ID Music: Cold Comfort 2023
Winter Solstice drones and dirges for the holly dazed and solstice confused
Inter-Dimensional Music brings 2023 to a close with Cold Comfort, an expectedly convoluted two-hour mix of winter drones and dirges for the holly dazed and solstice confused. These sessions will air at their usual times on Marfa Public Radio and WQRT Indianapolis this weekend as well as next weekend, but since you’re newsletter heads you get the sneak preview along with the convenience – if you so desire – of offline listening to the download. The newsletter version is also presented in its original form, a two-hour live-to-FLAC session recorded here at Cosmic Chambo Studio that also includes the s-word at 01:42:11 if you’re hanging out with people who don’t know about s-word yet.
In the first hour we'll drift from new age vibrations, old time feelings, and high altitude Christmas gloom, into tranquil overtone singing, avant-goth drone, downpressing folk music, and glacial piano ambience from David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir, Expo '70, Palace Songs, Coil, Harold Budd, and Depeche Mode, among many others.
For hour two we’ll continue to float through our drafty virtual meditation chamber with ambient music inspired by the weather in the Left Hand of Darkness and into a somewhat unexpected series of Teenage Fanclub covers, gargey pink noise, psychedelic shoegaze, and laid-back winter sludge before winding up with a threefer of songs about foggy flames, opiated snowflakes, and the way the cruel reality of contemporary capitalism deflates the good time holiday vibes. Listen for Gavilán Rayna Russom, AIR Krew, Boris, Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, Merle Haggard, and more.
Our practice begins, and eventually comes to an end, with free range devotional music from timber rattle and lightning white bison: "between poison and medicine is poison."
Language throughout the broadcast is taken from Dōgen’s Extensive Record, a 2010 translation of the 13 Century Zen Master’s collection of dharma talks, poetry, and other writings. We’ll hear a verse with suggestions about how to best examine the short days and long nights of the Winter Solstice, as read by your host: “Stop asking for the sun in the sky.”
The images for this Cold Comfort session are my own distressed photos from the Forest of The Wabash, an old growth woodland in southern Illinois. We may or may not be going quiet for the rest of the solstice holidays? At the very least we’ll be holed up with friends in the wilds of southwestern Illinois for the transition into 2024.
It’s a pleasure and a privilege – as always – to know you’re out there opening these emails, clicking the links, listening to some of the music, upgrading your subscription to paid, possibly unsubscribing which is totally fine, or perhaps forwarding this to a friend or two who may be seeking such cold comforts as these. For what it’s worth, this is a mostly metal-free mix, not counting the two varieties of cold weather sludge from Dhyana (meditative Zen sludge) and Boris (laid-back acoustic groove (?) sludge). If you’re feeling brave head in with closed eyes and open ears, but if you’re wary rest assured that spoilers abound in the setlist below and there’s nothing too caustic to harsh the otherwise frigid mellow.
blessing up and blessing down,
Daniel
Inter-Dimensional Music 20231222 + 29
timber rattle x lightning white buffalo - … between poison and medicine is poison … cold ground
David Hykes & The Harmonic Choir - Inward Calling
Coil - Christmas Is Now Drawing Near
Expo '70 - Pulsing Rings of Ice
Palace Songs - Christmastime in Mountains
Dhyana - Cold Mountain
The Field - Then It's White
Harold Budd - Ice Floes In Eden
Trentemøller - While The Cold Winter Waiting
Depeche Mode - Christmas Island
Gavilán Rayna Russom - Place Inside The Blizzard
AIR Krew - Solstice
Sun Araw - December
My Bloody Valentine - Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside)
Purling Hiss - Icelator
Kurt Vile - Snowflakes Extended
Lawrence English - December 24 - Frost's Bitter Grip
Yagya - SnowFlake 9
Boris - December
Wooden Wand - Winter in Kentucky
L - Cold Was The Ground
Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru - Jerusalem
Merle Haggard - If We Make It Through December
timber rattle x lightning white buffalo - … between poison and medicine is poison … cold ground
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