From Beatles to Bigfoot to Aetherius

Here’s the audio of Imaginary Station’s From Beatles to Bigfoot broadcast last weekend via Shortwave Gold, a show full of the songs of Lennon/McCartney covered in a way you’ve never heard before. Also beatles soundalikes, plus UFOs, flying saucers and a Yeti Choir (*subject to availability). It’s a odd mixture but a very nice odd mixture featuring contributions from all of the Imaginary Stations crew.

At 14.04 mins in One Deck Pete brings you a UFO themed mix called “A pint of lager please Earthman”. The tracks are:
Tena Stelin – UFO
Jah Warrior – Unidentified Flying Dub
The other self – Men from Venus
The Psychedelic Aliens – Blofonyobi Wo Atale
Meridian Brothers – Guaracha U.F.O (No Estamos Solos…) (excerpt)

Limited copies come with an extra “via the ionosphere” mix

A big thanks to DJ Frederick and Imaginary Stations for broadcasting Downbeat on Shortwave last weekend via the transmitters of  Shortwave Gold. The show featured two 15 minute mixes in a downtempo style back to back from Jesse Yuen (Australia) and One Deck Pete (London, SE23).

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. Fading and extra noises thanks to the ionosphere/groundwave.

Big shout to Jesse Yuen for getting involved and into the spirit of this shortwave radio project of ours.

Music opens up a whole can of worms (and more)

We’ve had Bargain Bin DJ (an A5 24 page fanzine) for a couple of weeks now (“print in the old fashioned way” as the song goes) produced by our good friend DJ Frederick from Groveton, New Hampshire.

If you love those bargain bin finds, this publication is for you. We don’t want to give too much away but issue number 1 has a review of Record Time magazine (the newest edition of said publication has all sorts of musical features from Polka to Sex Pistols inspired novelty records), Lawrence Welk, Kado Wilson, Forgotten 45’s from 1955, Sounds of Synanon, Moondog and Surf-Punk New Hampshire hero, Jonee Earthquake.

An excellent read if you love music found in the cheapo section or in a box hidden away under some damp smelling jumpers and coats in a charity shop. Cheers to Bargain Bin DJ fanzine for alerting us to the tune above under “sound-alike or plagiarism?”. A great track off an LP called Mood Indigo by Jean Jacques Perrey, “influenced” possibly by a tune called Telstar. We reckon it’s more than likely to be a tribute to the great Joe Meek. It’s a great one and we love the run out which we want it to go on forever.

If you want to find out more about obtaining the fanzine drop Fred an email at radiothriftshopnh@gmail.com

And here’s two sides a Bargain Bin classic of ours. An excellent single from Jamaican singer Jimmy James (he of Jimmy James and the Vagabonds later in his career). Wonderful stuff.

 

Turn up the heat

Below is the recording of last weekend’s WARM show from Imaginary Stations. It’s a great show featuring an hour of tunes to raise the temperature including a mix at 3.57 from One Deck Pete called Feeling hot, hot, hot. Tracklistings are:
Cass. – Ethan Veerbek
Bunny Wailer – Love Fire (Version)
Blundetto featuring Courtney John – Warm My Soul
Mice Parade – Warm Hand in Farmland (Stereolab remix)

Tune into the show and forget about the cold weather here at the moment.

Oh to be by the sea!

A few days ago we heard from our good friend from Japan, Stevyn from the great Iron Feather Journal fanzine who is away on holiday at the moment. He said “Hokkaido is minus 10 and there’s tons of snow so we took a mini vacation and flew south to Okinawa (pic above) and now relaxing by the sea side”. He sent us this picture below from his holidays of part of a jungle with a genuine viper warning! That’s brilliant Stevyn. We hope you had a great Christmas and that you’re having a great holiday, cheers for the pics.

Autumnal Japan

Thanks to Rob C again for a few more pictures from his trip. As he writes, “Japan is obviously famous for its cherry blossoms in the spring, but the changing leaves are also a popular attraction in the autumn. It was a little early when I was there, but as the days passed, there were clearer and clearer signs of the leaves turning from green to gold to vibrant red”.

And to say we are in awe of the greatness of Tokyo Tower above, (officially Japan Radio Tower as it says on Wikipedia) is an understatement. It puts our local radio/TV landmark at Crystal Palace to shame. It would be nice to have a little crystal set rigged up to a MP3 recorder and see what can be picked up from the photo location!

Thanks a million Rob, well interesting photographs and we may even have a part three to this series!

Japan pics © Rob C 2024

XRPT on your RADIO

Here’s the audio of yesterday’s transmission from Imaginary Stations, a show called XRPT, a compilation of Imaginary Stations shows past, present and future. It’s an interesting listen and includes contributions from all the crew, DJ Frederick, Justin Patrick Moore and at 21 minutes in is a mix from One Deck Pete called Bits and Pieces (nothing to do with Smiley Miley and The Radio 1 Roadshow of course!)

Bits and Pieces tracks:
Donut Specialist – As advertised (KMRT)
Alan Ginsberg vs Anima Universalis Into The forest – A supermarket in California (KMRT)
Beatz for Food – Frozen Food (KMRT)
The Conet Project – Phonetic Alphabet NATO (WORD)
Giorgio (Moroder) – Stop (WORD)
Christine Miller – Word Sound and Power (WORD)
Ham QSO – What’s it like being a token male? (KNTS)
Kwook – Calling all stations 1 (KNTS)
Jodey Kendrick – QYJ 9 (KNTS)

More bass, more drums and more harp please

Over the years we’ve discovered some great reggae tunes featuring some strange bed fellows instrument-wise including (above) this bit of banjo dub by Andy’s All-Stars called Banjo Serenade (Cheers Steve Barker for playing this). And it was only a couple of weeks we found out about the great  Alex Porteus/Jah Bottle Head (actually caught in action using said instrument at 18 seconds in and a few more times below).

And tonight we have found some harp dub. The below is from Lo Free Meditation, T-key Free Meditation, Ha Lan Leduc and called Hola Harp part 1. Wonderful stuff!

Dub dreams can come true

While going through some tracks this evening we found this excellent dub from Leo James called Daydream In Dub featuring one Ed Gooden.

It’s brilliant stuff and doesn’t even feel like the seven minute track it is. When we saw the length of the track we initially thought “that’s going to go on for a bit” but the truth of the matter is it could go on for much longer for us here. Wonderful stuff from way back in 2016. The 12″ is £34 on discogs which is a bit out of our reach but a super tune anyway.

And another slumber related tune, this time from the great “Sleepy” himself Horace Andy with Krak in Dub from Paris with “Stop borrow dub”. It’s on an uptempo tip and one to be played loud!

So nice the intstrumental has got to be played too!