This week’s show opened with something of an endurance test for listeners: a twenty-minute piece of insistently repetitive minimalism from Anthony Moore, once-upon-a-time composer and founding member of the legendary avant-pop group Slapp Happy. Those who endured were treated to the usual eclectic smorgasbord of musical effluvia: Norwegian New Age and traditional British folk, ambient trance dirge and plunderphonic atmospherics, neo-classical industrial and neo-folk, classic progrock, dark wave and post-punk, etc.

I played a track from one of Andrew Liles‘ recent titles in his Monstrous series (a strange series it is, running the gamut from industrial porn and breakbeats to psychedelic folk), and I’ll be playing more from these recordings in the weeks to come. 400 Lonely Things is an underappreciated plunderphonic project with several fine albums to their credit, including the lushly ambient Barsoomian Lullaby volumes. Another set of music started out as an elegy for Olde England and proceeded through themes of declining empire and dystopia, featuring the music of Michael Cashmore, Phil Ochs, The Strawbs, and The Westbrook Blake Big Band‘s musical settings of the poetry of William Blake.

A featured artist was German industrial drone project Black To Comm (taking their name from a song by The MC5), and I played their 2009 CD Charlemagne & Pippin in its entirety: an astonishingly powerful work which sounds like being sucked into a glorious dark vortex of apocalyptic drone. Also included in the program were two long excerpts from the new two-disc soundtrack to The Great White Silence (a 1914 British silent film documenting a doomed voyage to the South Pole), newly restored by the British Film Institute and magnificently scored by Simon Fisher Turner. This entrancing example of long-form ambient music was bookended with some classic vintage 80s post-punk & synth-pop from Cindytalk and Pink Military (when was the last time you heard that band?)

Listen To The Podcast

The playlist gives artist name, song title, and album title (in that order). A space between lines of text indicates the break between sets where track announcements were made.

Playlist for Mindtrain 08 – 20 September 2011

• Anthony Moore – Jam Jem Jim Jom Jum – Pieces From The Cloudland Ballroom

• Kirsten Braten Berg & Ale Moller – Heiemo Og Nykkjen – Nordisk Sang: Music Of Norway (Compilation)
• Miguel Frasconi – Dreams From The Body – Song + Distance
• Andrew Liles – Swamp Thing (Bloodbath For Bunyip) – Muldjewangk, Morgawr & Other Monsters
• A Bad Diana – Behind The Curtain Of The Sun – The Lights Are On But No-One’s Home
• 400 Lonely Things – Pimalia – A Barsoomian Lullaby, Volume One: A Snow White Egg

• Shirley Collins – Adieu To Old England – Fountain Of Snow
• Current 93 – Good Morning, Great Moloch – Sleep Has His House
• Michael Cashmore – Dream England – Sleep England
• Fire + Ice – The Werewolves Of London Town – Birdking
• Baby Dee – So Bad – Love’s Small Song
• Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger And The Trinity – Vauxhall To Lambeth Bridge – Streetnoise
• The Westbrook Blake – London Song – Bright As Fire
• Phil Ochs – The Crucifixion – Pleasures Of The Harbor
• Death In June – Jerusalem The Black – Rose Clouds Of Holocaust
• The Strawbs – New World – Grave New World

• Cindytalk – Muster – Wappinschaw
• Hex – Diviner – Tarnation (Original Soundtrack)
• Scivias – The Peach Boy – And You Will Fear Death Not
• Cindytalk – Hush – Wappinschaw
• A Bad Diana – Chant d’Amour / Da Mort – The Lights Are On But No-One’s Home
• Simon Fisher Turner – The Great White Silence, Part Two (Excerpt) – The Great White Silence (Original Soundtrack)
• Pink Military – I Cry – Blood & Lipstick

• Black To Comm – Charlemagne & Pippin – Charlemagne & Pippin

• David Bowie – A Small Plot Of Land – Basquiat (Original Soundtrack)
• Simon Fisher Turner – The Great White Silence, Part Two (Excerpt) – The Great White Silence (Original Soundtrack)