Category Archives: “Radio connects us all”

Off the map, off the radio

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Cheers to DJ Frederick for letting us know about this great quaility half an hour recording of last week’s imaginary stations show WDWD – Off The Map Radio broadcast by Shortwave Gold. It was recorded in Belarus by Aleksandr Myadel (cheers Aleksandr for putting it up on youtube).

At 13 minutes in there’s One Deck Pete‘s “I’ll take the high road too” mix and here’s the tracklistings:
Stereognosis – Farewell
Outward Bound – First Cue
Tetsuo – Not taking the bus
Hidden Orchestra – East London Street
Tubby Isiah – Lost dub

If you want to hear more of the show, ten of the latest Imaginary Stations episodes are up online here at our Mixcloud. The show is also looking for some financial help to cover the production and transmission costs so we can continue to transmit on shortwave, more on that here:

Nostalgia for dirty beer crates and rusty washing machines

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Here’s a couple of tunes for a Friday evening. First an Augustus Pablo classic called Melody Dub which is a B side to the tune Unfinished Melody. It’s a stripped down bass and drum instrumental with a crisp high end, whisps of double-tracked melodica floating back and forth into the mix interspersed with short piano and keyboard parts. Definitely a less is more tune.

And another example of said style is the B side Roman Stewart’s I was lonely called One Heavy Duba for obvious reasons. As far as we can remember, the (slightly pressed off-centre and very scratched) copy we own was bought on a second-hand shop crawl of Nuneaton in the late 1970’s. Distance memories of boxes of scratched seven inchers nestled in dirty beer crates between rusting fridges and old washing machines with the smell of mould and damp coming from them, ahh the good old days that we’ll never see again etc…

Music like us

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Yesterday our good radio friend in Cincinnati, Justin Patrick Moore tipped us off that Vicki Bennett from People like us was doing a show on WFMU. It’s now available via listen again here (The show named “February 14th, 2024: This Is Bardcore, This Is Barcode, This is the Pooless Flute”).

As you can imagine there were some crazy records played, bizzare mash ups and some “odd sausages” (as an old workmate used to say). Here’s two tunes that we’ve never heard before that caught our attention. The first is Polo & Pan with Nana (above) and it’s a bit of left-field pop on the catchy, happy tip. And we’ve just found out it’s sampled off this tune below from Os Tincoãs another band we have had to research. And an interesting band they were.

The second is Keezo Kane with Ga Ga Ga (James Brown Steppers Mix) which is great stuff. If you’re a lover of some real musical madness do check the show out. Cheers Justin for letting us know about it.

The relationship between apples and dub

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The sun’s out today and we’ve been listening to a great show called Golden Apples in Dub with a selection by Jesse Yuen (of RTMFM’s North of The River Swan that returned to the radio yesterday by the way). The show was broadcast by RTR FM 92.1 Perth, Australia and a fine dubbed out show it is. Listen and enjoy some very nice tunes here and some great “Baby I love you so” versions which you can never get enough of! It’s a great show Jesse!

The radio dial is a compass…

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This afternoon we were listening to a mixtape on Radio is a Foreign Country which is a wonderful radio show broadcast on WRMI (Mondays 0300-0500 UTC on 9395 kHz) also it’s own internet radio station and website. This is how they describe what they do, “An endless stream of obscure (and mostly retro) global music and audio ephemera rarely heard outside their home region.” This tune above by Los Zheros called Para Chachita was heard on the mixtape section called “Peruvian 45s” and is a corker! The whole mixtape is great in fact. Explore some worldwide mix goodness here.

A tune from yesteryear

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While searching through those old gramaphone records the other night for a forthcoming shortwave mix we came across this tune called Texas Yellow by Urchin which we had well forgotten about. It’s a long one but a tune that you can really get lost in. It was nice to rediscover it and there’s even a Aquilegia named after it too!

Local seed event alert

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Thanks to Ruth for getting in touch about this great event on Sunday 25th February 2024 from 1-4pm held at the AFRIL allotment of refuge at One Tree Hill Allotments SE23 3NP. It looks well interesting, there’s a bit of a seed swap, a free vegan lunch, a tour of the garden and at 2.30pm talks, a workshop and a Q&A session. It’s free and more details and tickets can be obtained here. Thanks for letting us know Ruth!

And this is a pic of a scarecrow at One Tree Allotments from a couple of years ago. We think that the coat has been changed for a yellow one now but it is still there and still creeps us out when we’re passing by. It’s those hands placed casually in the pockets that does it.

Stop those Monday morning blues

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Big shout to the one and only Rhythm Doctor for playing One Deck & Popular‘s “Enrico” from many moons ago (at 30.56) on his excellent Monday morning “Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room” radio show last week on IDA Radio (Tallinn). Cheers!

Tune in tomorrow morning at 9am UK time for the finest in Reggae, Dub, Downbeat, Ambient, Jazz and other great tunes!

Psychic TV meets Frederick Horniman at SE23

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We popped into Hornimans today and had a butchers at their garden and their collection of herbs and healing plants (well it was more about reading the plant labels as most of them were still in hibernation but very interesting all the same.)

After being outside we took a trip into the music room and saw the Yamaha DX7 synth in there with the Psychic TV sticker on it again. It’s been there for years but we forgotten all about it until today but does anyone know anything about its origins?