And over in France

Thanks to Spike from Morschen43 in Le Puy-en-Velay, for sending over more pictures of his house and garden over there. It looks like they’re enjoying some lovely weather right now too.

We mentioned in the post the other day (here) that we loved the use of an old staircase to put window boxes on and here’s a couple here above with also a nice table from a restaurant in the Marais in Paris which was originally green and has now painted black. Nice stuff.

Another thing we love is the use of fossils (above) and some fossilised wood (below) in the garden as well. The fossilised wood was from his father who used to swap fossils and minerals with a friend in Bourgogne (aka Burgundy). Really great ideas Spike!

Keep watching the skies!

Cheers to Spike from Morschen43 for sending these pictures of some great looking red skies from his house in Le Puy-en-Velay, France from the other evening. There’s some very moody looking clouds there!

It would be great to hear they had lovely weather the next day, proving that old proverb: ‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight’ was correct. Cheers Spike.

A little whistling bird told me so

Cheers to Spike from Morschen43 for sharing more photos of his garden in Le Puy-en-Velay, France. He was trying to take a pic of his apple tree and didn’t seen the blackbird on it that just didn’t move, so giving him a super picture and whistled a great tune as well!

Here’s some assorted photographs of the plum tree and some blossom around the garden. Spike certainly has a great looking garden and home!

And thanks to Spike, we heard this tune on his last Vampirefreaks radio show. It’s from Sidarsen and called Des Millards (from 4.51 mins in). It’s 18 mins long but it really is a bit of a hypnotising /strange one.

Here’s what Spike’s weekly radio show is all about: “Vampirefreaks is a show primarily focused on rock/punk but also covering the world of reggae, ska, dub, metal, hard rock, and sometimes hip-hop.” So if you love that stuff, tune in!

Cheers again to Spike for playing this tune as we’ve never heard of this before and for keeping up to date on the gardening tip. Keep those pictures and reports coming Spike!

It only takes a minute

Reading the latest article on SWLing Post here about BBC interval signals, it reminded us of the wonderfully simple and direct “B–B–C” in the tonic scale used on shortwave for the BBC World Service and other transmissions to Africa.

We’ve always loved it and recently used it in a one-minute slightly odd piece from Madtone called “It Is AI, but we created it” for the 60 Sec Radio 2026 contest here, where “anything is possible as long as it’s 60 seconds long.”

The piece is below and features the said BBC interval signal alongside an excerpt of an strange ham radio conversation on 2 metres about AI generated music. We’re not that keen on AI generated music here funnily enough.

The contest is still open, so if you have 60 seconds radio collage, send it to the website here.

So nice we had to play it twice

We’re just researching another shortwave radio mix and remembered this wonderful track from Triptica out of Alajuela, Costa Rica called Mysterious Radio Signals. This was recorded off air from One Deck Pete’s “Interval Signal Tea break” mix which was broadcast on KMTS on December 17th 2000 at 2300 UTC on 9670 kHz. We do love the track and its cut and paste video.

Slow mo shortwave

Imaginary Stations will be bringing another Downbeat on Shortwave (show number 3) this weekend (cheers Fred!) on Saturday 14th February 2026 at 1200 UTC and on Sunday 15th February 2026 at 1000/1400 hrs/2100 UTC on 6160 kHz.

Our good dub gardening friend Jesse Yuen from North of The River Swan, Perth, Australia and One Deck Pete from SE23, will be bringing you two 15 minute mixes each in a back to back downtempo style.

Tune in your shortwave radio or if you haven’t got one, via an online Software Defined Radio here (tuned into 6160 kHz) at the right time this weekend in AM mode and listen in and chill out to their slow-mo selection.

See you at the heel stone

Happy Solstice to all! Rather than bunking the train down to Wiltshire, English Heritage has got tonight’s sunset and tomorrow morning’s sunrise on a live stream. Sadly there won’t be Hawkwind playing Silver Machine live, Ken Barlow in full druid gear and you can’t sit on top of the stones but we are sure it will be an event. Tune in as from now to hear some ambient classics and enjoy!

It looks great, we’ve just seen a bloke walking around carrying a union jack with an acid house smiley face in the middle of it, some people eating cheese sandwiches, some sort of giant made out of bedsheets and wood and we’re loving the comments “Dave in Atlanta – Stonehenge doesn’t exist, it’s all done by projections, can you see people actually touching the stones?”

We’ll be up with the postman at 4 am for the sunrise.

Music to send you to sleep

Tune in via Shortwave Gold this Sunday 10th March 2024 at 1000/1400 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2100 UTC on 3975 kHz to the sound of sleep with WZZZ. This is a horizontal themed show and they’ll be lots of great tunes to drop off to and to dream to, all around the sleep theme from the Imaginary Stations crew of DJ Frederick, Justin Patrick Moore and One Deck Pete.

At 1.50 minutes in they’ll be a mix from One Deck Pete called “You may say I’m a dreamer” with tunes by Jah Wobble, L. Pierre, The Barbados Steel Orchestra,
Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons and Owen Gray. Tune in for an hour of tunes on a sleepy tip next Sunday if you fancy a morning/afternoon snooze or an early night depending on the time.

And our good friend Gerry Hectic has compiled an answer mix (above) called “You’re not the only one” and an excellent mix it is too so listen and dream. Cheers Gerry it’s great stuff! Here’s the tracks:
Janek van Laak – Sloppy Dreams (Sonar Kollektiv)
King Jammy – Dreams (Dub Version)
MG Gost feat. Jack Jones – Dream Chaser
SEED Ensemble feat Cherise Adams-Burnett – The Dream Keeper
Spiritczualic Enchancement Centre – Dreaming of Miles Davis (Transporting Salt [Enhanced Version])
Miles Davis & Michel Legrand – The Dream

We of the other planets…

It all started today when we heard a great tune from Ronny called Don’t touch my hand on an excellent show called Tarmes #4 by Mud Creeper on Palanga Street Radio. The show is available here and is a very chilled affair and well worth listening to.

For some reason it put us in mind of a Joe Meek production that our good friend Justin Patrick Moore told us about a while ago. It’s called It’s hard to believe it by Glenda Collins and it’s one hell of a tune.

We tweeted it up in a “presently listening to” type post and a big thanks goes out to Denis H from JoeMeekSociety who replied to us with a link to an earlier demo of the song. This includes the original lyric “flying saucers are here to stay” instead of the familiar “bombs and missiles are here to stay” and what sounds like to our ears (but we may be wrong) some shortwave sounds at the start and finish. It’s a wonderful alternative take.