Something very special from far far away

A big shout to Jesse Yuen (of RTMFM’s North of The River Swan) for letting us know that he’s moved into a new house in Perth and that in the garden they have a wonderful looking Foxtail Agave (above) that’s actually flowering! As Jesse said “Flowers are rare for the plant and each one only flowers once in their life, after 10-15 years.” and he also said “It’s like ours is welcoming us to the new house.” We agree with you there! What a great housewarming present.

Jesse also said “All over Perth you can see them flowering, and the members of local gardening Facebook groups are speculating that because we had a really dry, long summer, they are in shock which has bought on a mass flowering season.”

He was saying the bees are going bonkers for the flowers and told us “Apparently once it finishes flowering the big head dies off and these smaller “pups” take over” (above and below).

Absolutely wonderful stuff Jesse and best of luck to you and the family for the new house and hope everything goes well with the move and getting settled in! More on the wonderful plant here.

Tune of the night

As we were looking for some tunes for a shortwave mix the other night we came across this track. It’s from a few years ago and one we hadn’t heard of before. It’s by Chancha via Circuito called La Victoria featuring Lido Pimienta & Manu Ranks and it’s a winner! It’s from the LP Bienaventuranza.

And as one of the comments on the Bandcamp says “I don’t think there is a better album cover. Frame worthy, and the music matches its brilliance!” Excellent stuff!

News on this week’s Imaginary Stations broadcasts here.

Words in papers, words in books

Big thanks to Gerry Hectic our man from the south coast for sending us his “Wise words or not” mix. It’s a great one as ever with lots of tunes that we’ve never heard before (Yvonne Baker being one of them, what a great track) and a mix to investigate. Here’s the tracks:
Moritz von Oswald Trio – Chapter One
Mike Leander And His Orchestra – The Letter
The Harvey Averne Dozen – The Word
Yvonne Baker – Didn’t Say A Word
The G.G. All Stars – (Same Folks) Dub Wise
Felipe Gordon – No Words (Byron the Aquarius Dub Mix)

Gerry’s mix was inspired by WORD on Imaginary Stations on Sunday which is now up online on the Imaginary Stations Mixcloud below. The show featured books, (Radio Phonic) laboratories, dictionary rock, abbreviations and ampersands and lots more from DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore.

The first track on the show from The Real Tuesday Weld called Last Words is how you use shortwave samples in a tune!

At 21.13 mins in there’s a mix from One Deck Pete called “A Word to the Wise” and the tracks are:
The Conet Project – Phonetic Alphabet NATO (excerpt)
The Medallions – The Letter
Giorgio (Moroder) – Stop
Capital Letters – Smoking My Ganja
Jourbert Singers – Stand on the word
The Conet Project – Phonetic Alphabet NATO (excerpt)

Cheers again to Gerry for sending us his mix and here’s more WORD related tunes.

Tune of the night

Researching a shortwave mix as we usually do on a Saturday night we found a tune of high quality psych from someone called Giorgio called Stop and what a tune! Crazy crazy stuff with a wonderful ending with key changes and backwards effects, the lot. Guess who Giorgio is? Giorgio Moroder that’s who!

The Dream Academy

Big shout to our good radio friend across the pond Justin Patrick Moore on his first book published by South London’s Velocity Press just a couple of miles away from Weeds HQ in Rye Lane, Peckham. 

The book is called The Radio Phonics Laboratory and as it says on Velocity Press’ website “explores the intersection of technology and creativity that shaped the sonic landscape of the 20th Century”. If you love Karlheinz Stockhausen, Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, Robert Moog and the like, go and buy one from the Velocity website here.

By request of the author here’s a daft dream we had around the time said book went to print. We’ve no idea what relevance the dream has in the scheme of the universe and also what Freud would have said but we can only put it down to a couple of tabs of co-codamol before bedtime to stop toothache.

The dream was about a man who fixed vintage valve radio sets in an old factory in Coventry that also housed an exhibition about radio propagation, “Which is a very interesting subject” the man told us.

The factory was in a street off a back entry behind Cedars Avenue in Coventry where Delia Derbyshire was brought up. In the dream we imagined we woke up and were going to travel back to Coventry to find this non existent factory and the radio exhibition housed within it. Then we woke up!

It’s not much of an exciting “we won the lottery and now live on a luxury Richard Branson type island” dream and doesn’t make much sense, unlike the great book from Justin Patrick Moore. We promise we will never divulge our dreams again but the long and short of it is, if you love a bit of electronica, you’ll love this book!

Rotating one’s Yagi

This Sunday 5th May 2024 on the shortwave bands, Imaginary Stations bring you a radio premier, Test Cards on Radio. It will be beamed to Europe via Shortwave Gold at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2000 UTC on 6160 kHz and 3975 kHz.

The show is a must for fans of test cards and TV trade test transmissions alike and will feature all kinds of frequency tones for radio calibration purposes, an exclusive ten minute chat with Stooky Bill (*subject to availability) and test card related music from around the world. So get up on your roof and rotate your yagi, adjust your brightness and vertical hold and tune in on Sunday.

Music to drive any frosts away

Here’s two great tunes for a Tuesday evening to drive any chance of the frost away.

The first is a lovely middle eastern-inspired mix of an Adrian Sherwood live track. It’s a wonderful piece of instrumental reggae called Sinnervisions from the great Spy From Cairo who makes some brilliant music that we have featured before and this one is really up there! More about his stuff here.

 

And from 2015 from Blackboard Revision we have Blackboard Horns from Lee Scratch Perry, Danny Boyle and Danny Red. Wonderful horns with some fantastic bass!

 

And here’s another track or two from each of the artists for good measure!

 

(Internet) radio connects us all

A big thanks to The Rhythm Doctor for playing Jasmine Tutum & Madtone‘s What is Man/Promised Land (Blossoms Kitchen dubplate mix) on this week’s Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room on IDA Radio at 5.33 minutes in then followed by The Nairobi Sisters Promised Land dub.

So you fancy an excellent Monday morning listen tune into IDA Radio (Tallinn) at 9am – 11am for the best in jazz, downbeat, dub, ambient, reggae and lots of other eclectic stuff. It’s well worth tuning into! There’s lot of the shows archived here.

We’ll throw in the scratches for free

We love a seven inch single here at Weeds and were going through some old mixes and found this one called One Deck Pete presents The Skybird Singles Club. It’s from a shortwave broadcast of Radio Skybird from August 2023 and thought it would be good to post it up here. We hope there’s a couple you haven’t heard before. Here’s the tracklistings:

Rotary Connection – Like a rolling stone
Weekend – The view from her room
Earl Curry – One whole year baby
Felice Taylor – I feel love comin’ on
Toby Nelson – You don’t need me