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Holler if you are visiting this blog by some haphazard result of surfing the internet, you should know that i am on air RIGHT NOW: wnyu.org . Playing Sunnybrook currently.

WHALE-WATCHING: Field Guides to the latest trend in band names/&& SLEEP WHALE MP3s

While I didn't play each and every one of these multitudinous new bands with 'whale' in the title, I sort of called this trend a couple weeks back on my second show.

[via Stereogum] Here is an alphabetized field guide to the ocean of new 'whale' bands: Letters A-O here, and the rest here.

Of these bands I'd like to introduce you to:

SLEEP WHALE

I played Sleep Whale on Thalassique on 10/4. Their whole album Houseboat is quintessential thalassic music so I feel obligated to direct your attention to it. From rain samples and slower, ambient tracks to upbeat pop songs where melodies make their way through hazy layered sounds, it's a good listen and I'll be playing them again in a month's time.

In the meantime check out these Sleep Whale Mp3s floating around the internet:

"Josh Likes Me" MP3
"Cotton Curls" MP3
"We Were Dripping" MP3 (as heard on Thalassique)

Bon week-end!
See you Sunday on WNYU.ORG.

IROQUOIS CREATION MYTH

"The world was formed on the back of a giant turtle. First Woman fell from the sky and lived with the help of the animals. She had one good grandson and one bad grandson from which stemmed the conflict of good and evil among humans."
Iroquois Creation Myth [mukto-mona]

PLAYLIST 10/11/09

Pumpkin Fish

Tonight's Thalassic Adventures were frightening and autumn-twinged to say the least. Too bad there's no fall leaves out at sea.

I played Best Coast's "Sun Was High (So Was I)" for the millionth time (third?) in my WNYU career... I love that song; then in rolled a whole roster of recent surf-twang garage/punk releases and some quality throwbacks like Hüsker Dü and Jesus & Mary Chain. Yay!

Jesus & Mary Chain

PLAYLIST

6:08 PM	Best Coast "Sun Was High (So Was I)" Sun Was High (So Was I) b/w That's The Way Boys Are 7" (Art Fag) CD [N]
6:08 PM	Black Tambourine "Throw Aggi Off The Bridge" Complete Recordings (Slumberland) CD
6:10 PM	Ten Kens "Y'all Come Back Now" Ten Kens (Fat Cat) CD 2008
6:18 PM	The King Khan & BBQ Show "Truth or Dare" Invisible Girl (In The Red) CD 2009 [N]
6:20 PM	Duane Eddy "Because They're Young" Twang Thang: Anthology (Rhino) CD 1993
6:22 PM	The Pastels "Crawl Babies" Truckload of Trouble (Seed) CD
6:25 PM	The Cure "Jumping Someone Else's Train" Boys Don't Cry (Elektra/WEA) CD 1980
6:36 PM	The Love Language "Lalita" S/T (Bladen County) CD
6:37 PM	Male Bonding "Pumpkin" Male Bonding/Old Blood/Grafitti Islands/Rapid Youth split 7" (Paradise Vending) CD
6:40 PM	The Mummies "Test Drive" Death By Unga Bunga!! (Estrus) CD
6:42 PM	Continental Divide "Golden Throat" Golden Throat EP CD
6:44 PM	The Sticks "On The Sea" Split w/Hands On Head (Upset The Rhythm) CD {will appear on their upcoming full-length in November 2009}
6:48 PM	Beta Band "Liquid Bird" Heroes To Zeros (Astralwerks) CD 2004
6:50 PM	Ganglians "Blood on the Sand" Captured Tracks 7" (Captured Tracks) CD {features Jarvis from BK darlings Woods}
7:01 PM	Christmas Island "Bed Island" Blackout Summer (Midheaven) CD {http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/water-scarcity-index}
7:06 PM	Ratatat "Tropicana" Classics (XL) CD
7:08 PM	The Troggs "With A Girl Like You" Wild Thing (Atco) CD 1966
7:10 PM	Brown Recluse "Contour and Context" Soft Skin EP (Slumberland) CD
7:20 PM	Campfires "Daytime TV" (self -released) CD
7:21 PM	TV Ghost "The Recluse" Cold Fish (In The Red) CD 2009 [N]
7:23 PM	Jesus & Mary Chain "Kill Surf City" Barbed Wire Kisses (Blanco y Negro Records) CD 1988
7:26 PM	Obits "Lillies In The Street" I Blame You (Sub Pop) CD
7:31 PM	The Hunches "Fall Drive" Exit Dreams (In The Red) CD
7:44 PM	Suckers "Out on the Water" Make Mine 7" (Make Mine Music) CD
7:45 PM	Husker Du "Pink Turns To Blue" Zen Arcade (SST) CD
7:48 PM	Wendy James "You Tell Me" I Came Here To Blow Minds CD
7:50 PM	Spectrals "Leave Me Be" Leave Me Be 7" (Captured Tracks) CD
7:58 PM	Thee Fair-Ohs "I'm A Woman I'm Your Wife" CD
7:59 PM	Graffiti Island "Demonic Cat" Split Cassette w/Pens, Male Bonding CD
8:00 PM	The Soft Hands "Harbor" Hours Pass By CD

I keep discovering new bands (new to existence, and new to me) that fit for Thalassique. If you think your band fits in and you want to send me your music go ahead! It's pier@wnyu.org.

Lookout: for next week I've got The Tempest in audio-book form.

[Pumpkin Fish photo courtesy of http://www.scottandjamie.com]

Grrl Groups

[above: the Shangri-Las]

This evening's Thalassique will pay tribute to the girl groups responsible for some of sound and shit that you hear from new lo fi bands each week. Sorry for the inarticulate phrasing... I kind of have the flu. Anyway, it will be a tribute SORT OF, because I will be playing other cool stuff too.

TUNE IN 6-8PM KTHX.
<3 Pier

LITERARY ADDENDUMS 9/27

The following were read on the 9/27 emission de Thalassique:

A selection from Moby Dick by Herman Melville:
"Like noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped through the sea; but only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean grew still more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves; seemed a noon-meadow, so serenely it spread. At length the breathless hunter came so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing, and continually set in a revolving ring of finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the vast, involved wrinkles of the slightly projecting head beyond. Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged waters, went the glistening white shadow from his broad, milky forehead, a musical rippling playfully accompanying the shade; and behind, the blue waters interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake; and on either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side. But these were broken again by the light toes of hundreds of gay fowl softly feathering the sea, alternate with their fitful flight; and like to some flag-staff rising from the painted hull of an argosy, the tall but shattered pole of a recent lance projected from the white whale's back; and at intervals one of the cloud of soft-toed fowls hovering, and to and fro skimming like a canopy over the fish, silently perched and rocked on this pole, the long tail feathers streaming like pennons...."

"Lobsters and crabs once lived together in harmony, and even interbred, in a remote crustacean colony off the coast of Labrador. Then, a horrible plague of displaced orca whales beset their waters, blocking out the sun with their ominous, circling presence. The crustaceans began to quarrel over food and mates, which led to a mass genocide of the Labrador crabs by the lobster clans. Thus the species is no more, but as fate would have it, the Northwestern Atlantic region is the prime hunting grounds for lobster fishermen to this day."
A Thalassique original fable

"A whale once decided to live among mammals so he swam into the harbor and climbed ashore. He was received cordially and began to walk around on his tail fins. So well-received was he that the mayor invited him to walk in the annual parade. So down 5th Avenue he strut, waving graciously with his flipper at the smiling crowds. The Washington Square arch was barely in sight before a harpoon flew suddenly through the air, through his skin, through his blubber and muscle tissue and pierced his heart. The sound of his massive flesh against the ground was drowned by the roar of the crowd, who descended upon him. Weeks later his remains were returned to the Atlantic, and the dissembling island of Manhattan had new oils, perfumes and scented candles for their one bedroom apartments in the sky."
A Thalassique original fable