Radio IS a foreign country

Cheers to Steve Barker from the excellent On The Wire radio show for letting us know about the wonderful online radio station that is Radio is a Foreign Country here. As it describes itself: “An endless stream of obscure (and mostly retro) global music and audio ephemera.” Crazy is not the word.

There’s a whole load of stations to have a listen to here from Shortwave, Exotic, 24/7 Nature Radio, Oddball (including Mechanical Music Radio), American Elsewhere (WBCM Radio Bristol) and tons more. It is such an eclectic selection and for God’s sake, don’t touch that dial. Cheers again Steve!

On a Chilli tip

Thanks to Kit G5KIT in Bristol who sent us these great pictures of his chilli plant and he wrote: “Remember those little chilli seedlings from earlier in the year? We’ve given most of them away, but kept the biggest one – and we took our first crop yesterday. The chillies aren’t very big, maybe 20mm long for the largest ones, but boy do they pack a punch. They’re not called ‘Demon Reds’ for nothing; they’re about 194,000 on the scoville scale of heat!” Wow that is crazy Kit!

He sent a tune too and added: “I do like the way the fruit grows upwards, they’re attractive as well as tasty. We’re going to make some chilli oil from these ones.” Cheers Kit for getting in touch.

Morschen43 on the wire

A big thanks to Steve Barker, Fenny and Jim from the excellent On The Wire for playing Morschen43’s Dark Dread / Toi … , L’Homme … at 1 hour in on the show earlier this morning. Cheers Steve for mentioning Weeds up to me knees also!

The track is off Spike’s new album available on Bandcamp here.

The track above was the tune played before it which is of the crazy dubby trumpet variety. Cheers again Steve!

To listen to the wonderful eclectic programme that is On The Wire check the blogspot here.

It’s also on Totally Radio on Sundays at 6pm here. It’s well worth a listen to say the least.

Now across to the twin cities

Another big shout out to our good friends across the pond Dr Strangedub and DJ Baby Swiss of the excellent radio show The Echo Chamber on KFAI. We’ve said this countless times, but if you want to hear reggae, dub, downbeat and beyond, tune in from 8 – 12 UK time on a Wednesday morning here.

This Wednesday just gone was the annual Echo Chamber/Echo Beach Dub Club Tiki Bar Special (not unlike the The Skybird Lounge series of shows) with all sorts of beach bar and holiday beach destination classics including One Deck Pete presents a mix for WAVE at 80 mins in.

Tracklistings:
The Grizzly Folk – Broomway
High Skies – The shipping Forecast
Michael Rose – Surfing in the dub (Intro)
Quiet Village – Keep on Rolling

Pull up the deck chair or get the 1970’s sun lounger out and tune in here for a far out holiday sunny vibes show as there’s some wonderful stuff on the show.

Pirate radio connects us all

We’ve just finished a new mix for an up-and-coming Imaginary Stations related project and found this lovely bit of Electronica from Classical Mechanics called Porphyry off the “Sealand” LP on Bandcamp and you know we anything Guy Maunsell related! More on Sealand (AKA Fort Roughs or Rough Towers) here and here.

 

And one that got away. Thanks to DJ Frederick for spotting this cracking version of The Horse on the GRC site after we chose another classic from a collection on there. Drum solo!

 

And as Fred pointed out, The Horse by Cliff Nobles & Co was an important tune on Radio Veronica (we just read it was the signature tune for their popular travelling mobile disco, the Veronica Drive-In Show). There’s always a radio connection and it certainly connects us all! Have a good Sunday all.

It’s a bit short notice but…

Unfortunately, we will be down the south coast later this evening but earlier this week noticed this poster up all around the Farringdon locality. The day features an appearance of the great Swell Maps!

Also, an appearance of a typo (we do loads so we can’t talk). Free random pack of seeds to the winner who spots it within a couple of minutes.

On a worldwide tip

Here’s the latest Lingua Franca (Episode number 10!) with “Songs sung in different languages” from Will Jeff on Love Will Save The Day FM.

If you want a nice worldwide mix up journey of a radio show, you can’t get better than this. Cheers Will!

Preparation, preparation, preparation

This afternoon we cleared an area (which once housed a greenhouse many moons ago) in preparation for a polytunnel which will arrive sometime this week. Thanks to Alan C who gave us some great advice about purchasing one, as we didn’t know much about what was on offer out there.

We weren’t the only ones that were excited today, there were a Blackbird and a Robin who swooped down a few times even when we walked a little way away, we must’ve disturbed some food in the area or someting.

We didn’t see the eclipse as it went dark

Strange lighting was the order of the day when we witnessed the partial eclipse of the sun in SE23 around 7.16 pm this evening. The colander was out and reflected said phenomenon onto the fence. Crazy stuff!

The earth didn’t stand still and the birds didn’t stop singing but it was an interesting evening all the same and it was nice when the light went back to normal again.

Here’s an eclipse-related (originally for shortwave) mix from a few years ago called “Can you see Baily’s beads?”

Tracklistings:
A Man called Adam – Moon
Cosmos – Summer in space (Mark’s Harmonic 33 mix)
Cedric Im Brooks – Blackness of Darkness
Cornell Campbell – Stars

The colander is now back in the cupboard until the next eclipse in 2056 or whenever it is, the birds have gone to sleep for the evening and the world continues turning…