The End of The Endless Library
Five years of the Inter-Dimensional Music Archive
Here at Cosmic Chambo Studio we are not great with keeping track of “time.” Years ago when I did Inter-Dimensional Music live on Marfa Public Radio on Sunday nights, I would usually miss the time change and cut in an hour early or an hour late when Daylight Savings hit. Almost every year in … May? I think? … we forget to commemorate Inter-Dimensional Music’s genesis on Marfa Public Radio in 2010. And after submitting our final 2022 episodes in advance to WQRT, Marfa Public Radio, and LOOKOUT FM in Los Angeles, I remembered that Inter-Dimensional Music’s inaugural transmission on WQRT Indianapolis happened on December 8, 2017. Happy five-year anniversary, I guess! Looking forward to celebrating 14ish-year-anniversary in May or April or June.
When ID Music debuted1 on WQRT, I decided to start archiving the shows online, since I was recording2 them at my home studio anyway. I liked Mixcloud because it offered endless storage for free users, and catered to DJs rather than Soundcloud’s hectic mix of original music and mixes.
As of December 2022, the endless storage option ended for free users3 like me. To their credit, Mixcloud is not un-publishing any of the 218 programs currently on offer at mixcloud.com/CosmicChambo. At least not yet: It’s another good reminder to back up your stuff and never assume that an external for-profit entity like Mixcloud, Twitter, or Instagram is going to keep your archive safe. The new Mixcloud setup allows for 10 published sessions, i.e. in order to add new programs I’d have to delete 208 old shows. Therefore the previous page is now the Official ID Music 2017-2022 Archive.
For new episodes in 2023, I invite you to follow along at mixcloud.com/InterDimensionalMusic. I’ll also re-post other Mixcloud shows4 that hit the sweet spot here on the home soundsystem. And newsletter heads will still have the option of downloading5 ID Music broadcast versions, instrumentals, and subscriber-exclusive mixes as 320kbps MP3 files for offline listening. You can dig into the private library here.
For the final two broadcasts of 2022 we broke the previously newsletter-only mix Smooth Jazz for Armagideon Times session into two parts, which aired at all the usual times on all the usual channels. Find the full unbroken two-hour mix in the newsletter archive here:
The new Inter-Dimensional Music library on Mixcloud starts off with two relatively easygoing Pure Flow6 sets from late December. Find setlists and links to stream or DL below. It’s not really a Best of 2022 mix, but it does feature some of my favorite music from the year. Including pseudo-organic bioluminescent noise from Leslie Keffer – under her own name, and in collaboration with Arvo Zylo as Blood Rhythms – that reminds me of Yellow Swans’ most colorfully psychedelic moments …
… and this collection of “deep jazz excursions with expansive synth passages and intimate piano turns” that “create a hypnotic, meditative and devotionally expressive suite that soothes, enriches and uplifts the soul” from Surya Botofasina with contributions from ID Music mainstay Carlos Niño:
We’ll also fall back on our favorite excerpt from Lewis Richmond as he restates the traditional Buddhist Three Marks of Existence:
Everything is connected.
Nothing lasts.
You are not alone.
Look for more coherent series in 2023 if that’s your thing, or just cruise along at your own pace, dipping in and out of the flow as you like. Maybe we’ll even get around to some kind of 2022 in review7 before the vernal equinox. Either way, it’s great to know that you’re all out there, even if you just passed through the room where someone's transistor radio was dialed into the right frequency on their lunch break.
2023 ‘til Infinity,
DC
ID Music 20221202 – EOY Pure Flow I
North America's Gnarliest Mix of hypnotic gut biome meditations and dubby ambience
For this first installment in our 2022 End of Year Pure Flow twofer, we return to the words of Zen teacher Lewis Richmond while immersing ourselves in a synaesthetic morass of hypnotic gut biome meditations, solitary cosmic minimalism, twinkling dubby ambience, excerpts from infinite sound baths, and other forms of contemplative improvisation.
Listen for sounds from Leslie Keffer, Revelators Sound System, Tom Skinner, Joe Rainey, and other. Our practice begins with an edit of the first installment in Keffer's BLOOD RHYTHMS series of collaborations with Arvo Zylo. It gets noisy about halfway through, but this is a mostly metal-free broadcast for those of you with allergies to the heavier side of the ID Music flow.
artist – work
Blood Rhythms - Horror Pilation 1A (edit)
Revelators Sound System - Grieving
Tom Skinner - The Day After Tomorrow
JJJJJerome Ellis - Fountain #3
Leslie Keffer - Tremble
Joe Rainey - d.m.ii
Al Cisneros - Akeldama
Tokio Ono - Memorandum
Blood Rhythms - Horror Pilation 2A (edit)
☸️ Lewis Richmond - The Authentic Life
ID Music 20221216 – EOY Pure Flow II
North America's Gnarliest Mix of gurgling corporeal weirdness
For this second installment in ID Music’s 2022 End of Year Pure Flow twofer, it's more gurgling corporeal weirdness from Leslie Keffer followed by 24 minutes of atmospheric ensemble purging, plus doom, death, and acoustic metal discourse regarding non-self, the spongy tissues that comprise our innermost physical being, and what our faces looked like before our parents were born.
Times are rough so we're sticking with the comfort of Lewis Richmond's revision of Buddhism's Three Marks of Existence.
artist – work
Blood Rhythms - Horror Pilation 3A (edit)
Tchornobog - The Vomiting Choir
Phobophilic - Individuation
Phobophilic - The Illusion of Self
Mike Scheidt - Marrow
YOB - Original Face
Blood Rhythms - Horror Pilation 3B (edit)
☸️ Lewis Richmond - The Authentic Life
If you know anyone who might find value or otherwise enjoy some aspect of Void Contemplation Tactics or Inter-Dimensional Music, please pass it along. It means a lot to me!
My reach is limited on social media, which I’m increasingly convinced is a good thing. As Dōgen's teacher told him, “You don't have to collect many people like clouds. Having many fake practitioners is inferior to having a few genuine practitioners. Choose a small number of true persons of the way and become friends with them.”
I credit Holly Somers, former WQRT station manager, with helping me improve the show as I was actively ramping up the metal content. I used to make flyers for each program with cut-and-pasted images of all the artists that I was playing. One day she made a joke about how unsurprising it was to see a mostly white/cis/het/dude/bro faces.
Going forward, I decided to use the usually unspoken rule “never all white, never all cis-men” as a behind-the-scenes organizing principle. It’s not something I crow about often: In the same way that “female-fronted” is not a genre of music, our FM radio art project is not a “diverse voices in metal, New Age, ambient, Indian ragas, cosmic jazz, drone, dub, and techno” show. And there are a few times I’ve broken the rule. But for the most part, it keeps me from getting lazy and only paying attention to the legions of artists that look like me, which is easy to do in the metal and ambient music environments.
It is a small detail but I am still delighted to be mixing the show live with all the requisite flubs and skrrrrt moments that go along with trying to beat match amorphous cosmic jazz with dissonant death metal time signatures here in the home studio/extra bedroom.
I upgraded to a Mixcloud Pro account a few years ago but it doesn’t really make sense unless the user is getting thousands – as opposed to dozens – of plays. The Pro user pays $15 month to offer subscriptions, of which they collect a small percentage after Mixcloud takes their cut and pays out royalties of some kind. I don’t know what kind of royalties the artists that I feature on the show are getting from Mixcloud. but I’m guessing it’s not substantial until we’re hitting at least triple digit plays.
Although the shared drive is filling up so older episodes may start to disappear. Feel free to hit me up if you’re after something and can’t find it elsewhere! Always happy to try and dig up track IDs too.
Pure Flow is sort of a catch-all term for when a coherent theme has not revealed itself. These are shows where we’re just wandering around and seeing what’s out there. For example I almost forgot about this Pure Flow session from the end of November that includes a truly righteous and head-noddable transmission of blood and fire from Konjur Collective:
Thank you for these great mixes - and especially for putting Leslie Keffer on my radar, very much My Zone at the moment.