Radio Free Arcadia

0204 – First steps with Sinewives II

This episode collects a few of my first recordings with the second iteration of the Sinewives concept. Unlike the first, which moves largely of its own accord, this iteration is intended for more direct interaction, ultimately for live use. It is rudimentary at this point - 8 sinewave oscillators with pitches generated randomly based on scale, root, range and harmonicity - but with fully flexible fm routing between the 8 voices. My plan is to build some triggerability to allow for long evolving sequences, as well as parameters driven by location, weather, and - perhaps most importantly - current lunar state. More recordings forthcoming.

0203 – Sinewives at Unease

A collection of recordings made by my newest Max/MSP patch Sinewives, combined and mutated by my other patch, the Free Arcadia Transmitter. The world is burning, but we are aware of the emptiness inherent in all things. This too, shall pass. May all beings find and achieve happiness.

0202: Éliane

I first heard Éliane Radigue's work sometime shortly after I started my own journey into Tibetan Buddhism. I stumbled upon a reference to her "Songs of Milarepa" and suddenly was captivated by her music. Shortly after, I found a cassette copy of Jetsun Mila [https://www.discogs.com/release/1015152-Eliane-Radigue-Jetsun-Mila] that doubled that captivation. It is a sublime, slowly moving piece, and was everything I loved about Coil's Time Machines but seemingly tilted specifically in my direction. I started slowly accumulating a few of her recordings, each more compelling to me than the last. She has become an enormous influence on my music, which I think is obvious to hear when you listen to my more drone-oriented work. Yesterday, when I found out she had passed, I was actually listening to Sinewives (my newest Max 9 project) very slowly feeding me with FM tones, and her influence on me was thrown into stark relief. In her memory, I post this episode of Radio Free Arcadia, which is made largely from recordings of the output of Sinewives using the Free Arcadia Broadcaster device. Upon listening back I think it's appropriate, if not coming close to her brilliance. In horror of death, I took to the mountains— Again and again I meditated on the uncertainty of the hour of death, Capturing the fortress of the deathless unending nature of mind [https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Nature_of_mind], Now all fear of death is over and done. -Milarepa May all beings be happy!

0201: Intersections I

After what must be more than two decades of attempting to properly learn Max/MSP, this holiday season I took some time out and made one more attempt. I'm very pleased to say that this time it appears to have clicked for me, and I've actually got a proper device I've been thinking about for some time. I'll go into details about the device as it continues to take shape, but it is beginning to fulfill my desires to have a machine that crawls my library of bits and pieces and re-contrextualizes and re-assembles them, creating a shifting stream of sound that can be guided or left to its own to continue churning out music on its own. A Radio Free Arcadia broadcaster and DJ, if you will. This first example was assembled from a few different sessions with the machine, including: * some explorations of the intersection of ambient and experimental music with traditional Irish music and the uilleann pipes; * explorations from a highly influential recording of a folk song in played on an acoustic guitar in DADGAD tuning; * a collection of my own ambient demos from 2023; * finally, I fed it with its own output. This device will continue to evolve, and I hope to start broadcasting live with it in the very near future. Don't forget to check out the first release on the new Offnominal imprint - Treces by Mail Order Mystics [https://mailordermystics.bandcamp.com/album/treces], who are myself and my very good friend and collaborator Ryan Dempsey. I suspect the next episode will involve the broadcaster being fed with that album.

E16 – The Year’s End

The year ends with a final episode of collected explorations. We will draw a close on this ‘Season’ of the podcast and with for you all to have as good of a closing of 2025 as possible, and a hope that 2026 sees some rays of light through the gloom. My sincerest thanks to all of you who have listened.