Category Archives: Songs to sow seeds to

We’ll take you where the sun shines

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Cheers to Maz and Marc from sending us some great pictures from their recent holiday in France. These photos are from in and about Saint-Aubin-de-Cadelech, south of Bergerac.

Just like when you receive postcards a few days after people come back off their holidays, we are following the tradition here. It was very hot over there and one day reached to 43 degrees C in the shade, wow!

Some Mirabelle de Nancy plums that taste very very sweet (above) and some sumac (below).

And a smoketree (below) that we have just read, that is related to sumac.


Here’s a wonderful willow shelter and below is the shady view from inside (looking down to the treeline by the River Dropt), what a great idea!

Big thanks to Maz and Marc for these great pictures! Hope you both had a great holiday.

Tunes to keep you cool in this heatwave

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Here’s a lovely bit of reggae to keep you cool in this mad heatwave we are experiencing in London now. The first is from The Disciples and it is called Living by The Sea mix 3 (previously unreleased) and a wonderful bit of dub. It’s got those keyboard stabs that remind us of Gregory Isaacs and his Rumours tune.

And talking of Gregory, here’s a great one from years ago featuring an extended “jam” of the “Rock On rhythm.” Keep a listen out for a couple of Skybird Jams radio shows coming soon with extended mixes, tracks over 8 minutes long and “Jam” bands aka “Music to increase your attention span”.

Pop don’t go the teasel

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The teasel is a very odd plant but we love the way the flower grows, very strange white mini flowers are now coming from the head. Odd but very interesting! We just hope they don’t take over the garden.

 

In the Doctor’s garden of dub

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A big shout to our old friend Dr Strangedub Radio DJ and Dub Gardener who presents the great show called The Echo Chamber (with DJ Baby Swiss) on KFAI from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis–Saint Paul. It’s on every Wednesday from 2:00 to 6:00 am (8am-12 noon UK time), if you love dub, reggae and all sorts of bass business you’ll love the show. Tune in live at the allotted time here. 

Thanks to the good doctor for sending over some snaps of what’s growing in his yard at the moment. We love the tomatoes (everyone else’s is doing better than ours, we are not jealous, honest!), the herb container and the raised bed and the stairs look like a good place to sit and chill on a summer’s evening. Cheers Dr Strangedub, keep in touch and update us through the growing season! Cheers for the plays of the One Deck & Popular, Madtone and Jasmine & Madtone tunes throughout the years.

Tomato fruit puller. Puller, puller

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Whilst researching a future post, we found this great variety of tomato from Seed Spring Seeds (website here).

As it says in the blurb on the site:
A Romanian tomato producing large, roughly heart-shaped fruit that weigh an average of 365g and measure about 8.5cm in diameter. Captain Beefheart’s big taste is combined with a juicy flesh, tender skin and few seeds, making it one of the best large-fruited tomatoes you are likely to encounter. The plants are good growers and will produce fruit well into the autumn.

A pepper called Frank Zappa anyone?

The above is a fantastic Beefheart tune as played on the excellent Andrew Weatherall – Live at Antenna Studios mixtape here.

A bit of downbeat for the weekend

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Here’s the fourth episode in the Downbeat on Shortwave series with Jesse Yuen and One Deck Pete that was broadcast this weekend on Imaginary Stations via Shortwave Gold.

Jesse and Pete bring you two 15-minute downtempo mixes each over the hour-long show. We’ve posted up two recordings, the above the clean studio version. The recorded off the radio, mono version complete with atmospheric sounds literally, is below. Enjoy the tunes!

Jesse Yuen Mix 1
Stress Assassin – Me We
Pugilist –  introspect Ft. Tamen
Drug Free America – Baby Doll and the Dolphin Burger (video edit)

One Deck Pete Mix 1
Deadbeats – Got it going on (Space Hopper original)
Stereo Total Vs Mad Professor – Das erste Mal dub trip 2
Transglobal Underground – Templehead – Burundi Beat mix
Madtone – It is AI but WE created it

Jesse Yuen Mix 2
Leslie Winer – King of sleep
99 Cents – Adrenalin Spaceboy (Dub Boy Extended mix)

One Deck Pete Mix 2
変化への恐れ – Shinogi シノギ
Mad Professor – Boombox version 2
Kuna – Decade Dub
Space To Crash – Holding Hands

It ain’t in FM stereo, but we like it!

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Earlier this afternoon we tuned into Downbeat on Shortwave (brought to us via Imaginary Stations) using The University of Twente’s online SDR here. Propagation wasn’t brilliant but we got a signal, unlike the sound of static on our shortwave receiver at home. Hopefully tomorrow’s conditions will be better and the later timing of the transmission helps. Here’s what was heard.

Imaginary Stations bring you music you don’t usually hear on the shortwaves every week and has an archive that is well worth looking through here. Expect the unexpected as they say and a whole lot more! Never mind the genre, it’s all about great music on the shortwave bands with some added remixing thanks to the ionosphere and those groundwaves.

Tune in here tomorrow at 1300 UTC (2pm UK) and 2000 UTC (9pm UK) for some chilled out sounds from Jesse Yuen and One Deck Pete. A big shout to all the Imaginary Stations crew: Fred and NanSea, Justin Patrick Moore and Marc from Belgium. Here’s to more eclectic programming on shortwave!

Love in a mist, it’s (not) so dumb

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Here’s a few pictures from around the Weeds HQ garden.

We’ve had the above for a few years now and it pops up every year in the wild bit at the bottom of the garden. It’s quaking grass and we’re not sure who we got it off, but it was off a gardening mate somewhere (if it’s you, do remind us!) from 2023. It’s only small but it’s interesting stuff. Original post here.

The above is also in the wild part of the garden. Nigella or love in a mist is a great plant and as soon as the seed pods are ready, it’s a seed to chuck around the garden in an anarchic Crass-like sowing style. You’ll get results and it’s a great plant to cover a large area.

One of the great poppies that are just popping up all around the garden. They can seed where-ever they want in our garden, as we love them so much.

And finally, the mad plant that is the teasel. Bought off the internet (post here) and then moved from its original location. The wind blew it over last week and we’ve staked it up but before we did, it tried to straighten itself up hence the mad angles. Unless they always are like that!

Let’s hope the weather is better where you are tomorrow and you can get out in the garden!

Opening doors

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Cheers to Will Jeff for letting us know about this great tune by Jack D called Opening the Door. It’s got a touch of the Ghost Towns mixed with a chilled out Renegade Soundwave. Cheers Will!

The wonders of modern radio

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It was the first time in a bit that have we listened live to The Rhythm Doctor‘s excellent Waiting Room (every Monday morning from 9-11am UK time) out of Tallinn, Estonia.

There’s some wonderful chilledness at the start (17 mins in) that stopped us our tracks when we were filling up our watering can to give the garden a bit of a quick water. We potted up some seedlings just as it got to the dubbed-out section (55 mins in) and by the end of the show when he plays some shackleton stuff, we had enough of the heat outside!

RD played the wonderful Two Lone Swordsmen track Neuflex as mixed by Dry & Heavy which is a classic. Great to hear this again, crazy stuff.

Do yourself a favour this Bank Holiday Monday and chill out in the waiting room for a couple of hours. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, today’s show is now up online, so you have no excuse.