RC 370: When I Go Deaf
About to go off on my holiblobs, but did I tell you about the time I went deaf?
H ear me wax lyrical about how I went half deaf for nearly two weeks, hence the delay in a new podcast as I couldn’t hear properly and realised the hard way how stereo hearing is essential for mixing and making mashups…
So a mix of hearing-related tracks, a whole lot of Jump, hiphop mix medleys and posse blends, a Kitchen Disco of euphorically nostalgic and divine proportions, Bladerunner and summer dubs, King of the Jungle meets the queen of the jungle, lounge Satie and Sade in an elevator, He-man mashups and Tuppenny Falls , false endings and dolphins – a tribute to recently departed Bob Rafelson .
P.S. The images are AI’s idea of what the title would look like as a 1970’s medical poster done by Scarfolk – Very close….and quite spooky.
Deaf Tim and Blend (2:18, 192Mb)
Cecille DeMilla vs Instamatic – This Is Radio Clash ident
ToToM – 1979FU (Gayle vs. Smashing Pumpkins)
Kris Kross – Jump (Rhythm Scholar Whole Ball Of Wax Remix)
Tom Caruana Remix Projects – Day Trip – Possee Cut
ah! – Where’s Me Bumper (Sultans Of Ping FC vs Grace Jones)
MixmstrStel – Ride My Soul (Black Box vs Beyonce)
Rasco, Specimen A – Yesterday (Original Mix)
Orbital – Belfast (David Holmes Remix)
PVA – Divine Intervention
Antony Szmierek & Yemi Bolatiwa – Some Daze
New Blade Runners Of Dub – New Blade Runners of Dub (Theme 1984 – Virus Dub – Remix by Ale X)
Wolfgang – Summertime (feat. Boris Pokora)
4am Kru x Shanteh – King feat. Josh Kye (Remix)
DJNoNo – Pröpänë Kïckstärt (Mötley Crüe vs Pendulum vs Adriana A)
fnogg – HEYYEYAAs It Was (SLACKCIRCUS vs He-Man vs Harry Styles)
Francis Lung – 2p Machine
Jenny Owen Youngs – Have You Forgotten
The Coctails – Gymnopedie No. 1
sade – love is stronger than pride oki slow&reverb mix
Instamatic – What Glimpse Of Us (Joji vs P!nk) (2 Ear Mix)
bdRm – When I Go Deaf
People Like Us – The Sound Of The End Of Music
ah! – Somewhere I Used To Belong (Gotye vs Nine Inch Nails)
他の誰かの話 (Somebody else’s story) – 言葉の苔の下の飛行 (Flying under the word moss)
Field Mice – End Of The Affair
Arab Strap – There Is No Ending
Rachel Sermanni and Admiral Fallow – When I Go Deaf
Kramer Featuring Bill Frisell – Porpoise Song
Details
Hello and welcome to Radio Clash 370, and it’s an earwax related episode called When I Go Deaf. And that was ToTom, oh it is 1979 FU, Gayle vs Smashing Pumpkins, deservedly in the Bootie Top 10 of one of my favourite mashups of recent times. You just heard at the start a new ident by Cecile Demilla vs me, because I kind of remixed her entry to the challenge where I very naughtily set a bunch of people’s challenges to do idents for this podcast. I liked the drum and bass take on Brand New Cadillac and remixed it. So thank you to Cecile Demilla. And as I said at the start, this is 370, it is When I Go Deaf, because I did kind of go deaf for a while, hence the delay in this podcast, because I had too much earwax in one of my ears, and then I tried to use Q-tips and made it worse, and yeah, it all went very very wrong. I thought I’d actually permanently damaged it, because I tried to do syringing at home and stuff like that, so eventually after about 11-12 days with using the olive oil and everything it cleared, but it was interesting to try and make mashups with one ear. I could just about hear in the other ear, but it might make 30% of hearing in that ear. So it was all very much one sided, and I learnt it’s very hard to mix that way. I had to mix visually from waveforms, and you’ll hear one of the mashups I did during that period, and it’s one of the reasons why I didn’t record a podcast, because I knew that it just would be too much hassle to try and do it with one ear. Mixing with one ear, yay! And also, this would be my last podcast for a while, yay goes everyone, because I’m off on my, I was actually holibobs, I hate people say holibobs, and not a fan of that word. I’m off on my holiday, so it’s not really a holiday because it’s a working holiday, I call them jaunts. You can follow my progress, there is a new podcast that I’m going to record and mobile blogging, they don’t call it mobile blogging, do they? I don’t know what the kids call it nowadays. Mobile podcasting, microcasting, I think is the other phrase for it. And you can find that on anchor.fm slash jaunt, so that’s about J-A-U-N-T. And also you can find information on my website, because it’ll be more about my artworks, at tjbaker.co.uk. And there is already, as of writing this, a secret hidden page. So if you go to tjbaker.co.uk slash jaunt3, as I say it’s about J-A-U-N-T3, it will take you to the page where you can have aggregates of the podcast and also, hopefully, fingers crossed if it works. My Instagram posts, if I tag them properly, and Twitter posts, because this time I want to kind of group all of that stuff together, but I will be posting daily. Well, it depends on whether I’ve got battery and I’ve got signal, but hopefully, daily it will fairly frequent short podcasts about my work or how it’s going. And you can see it on the anchor.fm page, there’s already a test post with some artwork you should be able to see in the episode artwork, the artwork I’m talking about. It’ll be easier if it’s video, but in the middle of nowhere, it’s impossible to get one G, let alone four G. I’m not super modern, like some people would have five G. But even that area, yeah, you’ll find some cliffs somewhere, you just don’t have anything. So it’s going to be dependent on that, but I’m planning to record something, even if it’s 30 seconds or a minute or two minutes, five minutes, probably longer than that, because you can’t shut me up every day about what’s going on. And so, yes, we have a podcast starting off with some blends, some old school blends. You know that medley blends, we used to do cut up records, some things, it’s very much inspired by that, and then we’re going to go more into the kitchen disco, very euphoric and upbeat, not so much drum and bass, a little bit in there with a new mashup from DJ Nono, and then more indie downbeat towards the end, but you’ll get the idea. So this is a new remix by Rhythm Scholar, and this is Kriss Kross Jump, Rhythm Scholar’s whole ball of wax remix, and yes, there is Jump Around by House of Fame, I did that mashup once, and lots of jump related things in there, so it’s like mega mash, mega medley, I don’t know, I don’t know why the kids call it that, but anyway, it’s a lot of fun. That was Wolfgang with Summertime, yes, a reggae version of the classic tune featuring Boris Pokora, and that’s from Disco Reggae Volume Four, I played some disco reggae series tracks in the last podcast, it’s not dated, I think it’s from a couple years ago, I think the latest one is, it’s a four or five or six, something like that, yeah, so it’s somewhere in the tens. And then before that, we had a track I first heard via Don Letts Culture Clash on BBC Radio 6, that’s New Blade Runners of Dub, the 1984 virus dub remixed by, I don’t know if it’s AleX or Ale X, there’s something about that compilation, especially the chromium one with David Lynch that says to me, I do wonder who’s involved, Dub and Starr to one of those people, I thought the chromium up to Mr. Trat was Dub and Starr, so yeah, I’m not so sure, but interesting album, some nice dubs on there, all with a sci-fi bend, and I really like that, like with the Summertime track, that sort of Night Nurse, Gregory Isaac, mixed almost like with Ghost Town, that sparse, quite scary, dystopian dub, that’s more my kind of thing, especially at the moment, it fits in with the mood, it fits in with the times. Then before that, we had some more of Antony Szmierek, this time with Yemi Bolatiwa, that’s Some Daze, about DAZE, and that was from 2021, from last year, seems to do a lot of summary track, that was last year’s very summary track, and I’m still really loving Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Fallacy, and you will hear some more spoken word, but something of a similar ilk later on, but also from Manchester, and then before that, we had this other kitchen disco-y section which we came down from, that’s PVA with Divine Intervention from 2020, I kind of missed out on PVA, how to describe it, a bit like Porij in Manchester, they are a punk-funk, very gang of four-ish, but also, yeah, very electronic, it seems like a lot of people go between an interesting mix of all genres, it seems like a lot of new bands don’t usually, some do stick in their lanes, some put quite happily hopping between lanes, and they’re on Ninja Tunes, and I mean it’s from South London, I thought they were London, I had to check it out. And then before that we had Orbital from the new compilation 30-something, that’s Belfast, the David Holmes remix, which if you know of the history of Belfast, the Orbital track, why it’s called Belfast, you know that having a mix by David Holmes, because it was his club that they were DJing at, and they gave him a tape, they had such a good time DJing there, and a good response for that track, that they named the track after the place, that’s a new remix from the 30-something compilation, it’s over 30 years since they released their first track, but the lockdown got in the way, so hence the 30-something, and I’ve reviewed it on the blog, RadioClash.com, there are some amazing things on there, obviously the Lone, I love Lone, Lone’s remix is brilliant, that’s brilliant, the John Hopkins remix is great, the version of Satan almost made it on here, that’s really good, and they’ve dropped in some of, I think it’s Black Mass by Coven, and that’s something I used in one of my mixers, it’s purporting to be a real Black Mass, but it’s not, it’s funny, it’s laughably bad, but it’s from that Black Aquarius period of the late 60s, where there seemed to be a lot of interest in the whole Dennis Wheatley thing, and yeah, it’s coming from that angle, and yes, so there’s some really good mixers there, but there’s also a lot on there, it’s like that’s the best Belfast remix with there’s four others, and yeah, I wouldn’t bother with the other four really, well there’s the ANNIE mix, the Beatless ANNIE mix which is quite good, then before that we had Rasco and Specimen A, I love Specimen A’s stuff I’m hearing at the moment, coming from the breaks hardcore retro modern world, that’s yesterday original mix from 2020, I’m all here for the sentiment about, yeah can we go back to yesterday and Rave’s and where it was, though ironically we are kind of going back there, but without the Rave scene, we seem to be heading back to the late 80s and the strikes and interesting not unemployment, there seems to be a lot of this exact opposite, there’s a lot of jobs that aren’t being filled, but yeah decent unemployment that doesn’t pay shit, that’s harder to find, and then before that we had I think probably the only Beyonce Break My Soul Mash I’d play, because it’s the best, I agree with ToTom on this, and a few others, it is the best one that there are issues with that acapella, but generally I’m not massive on Beyonce, but mixing it with Black Box Ride On Time, yes I am there, 1989 all over again, and it makes me like Beyonce, it’s a shame that because they’re using extraction and stuff they can’t put, Big Freedia is the thing, great to hear but I think people are struggling to put in there, so if it is a sample I can just put the original in anyway, yeah it would have been nice to hear more Big Freedia in there, but for technical reasons I couldn’t, but yes I think that’s probably the only one I’ll play I’ve break my soul, but if I hear another good one that I love I will be there, but yeah it’s probably likely, and before that you had Alan Hurley, with Where’s Me Bumper, Sultans of Ping FC, Where’s Me Jumper vs Grace Jones Pull Up To The Bumper, and that’s track he debuted at Crumplstock 10, but a new album called Paddy Mashing, mashup album just of Irish artists, so you’ve got Cranberries and U2, but also Sultans of Ping which is always good to hear them, and Val Doonican, the Val Doonican one is brilliant as well, I’ll probably play that on a future podcast, but well worth checking out, you’ll find that on Alan Hurley’s, I think our mashups I think it is on Bandcamp, you’ll find that compilation there, and you might hear a Alan Hurley track, another one later in the podcast, then before that we had Tom Caruana remix projects with Day Trip, Posse Cut, and that’s from Return to Pepperland, Full Leftover collection, I’ve been digging through a lot of the old and new releases from Tom Caruana, I’ve never heard a phrase of Posse Cut, Posse Cut is where you get the whole Posse you know like Native Tongues, you get them all onto one track, and that’s what he’s done in that mashup, obviously mixing Beatles, Daytripper with lots of Salt n’ Pepa, there’s like Rakeem’s in there, and lots of GOATs, lots of greats as well times on that, and then the Starter section we had Kriss Kross, Jump, Rhythm Scholar, Whole Ball Of Wax Mix, again I can’t list how many, there’s probably 40 tracks in there, but I do know there’s Van Halen, House of Pain, Kriss Kross’s follow up track which is I Miss the Bus, Janet Jackson’s Edit bit, and Prince, and you know Millions of bits in there, but a little bit of I think Humpty, I tried listing them on his YouTube, he asked can you spot them all, but I’d listed quite a few of them, but yeah it’s not all of them, few of them I recognise but I can’t remember they are, but yes I love that, I know to say one of the first mashups I did was Kriss Kross vs Ludacris, the intro did it with an 8 bit version of Van Halen’s Jump, the Kid Carpet version with Ivor Cutler going Jump, Jump I want you to jump, and then I also did a Mega Mix where it went into House of Pain, so yes, good company, so let’s play some Jungle at you, as you do, it’s a bit of a jump up in, oh an intended pun, a jump up in Denver, so I mentioned 4AM Kru, I am so loving everything I hear from 4AM Kru, London, Jungle, Posse, I’ve never seen a picture so I don’t know, you could have just one person I don’t know, but this is not one person because it’s 4AM Kru with Shante, and this is King featuring Josh Kye, Remix, and yes, King of the Jungle. And that was The Cocktails, with Gymnopedies No. 1. I always like to work some classical music in here, and before that we have Jenny Owen Youngs, with Have You Forgotten, from a band I’m not going to mention because I just suddenly realised what the main singer of that band has been up to, and I shouldn’t be playing this work, so I just play the covers good, I’d rather not discuss the band it’s from. The band is good, just the person. And they’re both from Sing Me To Sleep, Indie Lullabies from 2010. Then before that we had Francis Lung, with 2p Machine, I love that greatly, that’s off a upcoming EP called Short Stories, the first track to be released. Francis Lung was originally in Wu Lyf, W-L-Y-F, which a band I’ve heard about but not really heard much from, who’s from Manchester, and there were some of the indie sarlings for a short period, but I really like that a lot. It reminds me of a mix of Arab Strap and good spoken word, it’s one of those stories, you know, a very appropriate name for short stories. I used to play those penny falls or 2p penny falls machines a lot when I was a kid. I love the reference to Edge of Seventeen, Stevie Nicks and theirs referenced and musically quoted. Yeah, I look forward to the rest of that EP, I will be looking forward to it. Then before that we had Fnog, with HEYYEYAAs It Was, at Slackcircus, yes the infamous pre-Youtube viral video of He-Man singing a version of 4 Non-Blondes, What’s Going On, mixed with Harry Styles, that works so well. There’s also a drum and bass tempo, so it mixes very well with the very crumpl track before that, which is DJ Nono’s latest challenge track, or for the last challenge it’s just finished, and that’s propane kickstart, but with omelettes on every single word. That’s Mötley Crüe vs Pendulum vs Adriana A, was in there slugging off DJ Nono, so DJ Nono had to do a response track obviously, especially as it was a hair metal challenge set by Adriana, and apparently Adriana likes that. So I need to send her a non-salty version for the Thunderdrome, so that’s good. And then before that, that start section we had 4AM Kru and Shanteh, King featuring Josh Kai remix, and I love that greatly, and the King of the Jungle. It’s like a sing-songy, but it’s very soulful. I do hope this is supposed to be at that tempo, it sounds a bit fast, but I think I’m gonna play a track. I’m gonna play some Sade at you, you see we go from Jungle to Sade, as you do. But this is probably not as you’ve heard it before, this is a remix by oki, and it was done before, I think a challenge, or a challenge track that oki did, and I love this because he’s slowed it down, added reverb, and his own synths and sounds and stuff, and in a way it reminds me of music, Mike Paradinas, the act on the Rephlex label, yeah, there’s something about that, very stuck in the lift elevator about it, but I like this a lot, so this is Love is Stronger Than Pride by Sade, the oki slow and reverb mix. That was Admiral Fallow and Rachel Sermanni with their cover of Low’s When I Go Deaf, which is what gave this podcast its name, I’ve played the Low track before, so hence why not playing it on this podcast, but we had two covers of it, and before that we had the more upbeat Arab Strap with There Is No Ending, which was their finale until they came back fairly recently, that was the last single from the last romance from 2005, a very strangely upbeat way of bowing out really, but then again they came back, and then before that we had from 1989’s Snowball, that’s the Field Mice with End of the Affair, and then before that we have, well I can’t read the, I think it’s Japanese, yes it is, but that’s Somebody else’s story with Flying Under the Word Moss from the album Immigrant, and that’s Departure’s new ambient moniker, Somebody else’s story, and you can find that, I recommend you go to the track list and copy, unless you know in Japanese what Somebody else’s story is, but copy of the characters and look for it on Bandcamp, very good, and I like the fact that you hear a bit of Aphex Twin SAW, the selected ambient works, but when you say saw too, everyone thinks the film nowadays, not the, sorry, that would be an interesting mash-up, a horror torture pod meets ambient works, yes, there’s some people that is torture to them, but yeah, I like the fact that you hear some Aphex ambient works too, I think it is, but one of those tracks flowing through and various things coming and going, so it’s really cool, then before that we had, ah, Alan Hurley with Somewhere I Used to Belong, that’s Gotye, is it Gotye, he said Gotye, Gotye, Gotye, the Australian singer-songwriter, versus Nine Inch Nails, and that’s from Ms, or Mis, I think Ms Disc 2, a recent release from 2022, then before that we had People Like Us from 2011, The Sound of the End of Music, that’s The Dooors meets Julie Andrews, and I’m surprised I haven’t played that before, I don’t think I have, I’ve looked for it and it didn’t seem to be out there, so yes, the video is a total blast, I saw Vicky, Bennett showing that live at the screening, and of course Osymyso was there, and it was the first time I met, lovely person, and yeah, the video is very funny, I’d go and check out the video on YouTube, then before that we had, and the other cover of When I Go Deaf by bdRm, spelt BD Big R M, and they’re from Portland, and that’s from 2016, and that’s the album, or EP, I think it’s an album, Identite, Identite, French for Intensity I think, Identity, I’m not regular in my French, and actually I do like the Camp Fire version of the Rachel Sermanni and Admiral Fallow, which was covered at South by South West quite a few years ago, it says Artworks Scotland, it was off the BBC website, and I think it’s 2011, well maybe 2017, but it’s some point in the tens, but it’s from a few years ago, quite a few years ago, and I was like, oh I love that cover, but oh I really miss the fact that the instruments of the band come in, but there isn’t that loud, quite loud, because that’s quite important for that song, because it’s about going deaf, and the whole thing about, it doesn’t have to scan, I don’t have to rhyme, I don’t have to scratching out lies, I don’t have to lie anymore, it’s about a relationship where you’re going deaf, it’s a relief, I don’t have to lie anymore, and I don’t have to do music anymore, which I do wonder how after Biographical lies, but what I like about the bdrm version is you’ve got that sort of noise, and that’s what they seem to do, sort of more of an industrial noise project, and then I love the fact that at the end they’ve got that tinnitus tone at the end, which is what I was hearing, I was hearing that eeee for 10 or 11 days constant, it still comes back, I do have tinnitus problems, from listening to music too loud with my headphones, but I don’t usually have it constantly 24-7, and so it was this constant whine, because of the earwax, and it was not fun, and as I said, I thought it was permanent, or I was worried I’d done some damage, so I was glad when the wax was removed, well before the wax had moved it started to go, and then the wax was removed, it was like, oh my god I can hear, it was like hearing again for the first time, but I was worried because you need stereo listening to be able to do mashups or mixing, it’s not, it’s possible, like I did with the track before then, which is the What Glimpse of Us, the Joji vs Pink, and in brackets it’s two ear mix, because that’s the mix I did, and it’s not too far from the one ear version, but yeah, when I heard it fully I was like, oh yeah, the volumes were a bit off, and that’s by Instamatic, and that was another challenge track, what not for last week, but the week before, I think, oh that was ToTom’s challenge, or you had to do a fresh challenge, or you had to do a track which was new since April, and so I chose the Joji track, Glimpse of Us, and then paired it with Pink’s What About Us from 2017, I think it was 16 or 17, there is an emotional subtext of what Collin responds to, they’re responding to each other and singing against each other as well, I’m experimenting a lot with that, with trying to grow those juxtapositions, and kind of have people backing each other and responding and putting stuff into the background and foreground, and that sort of stuff, and doing a lot of production stuff with that, but also there’s the Bliticle bit, which given the Roe vs Wade is definitely intentional about fighting back against that, and also, well, Gunning for Gay rights, Queer rights, LGBTQ rights, next, having smelt blood over Roe vs Wade, so, yes, and then before that we had to start that section, a long section, but I didn’t want to break it up, Sade, Love is Stronger than Pride, oki’s Slow and Reverb mix, and yeah, there is a real music, wonky, broken beat, but slow down thing about that, and I really like that, yeah, it does sound, yeah, a bit like experimental elevator music meets soul, and yeah, I love that a lot. So, we’ve reached the end of the podcast, and we’re going to play out on a track, which is a dedication to Bob Rafelson, who died a few weeks ago now, or I think it’s the 23rd of July, recording there somewhere, on the 4th, and yeah, I somehow missed that Bob Rafelson had died, and strangely last night I actually watched the whole of Head again, just as you do, and I enjoyed it far more than I first watched it, I think I’ve watched bits of it a few times, but I actually watched through it and was like, no, this makes more sense than my first time I’ve watched it, whereas like, well, I can’t get this, and now I can see it was obviously not aimed very well at their audience, there are serious themes in there about fame and being manufactured, but also, there is a feeling that I do wonder if the director and the producer were trying to destroy the Monkees to say put an end to it, because it is a bit like that, but there is a deeper thing, I mean like the idea of having Vietnam War and War stuff at the same time, you know, over a live gig, and then they brush the stage, and then you find out they’re actually mannequins, and they tear them to shreds, I think that was just probably a little bit too clever and a little bit too in your face for those times, whereas now you look back and go, no, there is something much deeper there and it’s quite mad, I say mad because it’s not really madcap, it’s intentional, all about nature of reality and switching between things, but also the fact that they can never escape from whatever box they’re in, so yeah, there’s a lot more going on there than people made out, and so I’m just going to play a track, a cover of Porpoise Song, I was going to play one of the other Monkees tracks but I found out I played it before, but this is from an album called the Brill Building Book 2, Kramer from Bongwater and other things, has done two albums of Brill music songs, and this is with Bill Frisell, a guitarist, it’s one of those tracks that you listen to and you sit there and you hear and you listen all the way through and you like, whoa, time stops and you enter a space and then leave it and it’s like, what happened there? And that’s when I first heard this cover, I was like, again I wanted to play that and you’ll know it’s by the travel of the dead cover, again I played it before, which is a brilliant cover, there are many people who have covered Porpoise Song, which is the, in head of the movie, it’s an intro and ending song, it was written purposely by Gerry Goffin and Carole King about the Monkees to order from the director, so there’s all this sort of themes through Echoed and so on, but a lot of them are kind of psyched by numbers, but this is something else, this is, I don’t know, it’s on the Tzadik label, John Zorn’s label, I know it was produced by John Zorn, and so it’s not your normal cover, so this Porpoise Song, Kramer vs Bill Frisell, and I’ll speak to you soon and, well, soonish, it depends how long I spend on holiday, working holiday, jaunt, and don’t forget to check out my new micro podcast at anchor.fm slash jaunt, if you want to, but yes, it’ll be a lot shorter than this, and no music, well, maybe the odd little bit of, I didn’t, but nothing among that, so anyway, I’ll speak to you soonish. One, two, one, two, one, two, for like fucking around, yeah. What is it, what’s the URL? Just give me the fucking page from that page. Actually, yes, if we do that that way around, we’ll do that. Listen to me code, with hey ya ya, hey ya ya’s, hey ya ya, that was shit.
