Category Archives: imaginary stations

We’ve got your number

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Cheers to our good music/gardening/radio friend Justin Patrick Moore for sending over this musical recommendation in an ambient downbeat style called The haunted testcard tapes by Alpha Seven. Haunted Testcard is a lovely bit of electronica and a great one to drift off to. By the way the cover of the LP is great too!

There’s another testcard connection as Pete Roberts of Alpha Seven was also a member of Testcard F, remember them?

 

The next we’ve chosen (above) is a numbers stations related tune and you know we love one of them here. There’s quite a few on Bandcamp if you tap in “Numbers Stations” under the search. Some are of an industrial or harsh experimental nature which all have their place but it is nice to hear something in a more chilled out style. The track even has some morse in there as well. Double radio-related bonus. Cheers for the musical tip Justin.

And by the way if you want to get into a saturday spy mode, pretend you are secret agent 001 and fancy listening to some numbers stations have a look here and see if there’s a transmission coming up.

Don’t worry you don’t need a shortwave radio hidden in a bar of soap or disguised as a loaf of Hovis to listen in, just click the link ( in blue under “Next station in so and so minutes”) and it will bring you to a online SDR (software defined radio) all ready tuned in and ready to decode. Make sure you have a biro and a rough book at the ready.

Rose thorns as gramophone needles. Isn’t it?

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Thanks a million to the one and only Rhythm Doctor for playing One Deck Pete’s “Put a sock in it” mix (originally for Imaginary Station’s KTAB) 11.30 mins in on his “Mojo” It’s a mix up of some fine funk, jazzy stuff, latin, soul, ska and whathaveyou. More on the show here.

Tracklistings:
Jimmy James – Come to me Softly
Off a Jamaican 7″ single on WIRL from 1962 from the man Jimmy James as in Jimmy James and the Vagabonds “I’ll go where the music takes me” fame.

Kouta Katsutaro – Asu ha otachika
Off the wonderful set simply entitled “Kouta Katsutaro” on Death Is Not The End’s Bandcamp (here).

King Stitt/Tommy Mc Cook – Sauvitt
As sampled by One Deck & Popular on “Son of Stitt” (here) and a version of Mongo Santamaria‘s Suavito (here).

Alick Nkhata – Kalindawalo Ni Mfumu
This track is something else! A sort of Rock n Roll stomper, with some lovely harmonies and some horns courtesy of a Coventry Salvation Army brass band sound-alike and someone tinkling those ivories very skillfuly towards the end. It don’t get much better than this. On an LP called Radio Lusaka off the mighty Mississippi Records Bandcamp here.

Marty Robinson – Follow you
From a very battered Coxsone Dodd white 7″ blank and later released on his Port-O-Jam label. M (Martell/Marty) Robinson may have lived in the Coventry/Birmingham area for a bit too. More about the artist here.

Sitting here watching crows like themselves

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Early this morning we popped down B&Q in Bell Green for some liquid fertiliser as we’re not producing enough comfrey leaves to make the liquid feed we’re used to putting on our garden (Above: crow waiting for bus home like us at 8.30 am).

Something we should look into is the NPK content that comes on the side of the bottle denoting how much Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and K for Potassium (or Potash) is in the liquid. As we’ve always used home-made comfrey liquid and mixed in compost on the beds, that’s something we’ve got to research about more.

Back home we spent a good hour or so feeding the back garden including the giant sunflower which is reaching skywards. We’ve 3 sunflowers, this 8ft monster and another 2 that are about 5 foot. It must be all about where they’re placed and how much sun they get. We love the sunflowers as the tops do follow the sun about during the day.

And this week we were told about this video, 10 vegetables/fruit that we don’t bother with anymore. We’re talking skirret, alexanders, good King Henry, medlar, chickweed, scorzonera, welsh onions, lovage, tansy (“The punk rock herb…” “…that demands respect and attention” as the bloke describes it, we love that!) and turnip greens. We wonder as food fashions come and go, will any of these “old time something come back again” as the song goes?

 

And two tunes about flying winged things:
The first a nice dub number from Derajah meets The 18th Parallel called Dub Crow.

 

The next is an a excellent tune released by the wonderful Sublime Frequencies out of Seattle, Washington, it’s by Chhoun Vanna and called To Tea Yum Chlong (Birds Are Singing But My Lover Won’t Return). At 2.45, it just ain’t long enough.

“The birds are chirping, to and fro
My love, have you forgotten me?
As water can’t cut through the sand
I can’t cut you from my memories
The bridge (between you and I) has broken
The pathway is gone, and the water is so very deep
How am I to find you on the other side, so far away?”
Thanks to fleurmach.com for the lyrics.

 

Slow down a little via shortwave radio

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A big thanks again to DJ Frederick and all the Imaginary Stations Crew for broadcasting the Downbeat on Shortwave 2 show over the weekend via those radio transmitters at Shortwaveradio.de

The show featured a hands across the world collaboration between Jesse Yuen from Perth, Australia and One Deck Pete from Catford Village, UK who played two 15 minute mixes each in a back to back style featuring some downtempo business to slow things down in our life.

We’ve posted up two recordings of the show. The first is the stereo studio recording and below that, the off-air recording via the shortwaves recorded in glorious mono. There’s added texture to the show thanks to signals bouncing off the ionosphere/groundwave propagation and someone next door switching on their toaster.

Heading to the moon on a friday night (on a 60 plus travelcard)

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We were compiling some tunes for a space leaning shortwave mix and came across this belter of a dub. It’s off a set called Moon Dub EP by Invadread. The track is by Baodub and called Dub of the moon and it is one catchy dub and has a touch of the Keith Levine’s in there and a bit of a Doctor Who vibe somewhere. A tune!

Another moon themed tune…

As the lyrics go “Neil Armstrong the first human on the Moon and the Pan Afros the first men to play the tune”. Brilliant!

They Could Have Been Bigger than the Beatles

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At 2.58 above is a tune that made us smile this week while putting together another shortwave mix for Imaginary Stations. It’s called Beatles and the MBE from Lord Short Shirt & The Silhouettes and even if you’re not keen on the Fab Four this’ll cheer you up.

“No WSTLing at WORK” said the foreman

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Here’s the audio of the weekend just gone Imaginary Station show WSTL/WORK in a whistling while you work tip. Expect all sorts of tunes from related genres (including Heavy Whistling and Gainful Employment-core) and at 22.30 there’s a mix by One Deck Pete called “Work while you whistle”.

Here’s the tracklisting:
The silhouettes – Get a job (excerpt) (00.01)
コディ – Clocking In (00.19)
Nexotica – Whistlin’ Blues (04.21)
Whistling Kettle in dub (6.40)
The Secret Whistle – Lebensmittelvergiftung (07.00)
Paul Blackford – Night Shift (11.20)
Phoenix City All-stars – Career Opportunities Dub (excerpt) (14.03)

Tune in and enjoy the sound of WSTL/WORK!

A two tune Wednesday selection

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While doing a shortwave mix the other night we came across this duo we’ve never heard of before called The Secret Whistle. It’s a great name and turns out they’re from Portland, Oregon and they make some fine tunes. Here’s two here.