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Today on SOUNDWAVE our guest deejay is n5MD recording artist, Daniel McCagh.

Daniel describes his mix as a collection of some favourite tunes both beautiful and sometimes uncomfortable for deep and immersive listening. It’s the kind of soundscape that’s perfect for the rare rainy day we’re having this weekend in San Diego. After you are done listening to Daniel’s mix you will know that you have just experienced something profound and that you will need time to process it.

Daniel’s mix comes to us by way of Mike Cadoo, the founder of n5MD. I interviewed Mike and featured music from his label on solipsistic NATION some years ago. When I launched SOUNDWAVE I reached out to Mike to do a mix for a show. Mike was busy at the time but suggested that Daniel put together a mix for SOUNDWAVE. Great idea, Mike. Oh, and I still want you to do a mix of your own when time permits.

Daniel McCagh is an electronic music producer and sound artist currently residing in Melbourne, Australia. Daniel uses acoustic instruments and digital manipulation to create powerful emotive and cinematic music. Daniel is also the sole composer and sound designer behind Gutterbox Audio, having composed music and designed sound for global companies such as Polestar, Huawei, Acura and Volkswagen.

This mix is a small label sampler for Other Forms of Consecrated Life, a platform for experimental artists with an interest in audiovisual phenomena, hypnagogia, or dissociative states. The mix begins with low, pulsing drones from the archive of Lynette Sandholm Evvers, a chromesthesic, whose work has been favorably compared by Disquiet to Éliane Radigue. It then continues with the choral, eremitic musics of The Penitential Station and Acoxaca, before concluding with the more abrasive sounds of Tepe Gawra and Elizabeth Cottern, the latter whose album was described by Brainwashed as an ‘instant classic’.

I love this mix and I’m happy to finally share it with you after listening it to it weekly for the six months. It’s also something of a relief because today’s mix is also a touchstone to very unhappy time in my life and I’m glad to finally let go of it.

Join us again next week when our guest deejay will be E & S from one of my favorite labels, Other Forms of Consecrated Life.

See you then!

Today’s guest deejay is Sasha, AKA, protoU!

A few months ago Dronny Darko came on the show with a killer mix. As usually, I asked Dronny who he knew personally who would be interested in sharing a mix of their own for SOUNDWAVE and Dronny recommended protoU. It’s a dark and mysterious that’s both ethereal and earthy. Sasha’s mix resonates with me because it is reminiscent of the first two albums that introduced me to ambient music, Brian Eno’s Ambient 4: On Land and Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks. Sasha’s mix also include’s Hivetribe’s “Uthernno”, which features one of my favorite recording of a 1950s housewife trying to describe a LSD experience.

You will not be disappointed with Sasha’s mix. I’ve had her mix on repeat for weeks and I still find something new in it.

Today’s guest deejay is Axel Arturo Barceló, who I met while interviewing him for solipsistic NATION about his netlabel, Discos Konfort. I enjoyed talking to Axel about his label and dug the music from his roster of artists that he was one of the first people I contacted when I started asking folks to guest deejay on SOUNDWAVE. I know you’re going to live his mix!

This is another one of those entries that I have to keep short because I have friends from out of town that I’m about to meet up with for dinner.

Okay, that’s it. I got a flex. Join us next week when our guest deejay will be protoU.

See you then!

Today’s guest deejay is Jonathan Ammons, a journalist, radio producer, and musician living in Asheville, North Carolina. You can find his music on Bandcamp and listen to his radio show from WPVM and Pacifica Radio Network at the Dirty Spoon.

Jonathan is yet another amazing person I was introduced to through my old friend, Steve Howard (listen to Steven’s SOUNDWAVE mix here). Meeting Jonathan is one of the unexpected pleasures in the evolution of SOUNDWAVE.

I launched SOUNDWAVE to help cope with the stress of the pandemic. In the first few months of COVID-19 it seemed that stepping outside your house might kill you. If that wasn’t terrifying enough, my family was scattered about the country so for a long time it was just me and my dog. That took a toll on me and my usual distractions, music, reading and television, could not hold my interest at all. In fact, they annoyed me or angered me. The only thing that provided any comfort was ambient, classical, experimental and instrumental music. I reasoned that if that music was giving me solace it might help others as well so I launched SOUNDWAVE. Very soon afterwards I decided to invite the talented people I know who might enjoy or, more importantly, need to share a mix of their own. And that very quickly led to asking my friends who they knew personally who might want to participate in the show. That decision introduced me to such wonderful people as Adrian Utley, Hannah Peel, Charles Hazlewood and Jonathan.

I don’t really know Jonathan, though. We’ve just had a few email exchanges arranging today’s show but through his mix I feel I know him more intimately than I might know him through a dozen conversations. That’s all projection, of course, but that is the power of music. It bypasses the rational and hits on emotional truths, which is why I launched SOUNDWAVE in the first place.

Our guest deejay is Hannah Peel.

Until a few weeks ago I wasn’t familiar with Hannah and had only become acquainted with her when I asked SOUNDWAVE guest deejay, Charles Hazlewood, who he knew personally that might be interested in sharing a mix on the show. Charles put me in contact with Portishead’s Adrian Utley and Hannah Peel. Adrian’s mix was lovely and Hannah’s mix is no less so.

On today’s show Hannah will take you to some very surprising places and she begins her mix with a track from Joni Mitchel. So unexpected! You're in her capable hands so enjoy the journey. I know you're going to love today’s show.

As I said, I was unfamiliar with Hannah but I’ve been getting up to speed. And you should, too, because Hannah’s music is also unexpected. Her songs can be delicate and achingly familiar. She’’ll paint impressionistic music with swathes of sound but will also delight you with covers of pop songs from the ‘80s performed on music boxes. I catch myself singing Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” constantly thanks to Hannah.

Join us again next week when our guest deejay will be Jonathan Ammons.

I’m very excited about today’s show because our guest deejay is Adrian Utley!

Most likely you know Adrian from Portishead, the band that put trip hop on the map late last century. Or you many know Adrian more recently for the work he did with Will Gregory for the soundtrack to the motion picture Arcadia, which I featured on the first episode of SOUNDWAVE. Adrian is a man who cares deeply about his craft and his love of sound and music is expressed in any project he is involved with.

I want to give special thanks to Charles Hazelwood for putting me in contact with Adrian. After Charles’s mix for SOUNDWAVE went live I asked him who he knew personally who might be interested in participating in the show and he suggested Adrian and Hannah Peel (who will be our guest deejay on next week’s show). It’s little things like that that make this show feel special and more intimate. At least to me, anyway.

Okay, time for me to wrap this up. My family and I are going to take a little but much needed vacation and get away from the wildfires and earthquakes that have wracked California.

I hope you are safe and well. See you next week.

A collection of pieces reflecting my mood as we near the end of Summer 2020, the summer of Covid-19, and the eve of a potentially apocalyptic American election.

The electrified mbira ensemble Konono N°1 from Congo Republic plays music that is simultaneously joyous and furious, danceable but stimulating cornersof the mind that reflect on history and colonialism, folk culture and electrified popular music.

With a wave of recent lynchings of African-Americans by uniformed police in the USA, forces that often see themelves as occupying armies, I’m reminded ofthis poignant blues by the legendary Blind Lemon Jefferson. While the singer laments that he will be executed for “doing something wrong”, one can’t help imagine that we are witness to a much more primitive form of justice, that of the lynch mob.

Some of my favorite guitar music of all time is vọng cổ music from Vietnam, performed on electric guitars with deeply scalloped fretboards and-built-in electronic effects. This music is deep blues, transnational and cosmic.

With the Linda Music track from what was the Central African Republic, we hear amusic now vanished, played by people extinguished in the civil war between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. Tragic, beautiful music.

At this point, I humbly add my own composition Storm of the Eye performed by thefantastic virtuosi Hilary Hahn on violin and Cory Smythe on piano. Commissioned in 2009 by Hilary for her album In 27 Pieces, the piece makes great demands on the players both in use of extended techniques and in summoning a feeling for the times.

This program closesout with an excerpt from Quatermass by the great Tod Dockstader, a visionary pioneer of music concrete and electro acoustic music. He worked outside of the academy and therefore never received the recognition due him. His music was visceral and powerful, perfect for this moment.