Mere inches from the negative review I received from my supervisor hangs a succinct letter I received from my grandparents a few years back. It has been hanging on my fridge since the day I received it.

I would like the record to show that since the receipt of this letter I have made effort to speak with my grandparents more often.

Another week, another podcast series ends for the Painful Leg Injuries. Dogs completes my Chickens Scratching series, thanks to everyone who's listened, next week the 13th series begins, Perilous Behavior. I'm sampling photography data again, of people engaged in acts that endangers their lives and I'm using that as the template for the composition that follows. Letting their dangerous behavior inspire me to take more risks in my podcasts or me, playing it safe within my own idiom, in order to help them survive their stunt.

El Plan De Aguavodka returns bearing us a Handful Of Carnations. An Eno-esque display of utter gorgeousness. Great stuff.

Next week there will be no new podcasts as we enjoy Labor Day weekend. We (including a new U/M/S podcast) return on September 10, thanks for listening.

I'd like to congratulate myself on receiving another write-up at work. Here's my personal fave part:

"Jonah's unsatisfactory work performance corrodes the kind of culture which the institution would like to uphold and preserve."

-- Jonah's Supervisor, from his most recent write-up

Another one for the refrigerator!

More music to recommend-


Girl Talk - Night Ripper

Despite what Pitchfork writers believe, this reinvention of the mash-up is nothing that new, but Girl Talk does an excellent job of updating John Oswald's techniques (if you like this album see Oswald's Plexure). This set is a fun fuelled romp through the history of pop music built into a frankenstein monster. Mash-ups have been all over the file sharing services for a while now, but Girl Talk does not just line up tracks with the same rythym, he lines lines up 5 tracks every 5-10 seconds. This combination of rythmically harmonious sample collage is what made me thing of John Oswald's work. The first track hits The Fresh Prince, Ludacris, Oasis and The Boredoms! The Verve (technically the Rolling Stones) segue into the Boredoms' "Acid Police" is ridiculously unexpected. Besides any record that have 50 Cent "Go, Go" chant from I forget which song exactly over the Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?" is a real knockout. Hilairious, fun and thoughtful in it's execution.

An Albatross - Blesssphemy (Of The Peace-Beast Feastgiver And The Bear Warp Kumite)

This record is a wild ride, and it's technique is nothing like the above Girl Talk album, but it has that same ADD tickling of constant new direction like Night Ripper. This record is almost cartoonish is it's absurd speed and hairpin turns. It's reminds of the Blood Brothers on speed with organs and little Boredoms singing English (I think it's English) thrown in. You'll love it.


Tortoise - A Lazurus Taxon

A nicely priced (19 bucks for 3 CDs and a DVD) box of Tortoise rareties and of course the out of print '95 classic remix album Rhythms, Resolutions and Clusters. While listening to this record over the weekend, it brings me back the time when post-rock was beginning and the music press thought that Tortoise could bring the world pop music that was instrumental.

When these guys first started, though their music is pastoral and beautiful, they were kind of a polarizing band. I remember the first time I played TNT in my car for a friend, he (no naming of names) said "what is this, a movie soundtrack?". The Princeton Record Exchange (or Vintage Vinyl in North Jersey) had a doodle on posted on their wall that resembled the cover of TNT but instead of saying Tortoise it said "Torture". I've always been big fan, and I even really enjoyed their most recent album It's All Around You, it does feel like the world moved on without them. However, if you can turn off things in you head that identify styles and dates them, this collection is absolutely gorgeous.

V/A - California
V/A - LA Noisescape

Two great compilations of California's noise scene. Now I recommended the hell out of the 10 lp set when I wrote the list essential box sets, so I won't dwell on that here, but I will say that the price (roughly 75 bucks) is extremely fair considering the excellent packaging and glut of great music. The LA Noisescape compilation is an excellent companion piece. Though California as a whole has a long history of great noise, the scene in LA is of particular note. The Los Angeles Free Music Society started a lot of the framework for what has become the American noise scene, and they did it before the punk scene started. Rick Potts an LAFMS alumni, who's still active, is represented in this collection. This comp also has great tracks by Andorkappen (an awesome Merzbow jump cut grind core jolt), John Wiese, Bastard Noise, Exjesus, and Circuit Wound. It's 36 tracks strong but the flow makes seem like it could one artist or a thousand. A highly entertaining and enjoyable listen.

Very busy week for us here at OKSRNA, got a great
review couple of reviews from the awesome
Smooth Assailing Blog. There a number of
new Painful Leg Injuries projects in the works,
check here for more info as it becomes available.

The Painful Leg Injuries Podcast this week features
the rebutal to the series starter, The Quick, it's The Lazy.
The same dare to listen to this loudly on a pair of headphones still applies.
El Plan De Aguavodka's 29th episode is
How Dare You Notice My Deranged Laughter! fun and lively as
always. It could be a cover of the love theme from Frogger.

Stay tuned, more next week.

Thanks so much to the Smooth Assailing Blog and JR Leonetti for this great review of the Painful Leg Injuries' Backwards, Broken and Incorrectly and our comp, Men In White Coats. Click to read our reviews!

I've lately come to like the idea of the boxed set more and more. I used to feel that it was always a disappointment, if you love the artist, it's a collection of B-material that they only put out to stifle demand.

However, the great box sets are usually a collection of either the work of one artist who just couldn't give the world enough material, or of artists that have disappeared now being introduced to the public for the first time. Also I've grown to love the box set that compiles a portrait of a scene be it new or old.

So below are ten box sets that are relatively recent and very much worth seeking out and owning. Some are harder to find than others but I don't think there's anything here that couldn't be found on either amazon.com or forcedexposure.com. These are in no particular order.

V/A - California

No Phantom Planet here. The Sunshine State's home to so many noise musicians that it seemed like the perfect place to have this kind of summary.
Yellow Swans and John Wiese are the most famous contributors but there are great sides from Sixes, R.H. Yau, Joe Colley and many more. 10 LP's, 20 artists, each one gets a side. No cd version, which is fitting for the noise scene, but difficult to put on Ipod. A great portrait of the forever budding scene.

V/A - Last Visible Dog Elegy Box

The more ambient side of the noise scene. Each artist has about an EP's worth of material leaving us with over 7 hours of music. My Cat Is An Alein, Seht Avarus, and Birchville Cat Motel create some gorgeous soundscapes, however I have done without the dull Bardo Pond material. Overall though, it's a fairly great work and one of the best releases from last year.


V/A - Ohm

An excellent history of electronic music lesson. A must for every hotshot with a laptop.



Albert Ayler - Holy Ghost

The mother of all box sets. This collection of the work of this jazz great had a surprising and lasting effect, all the Lightning Bolt and Wolf Eyes kids got a hold of hit and revered it. It's become a profound influence on the noise community. The low-fi live recording of "Prophet John" could be the best music I've ever heard.


V/A - The Anthology Of American Folk Music

A catalog of old weird America. Very well known, you can find it anywhere, should be one in every home, just based on John Fahey's liner notes alone.



John Oswald - Plunderphonics

Try as they may this record cannot be suppressed. Inventing the illegal art form of mash-up and sampling as far back '69 this set is wildly hilairious. Oswald perfected the "plunderphonic" form on Plexure, but at 20 minutes it's hardly enough. This is something I keep coming back to, the frankenstein monsters he creates are legendary.

V/A - Balance

Erstwhile records is the flagship label of the Electro-Acoustic Improv scene. Extremely abstract and minimal. On this document of their '02 festival they re-team many of the pairings of some of their best releases. Otomo Yoshihide, Ami Yoshida, Sachiko M, Toshimaru Nakamura, Keith Rowe, Thomas Lehn et al. craft absolutely bizarre, endurance defying, sometimes stunningly beautiful symphonies of the future. The price is pretty stiff, but it's got gorgeous packaging and a excellent companion DVD.

V/A - The Conet Project: Recordings of Short-Wave Numbers Stations

A compilation of recordings from the mysterious numbers short-wave radio stations. Coded messages looping forever, who knows what the hell their origin is, but listening to these are, but when we hear they are fascinating. The ghosts of epionage from the '40's, it's a must own and there's nohing quite like it.


Miles Davis - The Cellar Door Sessions 1970

There's hardly a note that Miles Davis recorded that is not essential. But this is Miles in 1970, playing at his most aggressive, during period where each month he was inventing a genre. This material was edited down to the single record Evil-Live, but that's only the tip of the iceberg, and there's so much great material, the box set is a must.

The Los Angeles Free Music Society - The Lowest Form Of Music

Artist like Smegma, Le Forte Four, The Doo Dooettes, Airway, Tom Recchion, Rick Potts, John Duncan and CV Massage were part of the mid 70's Los Angeles scene that was clearly a step foward from hippy-dom and a step before punk. They combined musique concrete, Beefheartian improv, and just odd behavior and set up the paradigm of what became today's noise scene. A very surprising collection, with many artists who are still active today, and still sound foward thinking. If you get in touch with the Cortical Foundation, you might be able to get the $100 set for less (I think I got mine from them at $60) if they still have any.

To match with our cover art for Men In White Coats and also just because we are far more into the idea of cheery pastels than industrial greys we've gone with a new look for the site.

We've also added some new features. First the blog has been consolidated into this one, so when we post articles they will be here with the Updates, it just got silly to have two blogs and the discussion stuff got lost behind everything elese. Also, we've made our podcast descriptions more blog-like in nature and you can comment directly on each podcast right below it's description and I swear to god we will read it and get back to you. We are dying for the feedback. Also we've added little touches like links to our My Space pages from the podcast sections.

Now about this week's podcasts, The Unevenness of the Moon's Surface gives us his best titled podcast to date, You Don't Just Happen Upon A Shark Attack In 3-D. A noisy joint somewhat like a subdued scarier Smegma track. El Plan de Aguavodka's The Sand Is Always Grinier In Night Vision sounds like eastern drone music that quickly dissolves into the atmosphere around you. With the 4th part of my latest series, Chickens Scratching, I was going for the missing Disintegration Loop where Basinski was remixed by Wolf Eyes.

Have a good week and thanks for listening!

Hope all of you like our new site design. New podcasts are now up and ready for download. Apologies for the brevity of this update, lots to do still to get the new site running smoothly, so more new info later, take care.

Hello again everyone, this is a very exciting week for us here at OKSRNA. First and foremost our label comp, Men In White Coats is now out available for purchase. A few months back we had an idea to put out a CD that would introduce us to the public. However, I originally wanted it to be all lame, with podcasts and album tracks and Jonah from U/M/S suggested to me that we should make it all new material. And the conceptual fireworks began to fly.

We settled on science concepts given life by our music. We also decided that rather than make a collection that was longer form pieces like our podcasts we set a limit of one minute for each track. What happens is a wildly kaleidescopic mix. For more info go this page, meninwhitecoats.html.

Also this week The Unevenness of the Moon's Surface returns from his extended hiatus of technically related down time to bring us his latest The Decomposition of Verow's Eyes. A perfectly gorgeous tapping of noises and melodic elements, and it's pie that would sit nicely next to his work on Men In White Coats. The downtime has lead us to a slightly friendlier U/M/S.

The Painful Leg Injuries celebrates it's 50th podcast this week! Back in April of 2005 when I first started podcasting I had no idea I'd love making these things so much. The concept of the podcast has grown so much in this time, (I was doing this way back before Itunes had a podcast directory). I'd like to thank everyone who has subscribed and listened, written about me on their blog (randomwalks.com, inevitablebacklash.com), written to me with comments about the episodes (tenderbranson on last.fm and Mike from Virginia on Myspace) and I will definitely keep them coming. This week, the 3rd part of the latest series Chickens Scratching, is called Jumped.

El Plan de Aguavodka gives us a very melodic minature with his latest My Growing Contempt For A Pattern of Disregard. It's as if there's a tiny MIDI marching band lost in the washing machine.

Thanks as always for checking in, until next week.

We are very exited to annouce our first label comp, Men In White Coats is now on sale! It features 45 one minute sound art science experiments by El Plan De Aguavodka, The Painful Leg Injuries and The Unevenness of the Moon's Surface.

Click here to order Men In White Coats.
Click here to find out more info about Men In White Coats including track details.

Listen to sample tracks:

"Red Hot Symbiogenesis Jam"
by El Plan de Aguavodka

"The Spontaneous Fracturing of Heavy Metal"
by the Painful Leg Injuries

"Socialism Supersedes Scientific Rigour"
by the Unevenness of the Moon's Surface

The three artists each contributed fifteen compositions to the collection. Individually they gravitated toward an exciting diversity of scientific subject matter ranging from the birth of the scientific method itself on through the present, successes and missteps alike. From artificial intelligence to intelligent design, from Newtonian physics to psychic surgery, classic Darwinism to Soviet Lysenkoism; the selections paint a lively and unorthodox sonic portrait of the scientific world far removed from the textbook and the lecture hall. This is science that lives, breathes, and is often forgotten.

Take care and thanks for listening!

I've always been one of those people that thrives when working in a crowded, noisy environment. A new book goes on to detail how noise can actually benefit you. Here's a sample from an interview with the author from the latest issue of Wired:

"...in his new book, Noise, Bart Kosko argues that even the most annoying racket can be beneficial. The USC professor draws on his degrees in electrical engineering, law, mathematics, economics, and philosophy to connect the finer points of calculus, game theory, and court precedent to all kinds of random, unpredictable energy"... "The more you can concentrate with background noise, the more it strengthens the brain. Isaac Asimov used to set his typewriter up in stores and other loud places to work. His claim was that you get really good at writing when you’re in a crowd. You want to be energized by that background noise, rather than distracted."

Thanks to Boing Boing poster Cory Doctorow for the link!