11: Too Long Til Morning

I’m back, on an ultralight laptop, listening to everything on a good pair of noise-cancelling earbuds. So if anything sounds a bit weird, blame the earbuds. Since I don’t have my PC, I don’t have the 1GB+ pool of music sitting on my desktop to choose from, so I’m slowly reclaiming stuff out of Gmail. The 4am will now, fingers crossed, happen a lot more often, with smaller programmes (and probably fewer notes — this one’s run longer than I intended already, damnit). Track listing:

Badman – “Modern Species” (4:19)

Kemper Norton – “The Unhappitants” (4:23)

Levi Weaver – “Of Bridges Burned” (3:32)

Satan’s Monk – Pro-Life (Demo – Alt) (1:22)

It’s Sunday night, black and stormy, so if this one’s a little bit low-key and doomed-sounding… you understand, right? Course you do. I mean, there’s a lot of it around. The haunted Americana and bone-clatter drums of “Modern Species,” the exhausted doomed-romantic rasp of Levi Weaver (from his new album “You Are Never Close To Home, You Are Never Far From Home”), the baby-eating underground choir recorded by Satan’s Monk… it’s one of those nights.

Here’s what Kemper says about his piece: “”The Unhappitants” is a track about the present bleak economic situation, with all of us (well, some of us) facing creditsqueeze, gas bill rise, bankbust and shopping ennui. It’s supposed to console us at this time, hence the harps. Its title comes from Joyce’s word for humanity in Finnegan’s Wake, in a desperate attempt to give the piece some intellectual gravitas.”

10: Peace And Soil

Yeah, I know, it’s been a month since the last one. A combination of work pressure and really not finding much music that seems to suggest a progression or sequence for a podcast. So have a short 4am that reeks of misery, loneliness, injury, abandonment and death.

It’s about time I used something from Aaron McMullan: wonderful voice, and a real writer. Burnt Earth’s other work has a strong early Human League/Depeche Mode influence, but “Locked Inside” is, to me, the one where they reach escape velocity; it’s bigger, more muscular, stomping and grinding sparks.

“Fierce The Fallow Foe” is just beautiful, a funereal garden.

Hope you find something here to enjoy.

Aaron McMullan – “Ode To Innocence” (5:09)

Burnt Earth – “Locked Inside” (5:14)

Poles Apart – Fierce The Fallow Foe (4:25)

The 4am needs music: If you want your music to be played on The 4am, email your 128kbps-plus mp3 files directly to warrenellis@gmail.com.

The 4am has been played more than 45000 times.

The 4am needs music: If you want your music to be played on The 4am, email your 128kbps-plus mp3 files directly to warrenellis@gmail.com, including your website address.

The 4am 8 has been listened to by 4428 people as I write this.

9: Poptometry

Opening with BLAMMOS’ recent single “How Do You Know?” We’re doing pop music this week, sort of, and BLAMMOS are definitely a pop band. Click through to their main website from the MySpace link below and you’ll find more free music, videos and other stuff.

“Between Sky And Sea” is from Dive Index’s current album, which in addition to this song features collaborations with the likes of Ian Masters (from Pale Saints). When, on “Between Sky And Sea,” vocalist Natalie Walker reaches the chorus, it’s like warm honey.

Onlooker’s “Cavalier” is the first track off their self-published collection, “Today I’m a Gunmaker,” which is due to hit the online record stores sometime this month. Brandon Whitesell of Onlooker says: “I imagine that this song is about chemical dependence, destroyed eco-systems and biological chaos… and an army of stuffed bears wearing gas-masks and marching through the rainy streets of downtown…” And he’s not wrong. If possibly a bit mad.

“Song In D” has one of those guitar sounds I just love, and Mock Orange are clearly moving towards reaching some Epic Pop Moment one day. Revel in hearing them a couple of years before their inexorable descent towards their Champagne Cheeseburger Cocaine Moment.

I am closing with a Cornish drunk’s idea of pop: Kemper Norton’s back. A statement on “Winterval”: “a slightly-too-late seasonal track about a moment of desperate realisation that those around you are having too much fun and that you will die alone one day.” Which, miserable as it is, is entirely more useful a description than my own “fucking brilliant, mate.”

See you next week, where I shall attempt to return to the disorienting noises and distant clanking sounds you’ve come to expect from The 4am.

BLAMMOS – “How Do You Know?” (3:49)

Dive Index – “Between Sky And Sea” (4:31)

Onlooker – “Cavalier” (5:12)

Mock Orange – “Song In D” (3:44)

Kemper Norton – “Winterval” (5:34)

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The 4am needs music: If you want your music to be played on The 4am, email your 128kbps-plus mp3 files directly to warrenellis@gmail.com.

8: Staging For Tomorrow

Be warned, there’s some long ones in here again.

Hate In The Box stick a used needle in that metallic vein of electro/goth/industrial/IDM that I think Deathboy once tagged as “futurepunk.” I like sawing guitars, hails of tinny breaks and girls singing about bad things. And I like opening up with something with a bit of pace.

Otto DeFaye’s “Murder One” has been hypnotising me for days. The bass thumps and the fog of guitars interact in bizarre ways, and do strange things to my chest. It fascinates me, and I find myself kind of wandering around inside of it. A great squalling beauty.

“Death Machine” is in demo state — thanks, Holoscene, because I love it. I’ve liked stuff by Holoscene before, but I find the raw condition of this distant, melancholy postrock study gives it a vital human skin and pulse. Holoscene say: “If you can think of a genre for it we would be most grateful. Using the term ‘chamber music for the end of civilisation’ is both a mouthful and pretty crap!”

I always liked the term “Transcendental Etudes” — an etude, or study, being a piece of music designed to hone and express virtuosity, and the Transcendental Etudes being twelve compositions by Liszt so ferociously, brain-incineratingly difficult to perform that, it was once said, probably only a dozen people alive on the planet at any one time are qualified to even attempt to play them. Which does Holoscene no good at all, but the datum amuses me, and we’re full-service entertainment here at warrenellis.com. Where was I?

NAVEL4EVE provides “The End Of A Planet” from her last EP, a collection of crookedly pretty, sinister and timecrossed antipop songs. The strange girl in the back of the club whom you know you really shouldn’t talk to, but that voice…

Got an email from Cory Brown from Absolutely Kosher Records, saying: “We just released the debut record by a trio from San Francisco called 60 Watt Kid (the record is self-titled). I attached an MP3 of “Ocsicnarf Nas” off the record because I thought you might like it. There’s also a video here.” And then he went on to discuss the peculiarities of his balls, concluding with: “When I started writing this, I never intended to discuss my balls. Sigh. It always comes back to my balls.” Therefore I had to play this rather wonderful piece of ten-dimensional rock-n’-roll broadcast from the same kind of ether inhabited by (for example) latterday Animal Collective. I mean, I would have played it anyway. But I’m worried that if I didn’t, I’d get treated to another treatise on the supernatural aspects of Cory’s scrote.

It’s New Year in a couple of days (as I write this), so ending with a drinking song fits. I have a terrible weakness for The Poxy Boggards. I know it’s wrong, I know I shouldn’t, but… I have to. I also put this at the end because some of you may listen to this at work, or at home with aged and infirm relatives in earshot, and not everyone will be enthralled by the choral bridge. But fuck it, make them listen anyway, because, in its wrong, awful and deeply uncool way, it is absolutely fucking glorious. Happy New Year.

– W

Hate in the Box – “eLECTRIC dOLLS” (3:05)

Otto DeFaye – “Murder One” (5:53)

Holoscene – “Death Machine” (4:04)

NAVEL4EVE – “The End Of A Planet” (3:45)

60 Watt Kid – “Ocsicnarf Nas” (8:25)

The Poxy Boggards – “Drink Til I Die” (3:40)

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7: Meditation In Ruined Temples

It’s 3am, not 4am, as I write this. But that’s close enough. It’s meditational noise tonight, with slight hints of whisky and cigarette smoke.

“Vilnius Colony” is a term found in my graphic novel TRANSMETROPOLITAN, but that’s not why I’m playing it. Texture says: “I’m heavily influenced by dubstep (Burial, Kode 9, Skream) and lo-fi guitar bands (Sebadoh, Pavement, Silver Jews), and am trying to find a way to fuse the two.”

“Helston Music Fair 1992″ is a new one from 4am regulars Kemper Norton, who have kindly offered me a CD but said “Don’t expect the luxurious packaging and gifts that those Ice Bird tarts have given you though… I happen to know that they keep a dosed and washed graphic designer chained in their bathroom.”

The Intelligence Community is but one of the outlets for the fevered brain of Thor Johnson, whom you can find doing lots of things, some legal, at http://www.thorrific.com. I appear to have lost the email from The Thing With The Stuff, whom I’m fairly sure is one of the aspects of Lauren Heckman.

And finally, Yoda’s House return with “Piamono,” which is, basically, the soundtrack for the end of the world.

I know this one’s another quiet one. I tend to go with the flow of the first track in the submissions pile that really gets to me. Next week I’ll make you listen to The Poxy Boggards instead. I hope you enjoy this. Good night.

(edit – the inline player might be freaking out a bit again. If it stalls out, best to just download it.)

Texture – “Vilnius Colony” (6:34)

Kemper Norton – Helston Music Fair 1992 (5:28)

The Intelligence Community – “Neutron Island BBQ” (4:06)

The Thing with the Stuff – Exhibition 24 (5:41)

Yoda’s House – Piamono (7:11)

The 4am needs music: If you want your music to be played on The 4am, email your 128kbps-plus mp3 files directly to warrenellis@gmail.com.

4am broadcasts have been listened to 34261 times.

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6: Nothing Was Ever Solved By Not Hitting Things Hard Enough

Opening with “My Crooked Toe” by Regular John, because, as Lou Reed once said, sometimes nothing beats two guitars, bass and drums. Plain old dirty guitar-pop, complete with Pixies-ish string torture and a false ending. Palate-cleansing, you know. This is off their new EP, which is called I HATE IT HERE, funnily enough. (If you never read my TRANSMETROPOLITAN, you won’t get it. Move along.)

New one by The Hungry Ghost. Features the sound of piano strings being struck by the legbone of your dead girlfriend in Hell. (Okay, it doesn’t. But that should be the explanation.)

I can offer no explanation for why I’m playing a track by The Urinal Mints. Obviously I should be stopped before they send me any more. But this, as clearly retarded as it is, is also glorious. My god, they even go acoustic around the 1.30 mark and turn it into a mass singalong. Brings tears to your eyes, it does.

I’m still kind of digesting “Shadow Codex.” It’s one of those musics that suggests an entire space and environment to me. There’s a few moments in there that seem to answer the age-old question, “what if Michael Nyman was forced to make a glitch album?” Okay, it might have only been me asking that. It’s from an upcoming compilation entitled EMERGING ORGANISMS on Tympanik Audio.

I swear, at the top of the second minute of “Cities Of The Red Night,” I can hear Show No Mercy actually travelling back in time. Seriously, by the end of it, Jimmy Page is crushing chords with a bit of mammoth tusk while a monkey waves his bits at a huge black monolith. This is from their new album DEATH IS MY RELIGION. It is, of course, a collection of chirpy pop ballads.

Regular John – “My Crooked Toe” (2:49)

The Hungry Ghost – “This Cold Abyss” (4:38)

The Urinal Mints – “I Wanna Smoke Crack With You” (2:05)

Phylum Sinter – “Shadow Codex” (4:10)

Show No Mercy – “Cities Of The Red Night” (2:01)

The 4am needs music: If you want your music to be played on The 4am, email your 128kbps-plus mp3 files directly to warrenellis@gmail.com.

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The podcast feed for The 4am is: http://warrenellis.com/?feed=podcast

5: There Aren’t Any Stars Out

It’s late-Sunday-night music, and be-gentle-it’s-Monday music. “Open Your Arms” is a comforting blanket of noise. “I’m Sorry, But This Is Goodbye” is chiming and evocative, to me at least, of a certain kind of reverie. “I Will Lay You Down” is the new one by Lanterns On The Lake, a tender autumnal thing. “Mississippi Nights” is a beautifully recorded piece of Americana, with all the space of the night in it.

“Song For Vara,” the longest song on the ‘cast, reminds me of many things. For me, it’s an alchemy of autumn nights spent by the radio in the 80s, poured out as postrock. If you’re nice and calm after that? “Delerium Tremont” is staggering drunk, all over the place and loving every minute. Go forth and be the same.

off’tan’discord – “Open Your Arms” (3:21)

Better Living Through Science – “I’m Sorry, But This Is Goodbye” (2:10)

Lanterns on the Lake – “I Will Lay You Down” (4:20)

Previously Missing – “Mississippi Nights” (4:18)

Shortwave Dahlia – “Song For Vara” (6:47)

The Perennials – “Delerium Tremont” (4:29)

The 4am needs music: If you want your music to be played on The 4am, email your 128kbps-plus mp3 files directly to warrenellis@gmail.com.

If you enjoyed The 4am, please spread the word, linking back to this post.

The 4am needs music: If you want your music to be played on The 4am, email your 128kbps-plus mp3 files directly to warrenellis@gmail.com. The last episode has been played 13000 times.

4: Nights Draw In

Apparently the clocks go back at the weekend. Or is it forward? I forget. I barely get to see more than three hours’ daylight as it is. “Heaven Is A Dark Place” reeks of the night, of urban nights, loping and shadowed. I’m in that kind of mood, where the knifefight-guitars of “Milk Road” fit right in.

Harlot insist that “Harlot” is pronounced “har-low.” Harlot are miserable gits. They only sound happy because they’re thinking about horrible things happening to other people. AWAKE are, if you like, evil shoegaze. They’re the people who fucked shoegaze in the night, puked blood in shoegaze’s toilet, made a shank in shoegaze’s bathroom and cut shoegaze’s boyfriend, and then left before dawn with all shoegaze’s money. There’s just something sleazy about the sound of “Whattanight” that you rarely hear in the field.

“The Bitter Dark” is the second and last piece that Cornish rural-drunktronic magician Kemper Norton gave me to play. Play late at night, with the lights out.

The Hungry Ghost – “Heaven Is A Dark Place” (3:51)

Poetry In A Machine Age – “Milk Road” (1:39)

Harlot – “Drown Me” (2:46)

AWAKE – “Whattanight” (5:56)

Kemper Norton – “The Bitter Dark” (2:56)

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3: That Man Has A Peculiar Walk

“Black Fly” fascinates me because it’s hard to pin down what it is from moment to moment — a sort of Industrial Prog Worldpop. “Pray For Me My Prey” is just fucking peculiar, as I’ve come to expect from anything involving JahFurry, New York City’s favourite freakscene facilitator. “Kletka ot Sniag” is all in Bulgarian, for reasons unknown to me, and is provided to me by Dorian from his current album BOLKA. It has a sort of epic bleakness to it.

“Hayride To Hell”… yeah. It’s a perfectly structured little pop song, but it’s also… Wrong. The Miracles Of God’s various claims to fame include having been run over by a drunk driver while on tour and playing the site of the world’s biggest urinal.

I’ve mentioned Kemper Norton on the site before, and I’m honoured to have been given “Denaissance” to play on the 4am. “Slurtronic folk collective” is how the sound’s been described, and, while I don’t get the folk element so much, you’ve got to love the word “slurtronic,” right? I know nothing about Jethro Furvert beyond the fact that his name is apparently Jethro Furvert. Which may well be enough.

Tribal Machine – “Black Fly” (4:09)
JahFurry and Josh Sampson – “Pray For Me My Prey” (3:32)
Dorian Wood – “Kletka ot Sniag” (5:47)
The Miracles Of God – “Hayride To Hell” (2:36)
Kemper Norton – “Denaissance” (4:58)
Jethro Furvert – Comfortably Glum (4:18)

The 4am needs music: If you want your music to be played on The 4am, email your 128kbps-plus mp3 files directly to warrenellis@gmail.com.

As of 1.20am today, The 4am 2 had been listened to 5,584 times.

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2: Cirque Du Cold-And-Drunk

I always like opening with big drums, and Big Thaw have them. Big Thaw don’t have a website at present, but can apparently be contacted via StylesKilling.

This one’s basically stuck together with guitars and drums. “Hide and Seek” is drums up front and guitar behind, and “Everything Bounces” is the reverse — the latter’s Eighties powerpop probably sounding a bit incongruous, particularly next to the Jubilees’ murderpop. But I love that sparkling little guitar figure, and I love that the Stalking Horses get the word “centripetal” into a lyric, as well as the line “and all of the numbers collapse in my wake.” The Moon Knights are from Alaska. They are very depressed, as you might expect. And Oh No Boiling Acid… well, there’s lo-fi, and then there’s recording in an empty oil drum in a ditch in the middle of the night while a crying hobo masturbates over it. Reminiscent of East River Pipe. I actually don’t mind that I can’t really make out what he’s singing. The whole thing comes together as simply The Sound Of The Doomed. Which makes sense to me, given that it’s Monday.

Big Thaw – “Blue-Devil Factory” (3:04)
The Jubilees – “Hide And Seek” (2:34)
The Stalking Horses – “Everything Bounces” (4:02)
The Moon Knights – “Ghost Horizon” (2:12)
Oh No Boiling Acid – “Still” (5:36)

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As I write this, 3605 people have listened to the last one.

If you want your music to be played on The 4am, email your 128kbps-plus mp3 files directly to warrenellis@gmail.com.

Last week’s the4am is here.

1: It’s Too Quiet

So I’m podcasting again, after a false start earlier in the year (the hosting failed me on that one). And I’m podcasting new music by new bands and musicians, because that’s what I love.

I have a terrible habit of assembling these things with an ear to tempo. I downloaded sixty songs out of the 200 or so I’ve already been sent, just to start sorting, and pulled the ones I immediately liked from the big folder to the small one marked 4am-1, and then dropped that one into WinAmp… and it just so happened that most of the first submissions I liked were the quiet ones. So this first edition is a gentle one, for fragile Monday morning minds. Don’t assume that future editions will be as subdued.

Brent Wilcox has been around for longer than he’d want me to say. He is, of course, Googleable. I’m hoping he’ll send more of these electronic sculptures. The big piece in the middle is a sort of thumping, organic postrock: like Animal Collective (or, more accurately but obscurely, Kemialliset Ystavat) doing Godspeed! You Black Emperor. Which is why it’s eight minutes long. I personally cannot get enough of this hideous clanging noise, and framing it with the autumnal strings of the Lanterns and the guitar reverie of the Vulcans is probably some kind of crime. Kendra Morris is evening balm.

Like I say: a gentle start.

Brent Wilcox – “Sound Sculpture 1″ (0:47)
Lanterns on the Lake – “This Year” (2:26)
Yoda’s House – “Wraith Rite” (7:56)
Lonely Vulcans – “Oh The Stars” (1:27)
Kendra Morris – “Teeth And Bones” (2:53)

If you enjoyed The 4am, please spread the word, linking back to this post.

If you want your music to be played on The 4am, email your 128kbps-plus mp3 files directly to warrenellis@gmail.com.

I’m using the Podpress plug-in for the first time, anything could go wrong…