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!

Fail we may, garden we must

That’s the mad thing with gardening, you’ve been waiting all winter for everything to start and before you know it, it’s nearly June and horticultural madness has ensued and you’ve a “to do” list as long as a garden hoe. There’s no magic day where everything just changes, it just happens and without you even seemingly noticing!

We’ve had some lovely days over the last couple of weeks with glorious sunshine and then overnight on Saturday came some heavyweight rain. Talk about the garden now being in a state of fecundity.

Oddly though we have a strawberry plant in a pot up near the house and been wondering why it hasn’t been doing anywhere as good as the others dotted around the garden especially with the current weather. We assume this could be the reason why (pic above).

International vibes yet again

This Sunday 19th May 2024 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2000 UTC on 6160 kHz and 3975 kHz Imaginary Stations bring you Skybird Radio International which will be beamed to Europe via Shortwave Gold.

SRI is a worldwide affair as you can imagine with tunes from around this globe of ours from DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore. There’s also a mix from One Deck Pete which will include tracks by Marlena Shaw, Manjeet Kondal, Tubotito & Rags, Adrian Sherwood and Esher Suarez.

Gerry Hectic (also a contributor to our Countryfile style calendar 2025) has produced an answer version to the One Deck Pete mix and here it is in its glory and what a mix it is. Thank you Gerry, it’s appreciated.

Gerry Hectic presents “A May themed answer” mix
One Deck Pete & Popular – Enrico (Hay-eer-yah’s Continual Harmonica Cut) BCR
Loretta Heywood – Satta Massagana (The 6/* Blues Mix) – Tangential Music
Marlena Shaw – Love Has Gone Away (Disco Version) – Blue Note 12”
Sababa 5 – Bezani – Batov Records
Natasha Kitty Katt ft. His Bitter Truth – Galactic Love – F*CLR Music

It’s been a long time…

We obtained our new flymo yesterday and after a quick cup of tea got to work starting on the overgrown lawn in the back. After a cut and a rake and a couple of repeats we got the lawn down to an acceptable level. We even included a wild triangle at the top. The flymo certainly got a baptism of fire yesterday, no hard feelings lawn mower.

 

This is a dawning of a new era

Looks like we’re getting a new lawnmower tomorrow so we’ll be cutting the grass as soon as we assembled said device. We’ll be cutting all of it in the front and about three quarters of it in the back, keeping a bit wild as per. We’ll be waiting outside at Argos tomorrow at 11am tapping our imaginary watch if we see a member of staff through the window and will be mouthing “It’s gone eleven, it’s gone eleven”.

Stereolab on shortwave

People complain about listening to music on shortwave radio, they say “The quality is no good” “It’s in mono” and “there’s fading and crackling and lots of weird noises that change the sound of the music”. That’s the reason why we love it!

Here’s nearly half an hour of Test Cards on Radio from last Sunday including the mix from One Deck Pete called “A Trade Test Transmission” at 5.49. It was recorded by Aleksandr Myadel in Belarus, cheers to him for putting it online.

Spring must be here now!

Thanks to Mike G and his partner Julia for sending us a couple more pictures of their garden near Coventry again this week. What we thought was a great looking brick wall is actually decking (above) and we love the raised bedding and can spy a great looking poppy getting ready to flower if we’re not wrong.

And look at their well colourful trees and bushes (below). They’re looking good Mike and Julia! Keep sending us those pics of your great garden. It really is good to see how other people garden. If you want to send us some pictures of your garden, balcony or windowsill gardening exploits drop us an email to one deck pete at gee mail dot com.

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!