Gates of Delirium

Dear Everyone,

First: some sad news. Jessica has begun her long journey around the world–nay, the universe. We may never see or hear from her again. Let us hope that this is not the case, and that she shall visit us from time to time (perhaps through the practice of transcendental meditation she shall achieve telepathic communicative powers).

Still: summertime!

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Highlights: A bit from the B-side of Rick Wakeman’s (former Yes keyboardist) prog symphony based on Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. Read here about how he almost went broke trying to record it, and how wildly successful it was for a few years. Then go to any record store, literally anywhere, and see for yourself how many copies of it are now on sale for 25 cents or less, because so many people wanted to get rid of it.

Also: The Nice, Todd Rundgren, Comus, The Lollipop Shoppe, Incredible String Band, Syd Barrett, The Millennium, The Churchills, and more, and more!

Love,
Gates of Delirium

Dear Everyone,

I’ve been completely remiss in my regularly-scheduled podcasting duties. Please, allow me to make it up to you, with this clip of video from Todd Rundgren’s Utopia “Ra” era tour, circa 1977. As heard on the April 21 Gates of Delirium show, this Herculean concert cost something like $250,000, much of which probably went for the construction a 22-foot-tall pyramid and a golden sphinx:

Presumably, this augmented the dubious allusions to Egyptian theology made throughout “Ra,” such as frequent praise and communion with a sun deity, or the fantastic battle between elemental forces in the “electrified fairytale” called “Singring and the Glass Guitar.” The lengthy, absurd song–which bordered on half an hour during live performances–depicted each band member as a brave warrior fighting his element in search of magical keys: drums vs. water, bass vs. wind, keyboards vs. fire, and guitar vs. earth. This culminated at the end of the concert with Todd Rundgren’s guitar solo (on a guitar which very well may have been at least part glass), which he would play as he climbed up to the top of the pyramid and then leapt off.

I highly recommend you seek out the whole song if–like me–you enjoyed watching Labyrinth or Dune more than the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Or for the next time you imbibe some mind-altering substance, I suppose.

Love,
Gates of Delirium

Dear Everyone,

An entire month’s worth of Gates, for your listening enjoyment:

4/7: a night of ambient music, minimalism and musique concrète, with Brian Eno, Steve Reich, John Cage, Phillip Glass, Alvin Lucier, and others. See Jessica’s description and videos in a previous post.

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4/14: Jessica’s friends Doc Brown and the Deloreans play a live set for the first hour of the show, followed by music from The Groundhogs, Bizarros, Exuma, Dali’s Car (formed by former members of New Wave bands Bauhaus and Japan), Robert Wyatt, and Family Fodder.

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4/21: a surprisingly awesome song by Chumbawamba, long before the noisome “Tub Thumping,” from back when they were an anarcho-punk band, in which they criticize nearly every famous rock star of the time; rock progressivo Italiano band Osage Tribe, named after a Native American nation, which makes sense when you hear the slightly racist “Injun”-esque intro; Emerson Lake & Palmer, Captain Beefheart, and David Axelrod; and most significantly, a selection from “Singring and the Glass Guitar: An Electric Fairytale,” an epically corny piece by Todd Rundgren’s Utopia (more on that later).

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4/28: the last show of the year! Gates of Delirium has the special honor of signing WUOG out for the ‘09-’10 school-year at midnight, and we ended it as blissfully as we could. Gong, Soft Machine, 10cc, Amon Duul II, King Crimson, Kevin Ayers, Todd Rundgren, and a special selection for the last song: the very namesake of the show, “The Gates of Delirium” by Yes!

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Happy summer.

Love,
Gates of Delirium

Dear Everyone,

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Some songs from the influential BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Italian pop-god Lucio Battisti, Love, Eloy, and more.

Also, an intricately-rendered, 8-bit cover of Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them,” from some poor guy with all sorts of time on his hands who covered the entire “Dark Side of the Moon” in 8-bit format (read: Super Mario coin clinks during the intro of “Money”), which is either hilarious or heart-breaking or both. Find the whole album gratis here: “MOON8.”

Also, the recent re-issue of “Tracks and Traces,” a collaboration between Krautrock super-group Harmonia (the guys from Cluster plus the guitarist from Neu!) and the legendary Brian Eno. The album, considered lost till the late ’90s, is the product of an 11-day stay with the band in Germany by Eno, who purportedly called them “the world’s most important rock band.”

Also, if you enjoyed the electronic experimentation of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop throughout the show, you might enjoy this BBC-produced documentary, The Alchemists of Sound” (Part 1 of 6):

Love,
Gates of Delirium

This week I had a focus on modern, post-modern, minimalist and ambient composers. Post modern, that means we are living after modern times, which is obviously the future. So bam, music from the future! And the greatest thing about it is that a lot of these composers are very classically based. Kind of like you have to know the rules to break them, and these guys tear the rules to itty bitty unrecognizable shreds. Some of the highlighted artists:
Brian Eno
Steve Reich
Philip Glass
and John Cage
really some of my favorite composers. Here are some links.
This on is the interview with John Cage I played over his piano piece “Dreams” about sound and silence

and here is a video of Steve Reich’s piece “Different Trains,” about WWII and includes recordings from holocaust survivors

Includes subtitles for the recordings too which is nice

Here is one more video explaining all about musique concrete, a musical style that consists of mish-mashing sounds together, early on this was done by manually manipulating tape that had recorded sounds on it. The nice man in this video explains it much better than I.

John Cage’s “Imaginary Landscape” played in the show is a good example of musique concrete

Dear Everyone,

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Because Mark is a bum, he didn’t show up. Jessica bravely soldiered on, backed by the combined forces of Mike Oldfield, Captain Beefheart, Naked City, Klaus Schulze, The Residents, and more.

Love,
Gates of Delirium

Dear Everyone,

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Weird night. Coming back from the high of spring break, all geared up to play corny celtic prog music all night, only to hear that Alex Chilton was reported dead only hours before the show. Things get emotional in the booth.

Love,
Gates of Delirium

Dear Everyone,

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In Jessica’s absence, Mark could only try his best. Local music came into play. Italian electrists appeared. Wendy Carlos. Joe Meek rose from the dead to drop a few tracks he produced back in the ’60s. Oh. And Funkadelic. And Funkadelic, indeed.

Love,
Gates of Delirium

Highlights from Jessica for 2/17:
We journey up the Holy Mountain in search of eternal knowledge. Selected tracks from the soundtrack of Alejandro Jodorowski’s 1976 bizarro film The Holy Mountain. Director Jodorowski collaborated with jazz musician Don Cherry for create a soundtrack almost as strange as the film itself. Highly reccommended!!!

This pretty much sums it up:

Another highlight from Jessica’s sets is Israeli band Ahvak, Hebrew for “dust.” Their sounds will surely blow you away.

They do look like a swell group of guys.

Dear Everyone,

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Tonight we journeyed through the gates of delirium into outer space, traveling alongside the likes of Science Fiction Corporation, Sun Ra and His Arkestra (Space is the place: “I am Sun Ra, ambassador from the intergalactic regions of the council of outer space.”), Chrome, Disco Inferno, and on and on. Further! Further!

Love,
Gates of Delirium

p.s.
Don’t forget, you can email us with questions about space travel or the show at delirium@wuog.org!