This week's episode has a (slightly misguided) hour-long spotlight on sounds from 1984 to celebrate CJSW's 1985 FM debut—but what better way to celebrate an amateur campus and community station than with a minor flub and great music. Happy anniversary, CJSW!

Playlist:

• Masayoshi Fujita, featuring Moor Mother - Our Mother's Lights
• Zeta II Reticulli - Teacozy 1
• Veryan - One Universal Breath
• Various Artists , A Person Disguised As People, featuring Moat Bells - Psych FM8E
• Kiasmos - Sisteron
• Various Artists, Catch & Release Records, featuring Laura Palmer - A Poem
• Kush K - being soft is your biggest asset
• Stelar Door - Saw Hollow
• Angell & Crane - Swingjugend
• This Mortal Coil - The Last Ray
• Cocteau Twins - Pepper-Tree
• Felt - Spanish House
• Various Artists, featuring Illegitimate Sons of Christ - In One Move
• New Order - Thieves Like Us
• Leonard Cohen - The Law
• Ohama - Part In Peace
• Ohama - Of Whales
• Haroumi Hosono - Androgena
• Holger Czukay - The Photo Song
• Michael Rother - Flammende Herzen
• Organic Pulse Ensemble - Passing Phase
• Badge Époque Ensemble - Lujon
• Polyphonic Exophilia - Staring at the Sun
• Jack Erin Brown - Code Grey
• SAULT - Signs
• Bobby Hughes Combination - Olympic Girls
• Vinyl Williams - Pure Imagination
• Gum Country - Brain Song
• Sleepkit - Human Rhythm
• Art d'Ecco - The Traveller

For the first episode of 2025, we're counting down The AM's top 50 albums of the past 12 months. Enjoy the second half of AM Gold 2024!

Playlist:

• Dummy - Godspin
• Jon McKiel - Under Burden
• Various Artists, featuring Green-House, Keela - Within Without (Liberation)
• Luka Kuplowsky - How Can I Possibly Sleep When There is Music (a response to Ryōkan Taigu)
• Nala Sinephro - Continuum 3
• Peel Dream Magazine - Machine Repeating
• OHMA - between all things
• Jennifer Castle - Earthsong
• Dialect - Overgrown Song
• Project Gemini - Twilight
• Bernardino Femminielli - La foire aux lumiéres
• Memorials - Name Me
• Jessica Pratt - Get Your Head Out
• Eric Chenaux Trio - These Things
• Ayal Senior - Burnt Lokshen
• Elori Saxl - Shorter Lifespan
• Buildings and Food - Planting a Desert
• Geotic - The Men-Shaped Fog
• Sam Wilson - Waterside
• Loving - The Light In You
• Chad VanGaalen - Little Song
• Organic Pulse Ensemble - Ypocalypse
• Andrew Wasylyk, Tommy Perman, featuring Aidan Moffat - Be the Hammer
• Tomin - Life Revisited
• Lau Ro - Each Day
• SW Hedrick - Explore, Exploit
• Hiro Ama - Everything Is Going To Make Sense In The End
• Cindy Lee - Government Cheque
• Caméra - Matsutake
• Peggy Lee & Cole Schmidt - fall ride
• SiP - Herbalife
• Tristan Arp - Invisible Cities
• Hypnodrone Ensemble - Alchemia
• Fabiano do Nascimento, Sam Gendel - Cores
• Ezra Feinberg - Soft Power

AM Gold 2024 – Part One: Looking back at 101 favourite albums from the last year. See the full list at theam.ca, or wait until 2025 to find out what capped this year's list.

Playlist:

• Ryan Lottermoser - Twilight Vigil
• Tomo Katsurada - Moshimo
• Hélène Vogelsinger - Elevation
• Trees Speak - Emotion Engine
• Loula Yorke - the stream sent forth such sallies of glad sound
• Ivan the Tolerable - Poole Hospital
• Drum & Lace, featuring Nailah Hunter - Plucked
• Lynn Avery & Cole Pulice - The Mirror-Glade
• Osmanthus - Cutting and Layering
• Temporal Waves - Cyclotron
• Hollie Kenniff - Surface
• Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan - A Shared Sense of Purpose
• Seahawks - Sail Across the Moon
• Clinic Stars - I Am the Dancer
• Mark McGuire - Anhedonia
• Charbonneau / Amato - BOC
• Dean McPhee - Cosmos
• Miyauchi Yuri - Jiade
• P:ano - mariko
• Yasmin Williams, featuring Kaki King, Darian Donovan Thomas - Harvest
• Bananagun - Those Who Came Before
• Circles Around the Sun, Mikaela Davis - Gloaming Way
• Retep Folo, Dorothy Moskowitz - The Enchanted People
• Anna Butterss - Seeing You
• SHOLTO - Trident (Jazz Not War)
• Wayne Patrick Garrett - Something About Us
• BIG|BRAVE - Theft
• Beak> - Ah Yeh
• Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Grey Rubble - Green Shoots
• Daisy Rickman - Winter Solstice
• BADBADNOTGOOD - Mid Spiral
• Unessential Oils - Solutions to My Gloom
• Bibi Club - Le Feu

No Christmas tunes on this week's AM—although there is one sad Christmas Eve song in the 8:30 Throwback. No, it's just an average mid-winter episode of The AM, gradually waking up from gently drifting synths and ambient jazz through a psych-pop second hour to a trip-hop-laced conclusion. Hope you enjoy the break from holiday sounds, and see you next week for the annual AM Gold year in review episodes.

Playlist:

• Various Artists, featuring Asta Hiroki & Tristan De Liége - reassurance, consolation
• Pye Corner Audio - Mainframe - Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith Remix
• Roedelius - TB11 34 20
• Boisson Végétale - Late Night Yellow
• R Grunwald - Bound in Stillness
• Sebastien Tellier - Septieme Ciel
• Domenique Dumont - To Unknownia
• Arooj Aftab - Last Night Reprise
• Philip Clemo - To Breathe
• Postnamers - Scarves and Lashes
• David Zucchi - Away
• Tarwater - Everybody Had a Hard Year
• Seawind of Battery - Dreamscaper
• Milkweed - The Tree as a Kinship Symbol
• Bernice - Empty Cup (Yves Jarvis Sequel)
• Simon Fisher Turner - Toast
• Nicholas Krgovich, Jan Lankish - At Last I Am Free
• The Everly Brothers - Christmas Eve Can Kill You
• The Everly Brothers - Green River
• Kit Sebastian - Enkaz
• Margo Guryan - Sun
• Parsnip - Turn to Love
• Faith Healer - Canonized
• Astral Swans - The Coward
• Portishead - The Rip
• Sinewave - Dodecahedron
• Massive Attack - Pray for Rain
• Bristol Manor - All At Once
• Concretism - Of Frisbees and Pylons
• Cate Brooks - Prismatics
• The Comet is Coming - The Afterlife
• O.rang - Superculture
• Dreamsploitation - The Soft Focus Sound of Today
• L.T.Leif - Into the Air

Some contemplative tunes for the last week before the Winter Solstice, including Nap Eyes tackling WB Yeats, Robert Wyatt's Matching Mole, and a selection of songs that may have made my year-end list if I'd found them a bit sooner. Hope you enjoy it, and see you again once the days start getting longer.

Playlist:

• Fabiano do Nascimento, Shin Sasakubo - Ap​ó​s a Tempestade
• Blue Lake - The Forest
• Wayne Patrick Garrett - Mystic Grotto
• David Zucchi - Mandi
• Woo - Memory Oscillator
• Google Earth - Wouldn't You
• david a jaycock - Salford Shopping City
• Caribou - August 20/24
• Machinedrum, featuring aja monet - ORACLE
• Zachary Gray - In Arrears
• Papa M - Devil Tongue
• Teitur, Girls in Airports - Krabbasker
• Kate Bollinger - Postcard from a Cloud
• Various Artists, featuring Pearl and the Oysters - Koi Wa Momoiro
• Matching Mole - O'Caroline
• Matching Mole - Instant Kitten
• Dorothea Paas - Whatever That Means
• Nap Eyes - I See Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart's Fullness and of the Coming Emptiness
• Me & My Friend - Imperfectionism
• Yuma Abe - I'm falling for you
• Klaus Johann Grobe - Io Sempre Di Tu
• Helado Negro - Best For You and Me
• Lætitia Sadier - The Inner Smile
• Animal, Surrender! - One of These Things First
• Eiyn Sof - Liquid Light
• Aluminum - HaHa
• Blume - Shifting Tides
• The Reds, Pinks & Purples - Finding Shells on the Beach
• Milk Toast - (You've Got A) Little Problem
• Ducks Ltd - Train Full of Gasoline
• Lab Coast - Walking On Ayr

A bit of a musical hodgepodge this week, making it through some tracks that didn't fit into the rest of 2024, and squeezing in some late-year releases that demand a moment in the spotlight. But who needs consistency as long as you have quality?

Hope you enjoy the variety, and have a fantastic week.

Playlist:

• Robin Guthrie - Starting Fires
• Hollie Kenniff, featuring Goldmund - Esperance
• ASKO - enoksasant
• Seahawks - Shining Dream
• Charbonneau / Amato - Groupe
• Kristen Roos - Bouton
• Harpsichord Canvas, featuring Orchid Mantis - The Dream Is Over Now
• ecotype - Inner Order
• Applesauce Tears - Faded and Braided
• Various Artists, featuring Lucas Croon - Krautwickel
• Castillo + Jarboe, featuring Thor Harris - The Humour
• Avi C. Engel - Cocoon
• White Poppy - Orchid Child (Acoustic Mix)
• Deradoorian - Digital Gravestone
• spirit blue - Desire Machine
• Yo La Tengo - Leaving Home - Alternate Version
• Yo La Tengo - Wizard's Sleeve
• anaiis, Grupo Cosmo - Voyage
• Mandrake Handshake - The Change and the Changing
• N NAO - Corps
• Fievel Is Glauque - As Above So Below
• Druid - Remembering
• Minor Conflict - Glue
• Prefuse 73 - She Needs No Introduction
• Sleepkit - Candy Apple Girl
• Hildegard - Melody I Heard
• Bon Enfant - Minimum
• Sunglaciers - One Time or Another
• Cindy - All Weekend
• Fashion Club, featuring Julie Byrne - Rotten Mind
• Jolie Holland & Samantha Parton - Wildflower Blues
• Te Huhu - Get It On

Another three hours of offbeat easy listening to warm a frozen December morning. Enjoy ambient psychedelica, soundtrack grooves, prog-inflected detours, and dream-pop ditties.

This week's throwback is Butter 08, a goofy, groovy one-off Cibo Matto/JSBE collaboration from back in 1996—thanks to Mike Bell for tipping me to the existence of this one.

Playlist:

• David Zucchi - Salve Regina
• Dissolve in Sepia - Apricity
• Ben Lukas Boysen, featuring Tom Adams - Vineta
• Tristan de Liège, Velvet Empress - Kensington
• Tomo Katsurada - Zen Bungalow
• Wayne Patrick Garrett - Reflections
• Yabra - Transmission II
• Drum & Lace, featuring Nailah Hunter - Plucked
• Prince Shima - New Albion
• Air - Ce matin-là - Demo 2
• SiP - Palomino
• Loud Diamond - Good Day
• Juana Molina - Astro de la luz segunda
• The Books - Chain of Missing Links
• Zacht Automaat - God Only Knows (Beach Boys)
• Butter 08 - How Do I Relax
• Butter 08 - Butter of 69
• MISZCZYK, featuring Chandra - Bad Ride
• Badge Époque Ensemble - Unity (It's up to You)
• Laurence Vanay - Underwater Light Reflections
• Sagor & Swing - Soft Forest
• Jane Weaver - Univers
• Gal Gracen - (Infinity)
• Brian Eno - St Elmo's Fire
• Memorials - Cut It Like a Diamond
• Church Chords - Man On a Wire
• Peggy Lee & Cole Schmidt - Gloop
• Snake River - TV Light
• Child Actress - Aries Sun
• Dummy - Nine Clean Nails
• Orange Crate Art - Diagrams from Spherical Models
• Century Palm - New Creation

A more downbeat, wintry episode, with occasional bursts of sunnier psychedelia and pop-adjacent sounds. Hope you enjoy it, and keep warm out there.

Playlist:

• Various Artists, featuring Rachika Nayar, Julianna Barwick, Cassandra Croft - Song to the Siren
• Hollie Kenniff - Amare
• IKSRE - vermillion - Kilometre Club Remix
• A Lily - Solar Systems
• Animals on Wheels - Stan's Soluble Fish
• Me & My Friend - Inspiration
• Flying Lotus - Garmonbozia (Instrumental)
• Angell & Crane - Yellow Diamond
• Elori Saxl - How We Got Here
• Philip Clemo - Space to Dream
• ermhoi - Ginger Island
• Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp - Tout Cassé
• KOKOROKO - Higher
• Crumb - AMAMA
• Alan Sparhawk - Black Water
• Zacht Automaat - Long Long Long
• Zacht Automaat - Lost in the Peak District
• Echolalia - Odd Energy
• Void Comp - Control
• Atoms For Peace - Before Your Very Eyes
• Cloe Martin - Winter Is Way Too Long
• Bananagun - Free Energy
• The Soundcarriers - With Us For Now
• Sleepkit - Yo Gamma Gamma
• SUUNS - Wave
• Emilíana Torrini - Black Water
• Bristol Manor - Shadows & Form
• Jilk - Hiss Release
• Yoo Doo Right - Spirit's Heavy, But Not Overthrown, Part 1
• Hypnodrone Ensemble - Desdemona

Skip to the 2:15 mark (ish) for a conversation with the filmmakers behind Slice of Life, a documentary at this week's CUFF.Docs film festival. Or listen from the start for your usual AM mix of hazy electronics, psychedelic sounds, and (this week) a bit of a dream-country detour to round out the show.

Playlist:

• Sankt Otten - Helden
• Various Artists , featuring Frunk29 - Journey In Search Of The Holy Gray
• Earthen Sea - Another Space
• RAMZi - flotilli
• Astrocolor - Cosmosis
• Jay Holy - All the Time
• Luciano Michelini, Lorenzo Dada - Modular Clouds in Rome
• Ryan Lottermoser - Blooming Despite the Dark
• Rich Aucoin - Waldorf Wave
• Underworld - denver luna
• Various Artists , featuring We.B - The Cycle of Seasons
• Mark McGuire - (I Can) Only Imagine
• Haruka Nakamura - passage
• Underground Wires - HEA
• Philip Clemo - Dawn
• SHOLTO - Letting Go of Forever
• Klint - Are You There
• Klint - Diamond
• BADBADNOTGOOD - Best Left Unsolved (Bonus Track)
• Black Moth Super Rainbow - Demon's Glue
• L'éclair, Klaus Johann Grobe - Lotus
• Scions - Fight Song
• P:ano - song
• Talking Heads - The Big Country
• Jennifer Castle - Louis
• Ghostkeeper - Rolly
• Rose City Band - Lights on the Way
• Skinshape - How Can It Be?

Jazzy sounds start your first post-Daylight Savings morning, plus the usual mix of shoegaze, jangle-pop, post-punk, and a throwback to Bruce Haack's Electric Lucifer.

Enjoy the sounds, stay sane this week, and enjoy a showfill from Greenhouse's Emily R. next Monday morning.

Playlist:

• Spirit of Naima - Cut Free
• SW Hedrick - Early Golden
• Blue Lake - Weft
• Ayal Senior - Ta Shma
• Peggy Lee, Cole Schmidt - Blame
• Sylvain Rifflet - Mǎmǎhūhū
• Tomin - Life
• Erki Pärnoja - Rumba in mostly 7 for one
• Bristol Manor - Sepia Tones
• Prefuse 73 - The End of Air
• The Smile - Instant Psalm
• White Poppy - Memories (Surf Mix)
• Bon Enfant - Enfant de l’air
• Memorials - Lamplighter
• Sleepkit - Flower Through Your Head
• Bruce Haack - Cherubic Hymn
• Bruce Haack - Program Me
• Kit Sebastian - Göç / Me
• Whatitdo Archive Group - Wild Man
• Panda Bear, featuring Cindy Lee - Defense
• Dana Gavanski - Business of the Attitude
• Jonathan Personne - Nuage noir
• Nick Brobak - They Can Save You
• Color Green - Ball and Key
• Jonah Yano - Someone Asked Me How I’ve Been
• Naima Bock - Moving
• Chad VanGaalen - Snake Pit
• Affiliate Links - Three Minute Drum Solo
• The Smashing Times - June Rabbit
• Tess Parks - Crown Shy
• OMBIIGIZI - Hands Are Up
• Smoke Bellow - Homecoming
• Cheer - Intersections
• Keiichi Suzuki, Hirokazu Tanaka, Hiroshi Kanazu and Toshiyuki Ueno - You've Come Far, Ness
• Mort Garson - Concerto for Philodendron & Pothos
• Mort Garson - Plantasia
• Mort Garson - Symphony for a Spider Plant
• Mort Garson - Baby's Tears Blues
• Michael Boddicker - End Title March