ID Music 20240126

An IMPURE FLOW of blackened livity, mucky crust, and vintage peace punk

A word of introduction for the new subscribers that have joined us¹ over the last couple weeks: Vøid Contemplation Tactics started out as an email list accompanying the weekly Inter-Dimensional Music FM broadcast that I’ve been producing for Marfa Public Radio since 2010, and for WQRT Indianapolis since 2016. In the years since, the newsletter has become something more than that, as has the show. When ID Music first hit the Chihuahuan Desert airwaves in May 2010 it was a straightforward mix of classic New Age and contemporary ambient music. Actually we were going for sort of a “New Age morning zoo” thing, and it was incredibly fun.

After a few years my DJ partner – an avid New Age collector – left the show and I got bored rolling solo so I decided to harsh the mellow. It began with Sunn O))), Yellow Swans, and Hawkwind and I slowly introduced more and more heavy drone and “cosmic metal” and somehow I’ve managed to not completely alienate 100% of our listenership by adding trve death metal, grindcore, and crust punk. And just in case that wasn’t off-putting enough, there’s at least a few shows each year full of Live Dead. Plus slopped and chopped readings from anarchist, Zen, and Zen-ish texts, so now something more like “morning zoo meditation.”

I’m both grateful and amused that terrestrial radio stations in states with extremely conservative governments continue to boost this signal! Thus the tagline: “North America’s Most Understandably Unpopular, Unexpectedly Widely Distributed, and Remarkably Persistent Mix of Heavy Mellow, Kosmische Slop, and Void Contemplation Tactics.”

Because I’m mixing the show live-to-FLAC here at the home studio – sorry to be annoying but these are blended mixes made with non-streaming files that I buy from artists, not playlists of music that I rent from Swedish arms traffickers – I’ll sometimes give myself a break from losing my mind trying to beat-match Luke Stewart and Cloud Rat with Constance Demby and Keith Hudson. There are still plenty of shows where the soothing aquarium sounds are disrupted by death metal about ecstatic dismemberment, but it’s also nice to take it easy with a Pure Flow mostly-ambient set or one of our rowdy 90% metal Impure Flow sessions.

Like many Impure Flows, this mix from January 26, 2024 includes the voice of Lama Rod Owens, a self-described Black Buddhist Southern Queen, and the author of Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger. It’s language about sitting with difficult emotions, as heard on a 2021 episode of Action for Happiness, a series of videos “relating to happiness and wellbeing.”

“All of our difficult emotions are teaching us,” he says …

They're actually full of a lot of data. If we have this tendency to push these difficult emotions away we're losing teaching, we're losing wisdom. And so, of course, my deepest belief is that everything has to be embraced. The light and the darkness. We have to understand that difficult emotions are really based upon how we're relating to them. We struggle with certain things and the things that we struggle with we just label: dark, difficult. When in fact these difficult experiences are trying to teach us hopelessness, or sadness.

They're very draining emotional energies. But in hopelessness, in despair, I think they're teaching us how to live with much more open heartedness. They're teaching us to understand that we're not the only ones in the world who are experiencing really difficult emotions. And that opens the door to compassion.

You can catch Inter-Dimensional Music in the wild each weekend on Marfa Public Radio and WQRT Indianapolis. Ten of the best and most recent episodes are streaming in the Mixcloud archive, and the last year or two of broadcasts are available to download for offline listening as 320kbps MP3s: Look for links in the show notes. And there’s 218 classic broadcasts in the 2017-2022 Mixcloud archive that I was using before Mixcloud ended their infinite storage option. If there’s still something you want and can’t find in the Bandcamp library, let me know and I’ll hook you up.

Thank you as always for listening online, tuning in to the FM broadcast, lurking or subscribing for free or subscribing for money, sharing this with your nice friends, hiding this from your jerk friends, or practicing self-care and smashing that unsubscribe button if we’re getting on your nerves.

xox
DC

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Inter-Dimensional Music 20240126
Impure Flow

stream | download

The hour-long mix begins with misanthropic feminist anti-fascist black metal (😍) from Marthe, less misanthropic but still very angry anti-fascist black metal from Bull of Apis Bull of Bronze, and a brief respite courtesy Omega Tribe, the most folksy and organical members of the Crass Records roster. From there we stay within the Crass extended universe as Aus-Rotten gets all the sweaty dread punks singing along with a live Flux of Pink Indians cover about public transportation, eventually sinking back into the murk with Gray Daturas’ Australian improvisational noise. To wind things up, vintage Swedish crust that sounds like Motörhead and contemporary Swedish crust that sounds like Metallica. And then some Metallica.

The program begins, and eventually comes to an end, with some of the most psychedelic dub known to humans, as channeled direct from the source by Creation Rebel & New Age Steppers. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed mixing, and if you do maybe you should invite me to DJ at your bar or dharma room?

artist – work

Creation Rebel & New Age Steppers - Eugenic Device
MARTHE - I Ride Alone
Yellow Eyes - The Ritual is Gone
Bull of Apis Bull of Bronze - Trophy
Omega Tribe - Freedom, Peace And Unity - 
Aus-Rotten - Tube Disasters (live)
Grey Daturas - Neuralgia
Anti Cimex - Rose
Martyrdöd - Nästa Syrien
Metallica - Jump In the Fire
Creation Rebel & New Age Steppers - Earthwire Line
Dharma: Lama Rod Owens

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1. Thank you and welcome!