Technological Retreat

This episode of Technological Retreat features mixes from three nights in November of 1988. Lots of varied sounds that go around in this hour. Tibetan Monks & Humpback Whales in dub – Stravinsky & The Marx Brothers & John Michael Jarre fight it out – Muhamad Ali battles Mr Tooth Decay in an alternate reality – more media manipulations and somewhat witty banter. Thanks for tuning in and checking it out.

This is the second episode in this set of 1-hour re-broadcasts. All of these sounds that you’ll be hearing were originally broadcast in October and November of 1988, somewhere in the middle of the night. During this period, I was making lots of background audio tapes of radios and TV flipping from channel to channel. Enjoying the static and fragmented dialogs along with pieces of popular mass media bouncing source to source. A lot of this was noise, sometimes very sweet noise, sometimes not. I would use these as sound beds, layering more and more into them, like a visual collage.

I’m here to announce more of the same! Beginning this Sunday at 4 pm, available online through KFAI’s “Irregular Audio (FA2)” stream will be the next series of one-hour Technological Retreat programs, featuring the audio sound collages from my 20th century radio program, that was broadcast from 1985 – 1989, and on between 1am – 6am on Sunday nights – Monday mornings.

Several years ago, I digitized over 100 cassettes of these shows and have been taking the sound collages or mixes, and putting them together in 1-hour presentations. 15 of these programs are available on KFAI’s website and on Spotify.

Sound collage is the live layering and mixing of different audio sources to create new pieces. Similar to the creation of a visual collage. Not an idea that I invented, but one I certainly played around with. My stuff never was sample based or a dance mix, more like a soundtrack for the subconscious. Radio & TV chatter, ambient city sounds and musical beds all mushed up. Now it’s called mash up.

Technological Retreat is available online through KFAI’s “Irregular Audio (FA2)” stream in conveniently sized travel packages, ready for your own personnel usage. Please listen Sunday at 4pm or at any time of your choosing through KFAI’s archive. I’m excited to be presenting these experimental radio programs through KFAI’s digital media stream.

 

And the sounds keep coming. Podcast number 15 contains 5 mixes from 3 nights – and that equals 15… Three summer nights from 1988 to be exact. Listening in to these old radio shows again has been enjoyable. I’m actually impressed with how contemporary these sound collages sound. Maybe the noise in this world is finally catching up to the way the world sounded like to me back then. Listen in for spacey ethereal feedbackery, crazed dialog and a completely over the top homage to William Shatner performed by Cap’n Caffeine himself, an irregular regular caller-in to the show if there ever was one.

 

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Hello and thanks for tuning in. Podcast 14 contains 3 minutes from July 4th that didn’t fit in the last episode, and almost 56 minutes from August 22nd. It sounds like there was a lot going on up in the studio that night. Lots of little sounds making bigger sounds in these long mixes. Listening to these shows again has reminded me of that unhindered creative energy I felt and how much fun it was to do these shows live. I hope you are enjoying these as well.

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Welcome to the Thirteenth Technological Retreat podcast. Thanks for staying tuned and coming back. The five mixes presented here are from July of 1988. The first two are from the fourth and the other three from a tape that just says July ’88. This episode is action packed and full of nuts: Angry self-help teachers, freaked-out religious fanatics in DUB, classical nightmares and helpful literary advice from Captain Caffeine, among other late-night tales.

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Welcome to the twelfth Technological Retreat podcast. The original broadcast dates of these four mixes were from March and June of 1988, and overall give me the feeling of Celestial Chatter. AKA, what the world sounded like to me back then. Imagine if you will, on your cosmic radio the badly tuned-in music of the spheres passing through and passing out of our solar system, riding sound waves on an audio cycle always heading out. Or imagine whatever you like while you stay tuned and listen in.

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Here is episode number 11, and like the number 11, these ones are fun. These recordings are from January 11th, 23rd, and February 22nd, 1988. The set of voices beginning the second mix belong to Graham and Steve, the hosts from "Baghead Dreams". Later on in this episode I’m joined by my very good friend Alice Phoenix. Alice hosted and DJ’d KFAI’s first radio show focused on local, Minneapolis punk rock and all the variations thereof. It was called "New Day Rising", after the Husker Du song, and it is such a treat to be able to hear her voice coming out of speakers again. This picture appeared in City Pages. That's her in the center and me on the right at a Husker Du show.  RIP Alice.

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This is the tenth podcast in the series. Technological Retreat was 5 hours long and I spent a lot of time playing great music by itself, which isn’t the focus of these podcasts. I’m interested in the sound collage mixes that I think are worth listening to. The two included here are from January 11th, 1988, and are each about half an hour long. I was having fun that night and the mixes go all over the place. Thanks for coming back and stay tuned, we’re just scratching the surface.

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Podcast number 9 contains the final recordings from 1987. The first two mixes are from April 13th and were made for and given to my Mom for her birthday that year. Using a lot of the music she enjoyed from light jazz to classical to Broadway show tunes, with a lot of messing around in between. I can’t imagine what her reaction could have been: “That’s really nice Greg. How about next year getting me another cat or a video tape recorder, hmm?” The other three mixes are from June 21st, and almost sound like what a bunch of drunk robots on laughing gas in the studio might have sounded like. Almost.

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