I want to thank everyone, the pledgers on the phone and online, the playlist commenters, Castleheads all—and the friends and colleagues who helped out and hung out in the phone room—it was a blast of a night of a time. The WFMU marathon overall should be FUN, and we commiserate over pledges and prizes as a part of that necessary process. Very special thanks to Listener Adam, Pseu, Alex, Sue P. and Ms. Fox.
THANKS FOR YOUR PLEDGES, EVERYONE! You can still pledge to WFMU through Sunday's finale, and I'll be back this Thursday night co-hosting for the great Nick Name program, once again entreating you all to donate via my peculiar charms and frank talk. Nick's music is choice, and I'm looking forward to it. YOU CAN STILL PLEDGE TO MY CASTLE OF QUIET, TOO. Here's how: a) Make sure you've chosen My Castle of Quiet from the drop down menu at the main pledge page, as well as b) CLICKED THE PLUS SIGN to the right of the menu, and BAM! your pledge goes right into The Castle's tin cup. We shake it, thank you on the air (next week), and a plege of $75 dollars or more will still earn you a copy of my premium CDr compilation Anthems, featured prominently in last night's show. PLEDGE GRAPHIC BELOW >>>
Musical highlights included, but were not limited to: Pink Mass (who will be our live guests on April 6) | Norma Tanega | Obscure Evil (new on Caligari) | Smersh (featuring Pseu!) | Nudity | Moros (awesome Philadelphia band, well worth your time, listen below) ...more form Moros and many others next week; looking very much forward to Castle business-as-usual, with massive muck and a lot less talk. ...and tune in to our closing soirée Sunday night, I'll sing you a song.
Stream this week's fun-raising horrorcast™ by clicking up top, on the game-screen list of dubious options.
"No, the cocks are mine. The cocaine isn't." If I had ten dollars for every time I said that, sitting handcuffed in the lightly falling snow, WFMU wouldn't NEED to hold a marathon. But as it stands, yeah, we still do, and tonight is your last chance to donate in real time to support My Castle of Quietand in all honesty that's the easiest way. Our show starts @ 9 PM PT, 12 AM ET, and across a spectrum of early-morning hours in Europe. If you want to be a part of our prize drawings (which tonight feature treats from Wet Ones, Killing Joke (see YT embed below), a One Master t-shirt & LP set, a Throaat CD, two different Midwich LP releases, a Baked Tapes 3-pk, and the great Nudity LP on Iron Lung), and have a pledge of $75 or more score you a copy of our annual exclusive CDr comp, Anthems (Classic video-game music & Misty Metal), the best way is to just party with us in the moment (even if you can only do so @ 12:05 a.m. and then go to bed) when all pledges made to WFMU at large during those hours will default to our show. No pluses will need be clicked, no new interfaces need be navigated.
NOW THAT SAID, you can donate the station at large any old time between now and our big wrap party Sunday night, by just clicking on Julian above, our featured clean-piss salesman. If you simply can't donate in real time, usually hear the show in archives, gotta get your ass up early to go to work, or are in a bar getting your face off—much respect—you can still show Castlehead love by just doing the little two-step dance pictured below; which is to say a) make sure you've chosen My Castle of Quiet from the drop down menu at the main pledge page, as well as b) CLICKED THE PLUS SIGN to the right of the menu, and BAM! your pledge goes right into The Castle's tin cup. We shake it, thank you on the air, offer you a pencil, and if that happens before or during midnight to 3 a.m. ET tonight, toss you onto the body pile for tonight's prize drawings.
My Castle of Quiet may not be the most cash-register-exploding show on WFMU, but there's a real camaraderie, tribe-thing happening between the show and our listeners, the bands we play and the labels we support; I meet these folks in person, at shows, and online, and your gratitude and dedication to the weekly broadcast is my great humbling. So please, think about tossing us some coin for tonight's festivities, for which I'm grateful to share the mic with fellow WFMU veteran Pseu Braun.
Marathon show nummer eins went swell, lots of fun and generous pledgers, many of whom walked away with one of the hi-gloss items from our prize list, which was basically all gloss.
Want to thank listener SiHV, who made a mouse-size pledge which was not credited to My Castle of Quiet, but intended to be so. Within the larger scheme, it all goes to WFMU so it's all good, though of course at MCoQ we're not the hit parade, so every bit of support is something we want to know about and would like to take credit for. Just know, if you're a listener who's frustrated because your pledge was not credited to your favorite WFMU program, that things are not only going much better with this new-software rollout than they could be, but it's being worked on, and in the meantime, the most useful takeaway is PLEASE CLICK ON THE PLUS SIGN, to the right of the drop-down menu at this page (you can also click the "Pledge Now!" in the widget at our current playlist page to get there.) This will assure that you are in next week's first prize drawing, will be thanked on air, and all pledges over $75 will automatically get you a copy of our Anthems premium CDr. [See all 2016 DJ Premiums]
Or, simply call us next Tuesday night / Weds. a.m. @ 1-800-989-9368 and join the fun(d) in real time.
With not the usual amount of time for music, every selection had to be a hit (and/or related to our premium and prizes), so among all the colorful chatter, there's still a music show there. Tracks by Leash | Throaat | Uniform | Haare (Heavy Meditation on SoundCloud) | Magas | Circuit des Yeux were particularly dazzling.
Special thanks to my co-host Jonathan Herweg, who made the 3 hours flow like freestyles around a trash-can fire, and listener/friend Rachel Fox, who brought her contagious positive energy & eye-patched cuteness. I'll be back on WFMU tomorrow, co-hosting for Diane's Kamikaze Fun Machine.
Click on the pic up top, from Cemetery Man, to stream last night's full horrorcast™.
It's hard for me to even imagine a radio station where My Castle of Quiet would even have context. Our show dangles on the fringes of WFMU's programming (when viewed as a whole) as it is. That I have a decades-long, life-history with the station is definitely the brush that paints the picture; fill-in DJ 1984; music director 1985; 2x weekly 12-3 a.m. shows for a while, eventually plateauing in a well-liked Free Form show called The Hip Bone, that sat comfortably in Friday-night prime time for some 7 years, ending in 1999 Feb.; writing for Beware of The Blog (yup, that's a link to all my posts) starting in 2005; My Castle of Quiet initiated in 2009 June... a show that not all my old-time listeners were 100% pleased with, though most/many have taken the ride with me and we've picked up a whole new generation of devotees along the way since.
I knew when I started that not everyone, even the generally pretty open minds of WFMU's listenership, would grok a show that combined horror-film themes and discussion with raucous live performance, black metal, ragged punk, and contemporary experimental noise-music. I honed the concept, stayed true to it, and over the years a great crowd has gathered, and I'm grateful both to YOU, for listening and appreciating, and to WFMU for providing me the forum to continually present this not-quite-like-anything-else program.
NOW COMES THE TIME WHEN WFMU ASKS YOU THE LISTENER FOR SOMETHING IN RETURN. The station at large is raising pledges for the next two weeks; you can donate to the station as a whole, or to My Castle of Quiet in the specific by going here and doing what's depicted in the image below; click the "☩" next to the drop-down menu to make sure that My Castle of Quiet is where your pledge is credited. We'll thank you live tonight.
The WFMU Marathon is always like a two-week-long, on-air party, and it feels that way in the physical space of WFMU as well. I'll be on the air at midnight ET tonight, for the first week of two My Castle of Quietfun-raisingshows, with my perfect foil, the slappy Yin to my sloppy Yang, Jonathan Herweg. I'll be on again next week; honored to share the air with co-host Pseu Braun, like myself, a WFMU 80s veteran, and one of the best co-hosts a WFMU DJ could hope for. Also, I'll be co-hosting this Thursday afternoon for Diane Kamikaze's great program, and next Thu./Fri. late night with the maestro Nick Name.
Thanks in advance for being a part of our Free-Form party; we'll have great prize giveaways, as well as a copy of this year's Castle premium, Anthems (more information on that in this post) for every pledge over $75. Even if you can't afford to give right now, we have many plans and options of ways to donate that are guaranteed not to tear out your pocket. JOIN US!
32 years, doing the freeform shuffle, riding its rails and eatin' beans from a can. My anniversary show was rife with hammering metal and snotty punk rock—and of course, a few engineering flubs, and my usual, "hey, we're just talking" microphone breaks—I gotta be me, and what's old is new again.
Seriously, thanks for all the congratulations, well wishes and kind remarks. I was just putting it out there, as this happened to be the year that I was reminded/remembered. I remember anniversaries like dogs remember why you're scolding them.
It's a black metal hidden ace to break out a song from Walknut's Graveforests and Their Shadows; the few times I've played the album on air, it never fails to get a reaction, and similar to the Weakling album, I've never met a black metal fan that does not revere the Russian band's one, magnificent blast, from 2007.
Also great to revisit the Twist Ending 2014 demo, Musica di Morte, that one being a constant in the pile of tapes next to my bed....
Going to keep this one short. Lots of things to think about, and prep to do, for our next two weeks of fundraising, for WFMU's 2016 Marathon. ...Will have some attractive, Castle-appropriate giveaways, a new premium CDr compilation (see last week's post, below) and two formidable & friendly co-hosts.
I hope that if you enjoy what we do every week on My Castle of Quiet, you're a part of our "dark army," that you'll tune in and donate/pledge what you can. Tune in regardless, because it's always a party; quite seriously the most-listenable, enjoyable, public-broadcasting fundraiser I'm aware of.
Click on the framed spatter above, from Der Todesking, to stream last night's full horrocast™, and view the playlist and comments.
Daddy likes his "dragon music," and Daddy likes Cape of Bats a whole hell of a lot. When you connect with a band as people, and find those people to be as amenable as the work itself, well that's just about as good as it gets. So genuine and unassuming in person in fact, that it adds weight to the band's incredible chops—in playing, in songwriting, in arranging; the care shown to every recorded piece, every live rendering...I could go on, and I will, for a bit. Their songs (written mostly by mmrs. Cassidy & Francis(?)) average 2-3 genius riffs per 2-min. opus, everything used sparingly for its emphasis and then quickly discarded, or perhaps revisited (sometimes in terms of a variation on a theme), solid bass and rip-roaring melodic-metal leads worthy of Mercyful Fate keep level the deceptive chaos, and occasionally the two guitars opt for harmony, and when it happens it's ecstatic. Punk 2/4 maintains a forward careen for the most part, except when things suddenly break for a few breaths, and a different statement gets made.
Some people cannot even approach black metal, or punk for that matter—it all "sounds the same," is too noisy or "absent of melody"—well, Cape of Bats are proof that in the best bands, there is a fuck of a lot going on, there's a GODDAMNED PLAN to the proceedings. These people are deliberate, whether by nature or by meticulous planning, doesn't matter; everything from a brief acoustic-and-synth break, to the overall aesthetic presentation of the band, has coherence and purpose. Part of the reason I continue to love black metal is its malleability; the potential shapes made by talented individuals of the genre's basic stuffs seems infinite.
Stepping down off pulpit... exuding charm and gaining praise also were Nick Cave (a perennial) | Dark Blue (hopelessly addicting) | Wounds ...I quite enjoyed Finnish d-beat dirge form Incriminated (thanks Andorkappen, for the tip-off) | new Red Mass | new Wet Ones ...ahh, I pretty much love the whole thing—otherwise, why do it? Not for the glory. For me, and for you. Speaking of rewards, it seems timely to mention that WFMU's 2016 two-marathon fundraiser soirée begins in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS, always great listening that sounds more like a party than a "fund drive." I've got a primo premium planned; Anthems, a collection of themes from classic videos games, interwoven with "kvlt" dark ambient and some inspiring classical dirges.Perfect listening for a moonlit survey of your kingdom.
Two great co-hosts are on deck as well (won't spoil the surprise), and I'll be privileged myself to co-host / MC two excellent programs. DO JOIN US!
Finally, as an extension of the movie talk with CoB members last night, wanted to share a link to the great Spider Baby, and also emphasize my recommendation that listeners see The Houses October Built, a film which got better for me on second viewing, and while a perfect piece on conception, execution (literally), visuals and scares, if they had only painted a more-interesting cast of someones besides the humorless douchebags we get, who seem to be the wrong people entirely to take on this particular adventure, we might care when horrible things happen to them, which I think is supposed to be what happens. ...
Hear's this week's full horrorcast™, with Cape of Bats complete set, by clicking up top on the image from Ich Seh Ich Seh (aka Goodnight Mommy) (The literal title "I See, I See" being so much more appropriate to the story and generally compelling, but hey, that's world cinema dumbed down for the punters!) Enough. Click on the creepy kid in the mask with the candle to be transported to The Castle's Great Hall.
It came back to me, last night after the program, that "hentai" literally translates as "pervert," but has been linguistically overwhelmed by common usage, as the umbrella term for Japanese cartoon porn, such that (based on what I read) it's not used too often today to point at individual perverts, in favor of the commercial collectivism of their fetish. As a word person, I find this highly amusing; just imagine if we had a porn subgenre here in the west called "pervert" ... Just in general, I like to follow up on the shit I say on mic, my late-firing synapses often failing me. Considering it's from 30 years ago, I waited way too long to watch Entrails of a Beautiful Woman, such a deliciously unhinged, ultra-colorful and downright filthy little piece of cult-cinema insanity that it is.
Yet again, I feel uniquely privileged to have a forum wherein to present some of my favorite musical artists live, and meeting and hosting Hiroshi Hasegawa was no small matter for me. Outstanding, powerfully engaging sets from both the Astro-man himself, as well as Castle familiars Desiccant dominated our horrorcast™; enthralling modern music, sound sculpture at its absolute finest, a reason to live, and to keep doing what I do as "niched" as it is, as that niche deserves a voice.
In our last hour, got into some great new punk records—there is simply so much these days, it's overwhelming; more good/interesting bands than there are trad./predictable ones—some new releases I'm pretty tuned up on are the new Red Mass one-sided vinyl, the Wet Ones s/t, Flowers of Evil, Death Index, Condition ...and of course the great Sesso Violento & Black Cilice songs from 2015 were personal highlights. You can stream & enjoy the live sets, and the totality of last night's horrorcast, by clicking on the titular character from Cyclo (1995) above, in his moment of happy-pill-induced self-sploshing and gun play.
Until next time, here's the trailer for Here Comes The Devil, a 2012 Mexican horror film that for me got substantially better with a second viewing, all things unsettling, Satanic, sexual.... More great live music next week on My Castle of Quiet with Cape of Bats!
A monumental, momentous occasion is upon us, as Hiroshi Hasegawa makes his first visit to WFMU's My Castle of Quiet. A living legend of Japanese long-form/improvised/psych-noise, Hiroshi Hasegawa co-founded C.C.C.C., cementing a near-Krautrock approach to Japanoise, one that had been hovering over it since Magical Power Mako, and later Merzbow, but C.C.C.C. really brought it home—with disk-long compositions/performances, that allowed listeners to float off on a cosmic bed of multicolored squeal and rumble. Hasegawa has continued this creative arc, through such projects as his solo Astro material, and the glorious, long-form Astromero collaborations with Damion Romero (Speculum Fight.)
Returning to our show are two seasoned and celebrated Castle guests; Mat Rademan (of FUN, Newton) and Andy Borsz (of Slasher Risk & countless collabs.), playing together as Desiccant; both of them natural improvisers, intuitive players who work at ease with unconventional sounds, their union sure to be full of excitement and surprise.
Live sets, recorded exclusively for WFMU and My Castle of Quiet, air Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, February 16-17 @ approx. 12:15 a.m.
Rolling with the My Castle of Quiet-favored "party continuum" option, which should see us straight through to the WFMU 2016 marathon and beyond, show #300 saw us privileged to host an artist with whom I've shared years of mutual support, Sandor GF aka Andorkappen, the wild creative force also behind such projects as Lord Time, member of KILT and 1/3 of the mighty Harassor. >>>
So, what just blew my mind in the post-experiential hearing (it was overwhelming enough in person, but it's often that next day where a rager really hits home, fully consumed) was a live-rendered, improvised-around-a-plan Andorkappen piece "Endless Endings", and you can hear / download the the "official" version here.
Stream our entire horrorcast™ (live set, interview, the usual tatty array of black metal, movie trailers, and those clean-pressed dark hxcx lads) by clicking on Chester Turner's Black Devil Doll above (I won't feed your anticipation of this one at all, just to say if you have never seen it, see it...trailer below.)
My most sincere thanks all of you for your kind support & hearty hails for our 300th show on last night's playlist; Castleheads unite, always! Kick against those Grand Pricks, and I'll hear from you next week, you'll definitely hear me.
Good idea to have that shit READY. That said, my "people" tend to live well into their 80s, sometimes 90s, but you never know, there have been exceptions. Still, probably excessive to waste that many perfectly good virgins on my passing...I'll surely get burnt out on the whole thing by 20, maybe 25.
I caught up with the show around the time Cherubs were playing; some old guy was doing the show up until then. Good music always; I just wasn't driving, I was distracted by the cigarette lighter.
Mercyful Fate / King Diamond always prompts a positive reaction; historically, their best work seems to unite metalheads, punks and popsters alike. ... Also new Dark Blue | Mondo Macabro DVD | Black Panties | general accolades for black-metal-saturated set #2 | Solo Organ ...I enjoyed it all as usual, lots of exciting new and recent punk, grind/death, black etc.
Having a blast with WFMU's playlist-db image uploader; always been a lover of great album-cover art, and based on the positive listener response, I'll keep plugging that aesthetic identity into My Castle of Quiet's weekly cavalcade.
Thanks also for all your comments / contributions / participation—a lively comment board always helps to keep me thrusting forward, makes it feel like a party, a group interaction. To view the playlist, stream the archived audio and view comments, you can hear last night's full horrorcast™ by clicking above, on that somewhat disconcerting image from The Poughkeepsie Tapes, a faux crime documentary that was a seat-squirmer, even for myself, seasoned viewer of cinematic torment that I am.
Super-excited about our February at The Castle, with a maddeningly good lineup of live performances—starting next week, with a live, in-studio, in-the-moment set from Andorkappen (Lord Time/Harassor, KILT, Universal Consciousness Records)—it will be A TIME.
