle West, it’s been endless sunshine with temperatures twenty degrees above normal. Meanwhile, our government shut down last night because we’re ruled by bullies and cowards who’ve been brainwormed by the internet. Each day brings inventive forms of idiocy and degradation. Feels like something’s got to give but nothing does.

So I’m looking elsewhere for reason. Read the full post.

* * *

Even though it’s far too warm for the first of October, the night continues to inch closer, which means it’s chromatic season.

The Chromatics have always been an unlikely proposition for me. I prefer my songs scuzzy and reverberated, whereas their music is so sleek and glossy it’s almost lacquered. It’s pop music from a neon world where Ruth Radelet’s frigid voice sings fabulous things like my leather glove grips the wheel. In 2017, they appeared on Twin Peaks before abruptly disbanding for reasons I don’t care to discover. Aside from rattling around the algorithms of streaming services, they've become a ghost—it's impossible to buy their music, and their Bandcamp and record label websites lead to 404s.

During their ten-year run, the Chromatics released only three proper albums but my library has over 250 songs. Drumless versions. Extended mixes. 8-track versions. Alternate takes for fictional movies. The same instrumentals reappear with different vocals and new titles. All these variations leave me wondering about the line between chasing perfection and forever relitigating the past. As if adjusting the variables enough times will finally yield the Platonic synthpop song. All of which makes finding their best tracks a daunting task, so I’ve made a megamix of ten favorites, including three of their covers.

If you like the Chromatics, this is the place to be tonight. And if not, even better: hopefully you’ll start.

1. Lady Night Drive (Cherry, 2012)
2. The Page (Kill for Love, 2012)
3. Stiff as a Board (Faded Now, 2020)
4. Running up that Hill (Night Drive, 2007)
5. The Sound of Silence (Closer to Grey, 2020)
6. Back from the Grave (Kill for Love, 2012)
7. Yes (Symmetry Remix) (Love Theme from Lost River, 2007)
8. Headlight’s Glare (Night Drive, 2007)
9. Disintegration (Running from the Sun, 2012)
10. Into the Black (Kill for Love, 2012)

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Five favorite songs released in 2025. Also includes bits of Rebekah Del Rio and David Bowie, along with the optimal dosage of static and reverb.

Biosphere - The Way of Time
The Way of Time | 2025 | Bandcamp

Romance - Leave Her to Heaven
Love Is Colder Than Death | 2025 | Bandcamp

Minor Hexachords - Minor Concession
Brinkmanship | 2025 | Bandcamp

Sa Pa - Nonspiration
Ambeesh | 2025 | Bandcamp

Rue des Garderies - Jiddu
2025 | Bandcamp

Read the full post.

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Tonight's episode compresses two and a half hours of dream chatter into twenty-three minutes that drift in and out of focus like dreams tend to do.

1. Abul Mogard - Staring at the Sweeps of the Desert
   Works | Ecstatic, 2016 | Bandcamp
2. Black Polygons - Incarnat
   Silence | 2014 | Bandcamp
3. Seefeel - Rupt (Cut Mix)
   Rupt and Flex | Warp, 1995 | Bandcamp
4. Transient Waves - Soulspace
   Transient Waves | i, 1997 | Bandcamp
5. Intrusion - Love in Lofi (Remastered by Pole)
   Unreleased Tape Sessions, 2025 | Bandcamp

Read the full post.

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A quick and knotty mixtape I made for tomorrow morning’s run, built from my favorite songs for lumbering along the river this summer—and lumber is the operative word. Laced with static and fried chatter, these tracks move like I do: sighing and lurching like a tired beast. But wait until the bass hits at the 41-second mark. It makes living in 2025 feel worthwhile. 

Sixsixsevenfortyseven’s Wounded Dogs is one of my favorite albums this year, a low-frequency exercise in patience, just like running or any repetitive act that hunts for freedom through repetition. An Egyptian low-rider comes next, followed by some metropolitan Detroit sleaze. This sequence lopes along until we get to Drissi El-Abbassi belting from the 1980s in Algeria. Look at this album cover. He was born to make us sweat. But his voice gets shredded by Autechre’s “Clipper” as we drop into more frigid and fractured terrain before winding down with a touch of Digital Underground. Here’s the hyperlink to tonight’s broadcast, or listen below.

I often think about this line from Richard Powers’s Orfeo: “Make the music that you need, for need will be over, soon enough.” 

Read the full post.

Sixsixsevenfortyseven - I Stood There
Wounded Dogs | Youth, 2025 | Bandcamp

Jana & El Nashmy - 3al Bayez
Place: Egypt | Air Texture, 2025 | Bandcamp

Erika - Tomorrow’s Fires (Whodat Remix)
Anevite Void Remixed | Interdimensional Transmissions, 2025 | Bandcamp

DVA Damas - Wet Vision II
Wet Vision | Downwards, 2015 | Boomkat

Drissi El-Abbassi - Zedti Laadab Aliya
Nashazphone | Bandcamp

Autechre - Clipper
Tri Repetae | Warp, 1995 | Bandcamp

Broken English Club - Prayer Space
Suburban Hunting | Cititrax, 2015 | Bandcamp

Plastikman - Contain
Consumed | Minus, 1998 | Bandcamp

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A stray factoid that lingers in the mind: evolution is fastest in body parts used to attract mates or frighten rivals. Some words haunt the subconscious like moonfish and gorgons. Sometimes I scan the liturgical names of geological epochs like the Time of the Great Dying and scribble phrases I cannot place: Light echoes from red supergiants. Eyes on stalks. Static implies fixture as well as chaotic noise.

There’s a similar flavor to crossing the 45th parallel, the halfway point between the equator and the North Pole. You can feel the geography shift when you see all that big pine and cold water. I usually cross this line while speeding toward Michigan’s upper peninsula on an empty road in the dark.

Lake Superior frightened me when I was small. My parents enjoyed camping along its shore on long weekends, and I would doze on the sticky pleather backseat of our Pontiac while we drove from Detroit to some vacant beach where we would set up our tent. I would squirm in my sleeping bag, unable to sleep with that mysterious lake sitting out there in the night like it was waiting.

In second grade, we studied the Great Lakes and read a pamphlet that described Lake Superior as the deepest and coldest of the five lakes: Scientists have not yet reached the bottom, and they do not know what lives there. I’d lie awake thinking about what might live in all that uncharted space.

There’s enough water in Lake Superior to submerge all of the Americas. Its southern edge is known as “the Graveyard of the Great Lakes” due to a cascade of shipwrecks. On July 30, 1985, Jeffrey Val Klump became the first person to reach the bottom of Lake Superior at 1,333 feet. This happened after I read that pamphlet.

Forty years later, I think I’ve made my peace with Lake Superior. Antarctica scares me today. My head goes swimmy if I look at it for too long on a map. All that blank land feels like leaping off a rooftop. Maybe this is why I’m drawn to signs that position me on the planet: the 45th parallel, the Continental Divide, and bullet-ridden signs cheerfully announcing the state line. And yes, the pulsing blue dot that accompanies me wherever I go, keeping me oriented and globally positioned.

But there were years when I would crisscross the nation with only a dog-eared atlas. Now I can hardly drive to Target without mapping my route. Something has been lost—a sense of agency, a way of being in the world—but I cannot argue that squinting at a roadmap with a flashlight was better.

Perhaps I’m thinking about Lake Superior tonight because it speaks to a deep-boned craving for mystery in these unmysterious times when it feels like everything can—and should—be answered. Feelings are mistaken for wisdom. Information has displaced wonder.

So tonight's soundtrack offers a murky marine-themed response to a Very Kind Listener's recent request for some dub techno—here's forty minutes submerged in mysterious echoes and watery orchestras. Listen below or better yet, take a sip of this mp3.

1. Loscil - Drained Lake
   Monument Builders | Kranky, 2016 | Bandcamp
2. Porter Ricks - Nautical Dub
   Biokenetics | Chain Reaction, 1996 | Bandcamp
3. Polmo Popo - Aqua
   The Science of Breath | Subtractive, 2002 | Boomkat
4. Variant - Ocean’s End Revisited
   Ocean's End | Echospace, 2015 | Bandcamp
5. Black Polygons - Underwater
   Silence | 2014 | Bandcamp
6. Mammo - Traversing a Raincloud
   General Patterns | Short Span, 2025 | Bandcamp
7. Deepchord - Oceanic
   20 Electrostatic Soundfields | Soma, 2021 | Boomkat

Served with several gallons of reverb, some crushed static, and a dollop of Stevie Wonder.

And dig the quiet luxury of Midnight Radio apparel. TeePublic's tri-blend t-shirts are the softest I've found—but a person can only own so many Spiritualized and Basic Channel shirts, so I've made a few Midnight Radio options to expand my repertoire and weird out the normals. (This isn't a dumbass attempt at monetization, I swear. I earn fifty cents per sale. I just like these shirts—but only the tri-blend.)

Thank you for listening, and the request lines are open.