Category Archives: NOTES

These are generally ruminations and ramblings about music (or links to interesting things elsewhere) that aren’t fit to count as their own feature of any sort.

zombies! (voodoo style)

November 30, 2007 – 22:16

OK.. this is just really cool.

I get exposed to a lot of talk about zombies… zombocalypses, survival tactics, discussions on what technically constitutes such a beast. And why shouldn’t I? I am a geek after all!  Sometimes I try to be too cool for all the zombie talk, and then I hear a song like this one.

From Exuma’s 1970 self titled debut album of “voodooed-out Bahamian folk,” this is a weird, tribal footstomper of a tune… and yes, it is most definitely about zombies.

There is no star in the sky, I see fire in the dead man’s eye.

have a listen. 

By damon | Comments (0)

subtle’s surreality

November 7, 2007 – 12:31

I got linked to this interview with Subtle‘s idea man, rapper, vocalist, poet and potential nut job DoseOne (born Adam Drucker).  I strongly encourage y’all to check it out. It was definitely one of the most entertaining interviews I’ve ever read, and really raises some questions about art, sanity, reality etc.  What a great fucking trip. High weirdness.

By damon | Comments (0)

burial – untrue

November 6, 2007 – 22:24

this album is getting a lot of hype on various channels (at least the ones I’m tuned to). It’s an interesting piece, that is revealing itself to me slowly.  Burial belongs to the genre known as Dubstep. It is grimy and murky, spooky and decidely dark. Breakbeats, clattering sound effects and samples, deep deep deep bass and a steady snaking rhythm; but Burial lays on plaintive soul samples pretty heavy, though he then shovels some dirt over them for good measure (buries?). It very definitely reminds me of nighttime in a bad area of a metropolis downtown, a cool bite to the air, the lack of light an expanse to be filled with your own pains and passions and fears, but you can’t quite ignore the grim potential for violence, or at least the unknown. The layering of different voices in the vocal samples, though, makes it the journey less intensely personal and more like a collective experience. A real mood piece. atmospheric-like. All the songs can get to sound the same, all comprised of similar elements and lacking standard melodies or lyrics. It’s not the kind of stuff that gets stuck in your head. It wriggles its way under your skin.  Trip hop for the new millenium? And the meaning of the title? (untrue)- maybe just making us a little uneasy.

That’s how I see it for now at least. Just on my second (and first intent) listen.

By damon | Comments (0)

Slipstream Season 4 – Tonight! …and free stuff

May 7, 2007 – 15:48

As I’m in Hamilton over the summer of COURSE I’m keeping up with the radio show! I’m sure everyone who knows me assumed as much. It’s the same deal as always.. just hoping that the kinda sketchy CDs work tonight better than last week (which was a repeat of this old playlist and went horribly wrong so I haven’t bothered posting it). Season 4, as we’re calling it here at the institute, will be exactly the same as you’re used to, so why even make a point about it?
Well, I have a present for you, if you want it. Because I’m dorky and ever so slightly pretentious, I’m calling it the “Slipstream Season 3 Official Commemorative DVDR” and what it is, is a burned dvd with every single song (604 of them) that I played on the show since last September and a playlist so you can listen to them all in order on your computer or your ipod or what have you. How do you go about getting one? Well, you get in touch with me, by commenting on the site, email, msn, facebook, word of mouth or telegram, however you want (the more creative the better!) and you say something along the lines of “Hey Damon, that dvdrwhatsit thing sounds pretty neat, I wouldn’t mind having one” and then, presumably through that same or a similar form of communication, we’ll figure out how to get one to you (if you can drop by my house or I’ll be seeing you any point in the near future, that’s probably best). And seriously people, don’t be shy! If you want one let me know.. I’d make ‘em for everyone I know, but I don’t want to give ‘em to people who don’t actually care all that much about having a lot of obscure songs Damon really likes. There may be many of you who think that would be really awesome, so just holla.. even if you don’t know me that well or you don’t like me particularly or you think I harbor some strange grudge against your pet rabbit. I fully suspect maybe 5 people to take me up on this, and to the rest.. your loss! bwahaha?

By damon | Also posted in announcements | Comments (0)

radio slipstream – SEASON 3 – tonight

September 11, 2006 – 20:04

My little college radio show is set to enter its third year, which will most likely also be its last. As we have come to expect (a recurring pattern with 2 instances) the timeslot is slipping. This time backwards.

THE SLIPSTREAM, with your delicious host Damon Muma
from MIDNIGHT Monday to TWO on Tuesday
on CFMU 93.3 …follow link to discover lo-bitrate webcast of radio!

So I thought in honour of the new season, and because I take this little radio gig perhaps far too seriously, I’d formalize the structure of my radio program, by way of -

THE MANIFESTO. [scrawled with half a pen on the back of your tim horton paper muffin bag].

Programming:
Music is art. Art is communication. Art should move us, spiritually and intellectually. Maybe moreso spiritually, but in a way they are one and the same. I aim to present, each week, a collection of songs that acheive small greatness in the field of musical endeavor, no matter the genre. What that really means is that I play the songs I like. I just choose them very carefully from a veritable slew (to illustrate this slew, I’ve so far listened to more than 150 albums that were released in 2006; and no, of course I don’t pirate music). I aim to play only songs that have a lot to offer, and of course what exactly that is can change wildly from song to song. I also want to make the best of what time I have, so I have determined not to repeat the same artist within one show, nor the same song within the same few years, except by accident. Of course taste is subjective, but I believe there is a large amount of objectivity in the analysis of art. There is good art and less good art, and of course a rather extensive middle ground. The Slipstream tries its darndest to be a place for good art. I want every person who listens to the program to hear and be moved by music they have not heard before or did not take note of on the first go round. A sort of goal for the show is to create for myself the ultimate playlist for my Ipod or Winamp or what have you.

Engineering:
The songs are selected well in advance, by being sent to my special playlist in winamp. Then they are arranged into a coherent order, shuffled around for a while, mixed and matched and blended (using mixmeister) so that they flow smoothly into each other. Also, the last song of a set will link sounways somehow to the next song. If the talking were removed one would hear a coherent mix. I do this all in advance and show up at the station with a few CDs full of each set as one track. Each show takes at least 2-3 hours to sequence, not including all the music listening or the burning, playlist writing, webposting, mp3 recording tagging and posting, manifesto writing, etc. The mp3s that show up here are recorded from the CFMU webstream and are therefore not particularly good quality. I apologize.

Hosting:
I basically sit in the studio, say some stuff and then press play. This year I’ll probably be bringing my shiny new laptop with me so that I can look stuff up if I need to and also lurk on msn and harass people into listening. Previously, everything I said about the show was just from trivia I have accumulated and stored in my indie-musically-overwhelmed mind. I like to be a big goofy now and then, but ultimately the me talking part is only so that you can know who these cool music making cats are.

So in the end, ignore all that jibber jabber up top, and what you get is a series of really good songs from a variety of genres flowing together for two hours every week around islands of Damon talking. What I get is something that I am almost always quite proud of.

Full stop.

Music: tonight’s show
Mood: pretentious

By damon | Also posted in announcements | Comments (0)

Introducing The Slipstream

January 5, 2005 – 20:39

The slipstream lies under, above and within the mainstream. It’s a safe zone in the wild currents where nothing is anything but what it is.The slipstream is about music first and foremost, and it tries to be fairly all-encompassing about it. I can’t (and won’t try to) say that I provide an equal representation of all genres, but I can say that there’s hopefully a pretty varied array of music to hear. There is an emphasis on that which would fall under the very broad umbrella of ‘rock/pop’ or ‘electronica’ but there’s no limitation on what gets played. You might hear indie rock, hip hop, oldies, classic rock, IDM, trance, symphonic, electro, pop, folk or anything else that happens to pop up. The criteria for selecting songs is fairly simple: quality, interest, newness (in that order). Every week I’ll highlight new music of note, play some old favourites, and the maybe one or two rare, random or off-the-wall cuts, and likely spend a fair amount of time yammering about this, that, or the neighbour’s pudding.

Which is all a fancy way of saying that I play the music that moves me to want to share it with anyone who will spare some part of their hearing for 3 or 1 or .0005 hours on a late Monday night. And I can only hope that every now and then you’ll hear a song that does something to you, triggers a thought or a feeling or a smile, rings with truth or hammers and grinds with affecting intensity… and if you hear such a song on my little radio show, then together we have won a small victory.

By damon | Also posted in announcements | Comments (0)