radio free gak #9 - "Smiling happy Germans (hello Autobahn!)"

Several themes bounded throughout this episode:

• Player pianos of the future. This was promised from last week's episode and promised to anyone I spoke with over the past few days, so I handcuffed myself to this segment. Part of the music came from Music for Maniacs, who had a feature on player pianos (as well as an obituary notice on Mort Garson that included the delightful concert listings background) that referred to Veronika Krausas' recent concert with the USC Thornton School of Music. I kept the set at 10 minutes since the constant percussive sound the player pianos use can get a bit extreme – that and the more experimental nature of the compositions are already a hurdle for the common listener to contend with. (Gavin, the host of the jazz show after mine, was shaking his head whilst listening, muttering admiringly about the insanity.) This meant that one omission was the song by James Tenney that was composed in tribute to the well-renowned composer Conlon Nancarrow.

  Too many write-ups for the player piano depend on alliterating the letter "P", which I tried to avoid when dealing with pianos, pedals, paper and perforations. But then, things got worse when the one song title I ought to have written down ended up tripping me royally: I'd Love to Live in Loveland With a Girl Like You. What a perfectly-executed problematic performance.

• The RZA's soundtrack work. This spotlight was going to be a lot longer since most of his tracks tend to be quite short (as most movie cues tend to be). However, a late attempt at locating the Afro Samurai ended up nowhere after the copy at the station vanished, so I left what I had as is.
• The Blocks Recording Club. Blocks has been a great artist-run community for the past seven years, with their emphasis on spunky "you can do it!" pop with anyone and for anyone. However, the set had to be tinkered a bit after I mistook Republic of Safety as being a Blocks booster (though Owen Pallett has recorded numerous times with them), so it was time to brush up on the compilations in the studio, then add another song based on the RZA snafu.
• German pop. Utterly unintentional since I had some other songs set aside for a future show dealing with music from that country. Klee had been bouncing around in this playlist for a while, but Siriusmo was a late addition (and I only discovered their Germanness later), the Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet cover of Kraftwerk's Autobahn was a must-add the second I found it via Chunklet and deploying the Cloudland Canyon motorik-styled song afterwards became mandatory. Of course, I found out later that they were half-German, which solidified the Teutonic theme. The lyrical imagery in the Arcade Fire B-side sealed the deal (along with the Hungarian military choir that raises the second half of the song into majesty).

I thought with all my last minute modifications, the show would've run short, so I threw on the Goldfrapp song midway to fill out the time. Turns out I was wrong; one song near the end got bumped into the future, which killed off one additional unintentional theme that was lyrically present: happiness. I think the subtext of that positivity rubbed off on the entire show nonetheless.

Playlist follows: