The Advisory Circle | The Decibel Tolls

As followers of our Twitter are more than aware, Kenny Bloggins has been straight fiendin’ the past few weeks. It’s probably been annoying as all hell, and I suppose I’m somewhat sorry. But not really – the final season of LOST begins tonight, and we are throwin’ down. In the traditional way this blog celebrates all the stupid shit going on in my life, it seemed necessary to throw a Super Swingin’ Mix in your vicinity to lift John Locke’s name on high. And hey, it also can serve as sort of a peace offering to you all for the general numberskullery that will occur on the Twitter account over the next few months. So… all the songs below relate to themes, storylines, etc. from LOST. Can you find all the connections at home, kids? Oh, and of course 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 are well represented in this mix. What kind of a blogger do you think I am?

I’m not entirely sure many or any of you care about some of the theories that myself, L-Train, and our friends have hypothesized. I’ll just leave it at this – John Locke will resurrect and Jacob’s ass is evil. Believe.

Much love to the Vintage DHARMA Flickr pool for providing the image above.

MP3 :::
Nethers – It’s an Island
Brian Eno – Burning Airlines Give You So Much More
Trap Door – International Psychedelic Mystery Mix Untitled 15
The Advisory Circle – Farmland Freeland
Broadcast – Never Trust a Rusty Bolt
Fairport Convention – Eastern Rain
Silver Apples – Program
Blonde Redhead – 23
Battles – Bad Trails [Live]
The Wilderness – Your Hands
The United States of America – Stranded in Time
Flying Saucer Attack – To the Shore
The Conet Project – Counting Control
Can – Mushroom
Brian Wilson – Cabin Essence
The Great Northwest – Chief John
No Age – Things I Did When I Was Dead
13th Floor Elevators – May the Circle Remain Unbroken
The Zombies – Imagine the Swan
Leadbelly – Don’t You Love Your Daddy No More?
The Incredible String Band – Nightfall
Animal Collective – Don’t Believe the Pilot
Bachelorette – The End of Things

As you know, I’m super obsessed with Ghost Box, and just this week the collective dropped three delicious new tracks for their subscribers (it’s free, so you should sign up). I can’t stop, won’t stop talking about the mighty Ghost Box – who, as I’ve mentioned before, are more or less the most prolific collectors and composers “library music.” That is, all the Ghost Box artists sample, reconstruct, and rebuild the sounds of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and turn it into the springboard for their deep, spacious, glacial psychedelic electronic glitch movements. I absolutely love how each artist on Ghost Box creates a cohesive musical ambiance, and it’s always paradoxically retro and futuristic. The Focus Group in particular sounds like how the Atomic Age envisioned the future.

Ghost Box brings it heavy on the zone out times. If you love Silver Apples, Raymond Scott, or Broadcast, you need at least one Ghost Box release in your collection.

ghostbox1 The Focus Group and The Advisory Circle - An Evening with Ghost Box

The Focus Group’s new release “We are Coming Back to Dance with You” is dense while creating a huge sonic headspace to take in each sound with profound consideration. As with most of The Focus Group’s catalogue, “We are Coming Back…” treads this weird, thin line between being tranquil and being spooky, sorta in the same vein as Music Has the Right to Children. And as prevalent on that aforementioned album, The Focus Group lays it thick on the bucolic imagery. This is pretty much the same with The Advisory Circle. “Energy in the Home” builds itself around analoge synths and what is, presumably, some public television program. Once again, futuristic in the most nostalgic sense. Some of my favorite songs feature random field recordings over vocals. It’s a good way to go, and you get plenty of that with both The Focus Group and The Advisory Circle.

MP3 :::
The Focus Group – We are Coming Back to Dance with You
The Advisory Circle – Energy in the Home