Idyllic Music Podcast | Trip Hop - Downtempo - Electronica

This week, we'll explore the belief that all that we know of God can just as easily be attributed to the sun. Of course, sun worship is as old as civilization and even in an Old Testament context, the sun can be just as punishing or life sustaining as God. So rather than worship, we'll marvel at the hope and happiness, love and warmth we get from the sun with help from Adam and Alma, Artemis, Blea...

This week, we'll welcome the cleansing power of fire. It's a concept so broad as to include ancient elements of Egyptian, Christian and Druid rituals as well modern ideas about the birth of the universe. On a personal level, Fire can lead either to brilliance or devastation. As Tennessee Williams noted "We all live in a house on fire".

This week, we'll look at abbreviations and acronyms. You see them everywhere from texts and license plates to government forms and love notes. They might be cute and clever or confusing and inscrutable but these brevis or shortenings have become the bane of writers and lovers of language everywhere. We'll hear from six artists, PDQ, who use them in name and title only. LOL. They are 2 percent, The...

This week, we'll breathlessly await a world of possibilities. The future is more open, blended and diverse than it was even a generation ago. That means there is more opportunity for progress and enlightenment even in the face of retrenchment. The tide is inevitably against the forces of the status quo. It's called progress and it's not limited to the macro. Everyone has the possibility of growth.

This week, we'll look at the unbearable sadness that marks the end of relationships. Whether the result of the discovery or admission of infidelity or the euphemism of 'growing apart', the cold numbness deep inside of those unaware and most pained lives on in a hundred ways. Its never about them as protested but the left behind deal in anger and recriminations, self-doubt and what-ifs. It is a sad...

This week, we'll try to fathom the hidden world of Esotericism. It's a fool's errand; really, because the point is certain things are kept by a narrow circle of the enlightened or initiated away from the rest of us. The most obvious are in the government or religious arena but the idea cascades down to much smaller things like school or office politics. Holding the torch whilst we search the catac...

This week, we'll look at the wars men wage with all its glory and tragedy. How something so awful can be a source of honor and how Napoleonic ego can lead us into horrific conflict. It's the story of mankind for better or worse and war's moral paradox largely defines the human race. Informing us in ways large and small are Kate Martin, Drifting In Silence, Jelle, Bill Laswell, CC Asia and Peter Ga...

This week, we'll lay back and take in Camus' invincible summer. In times of ambiguous environments, artificial seasons, climate controlled offices and 24 hour shopping malls, its nice to revel in the easy season. Summer. Its sprinklers, beaches, vacations and slower pace.

This week, we'll look at Promises and Lies. When Ali Campbell sang of the sorrow and pain from the serpent's song of a lovers deceptiveness, he also implied that acknowledging those lies led to hope and healing. Setting down that road this week are Sabian, Vela, Null Device, Wordless Poem and Lucky Cat.

This week, we'll marvel at the plant world. Turning the sun's energy into life from nutrients in the soil and atmosphere is so fundamental to our existence that it is hard to believe we would do anything to disrupt it. Taking us through the first trophic level are Rho, Hands Upon Black Earth, Analog Fury, Sitchin, and Seth Master.

This week, we'll look at tall tales. Stories and fables of exaggeration and entertainment some fantastic and others with morals. They often contain a morsal of truth spun out to the absurd across every culture but reaching a zenith in 19th century American folktales like Paul Bunyan, Brer Rabbit, Little Babaji and John Henry. Ixtlan, Erosops, Refrag. Sounda, Botany Bay and Capt. Beefheart.

This week, we'll look at migrations and aspirations. For millennia, people have moved from one place to another seeking better lives. Whether it was for better hunting, soil or jobs the migration was like rivers to the ocean, constant and inevitable. The sorrow of leaving behind the old and struggles to establish the new have marked every one of us. Immigrant and resident alike.

This week, we'll look at at the sweet and lowdown. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. Ellington knew it and Irving Mills codified it but many of today's singer-songwriters from Jack Johnson, John Mayer, Nora Jones and notably Amos Lee's "Sweet Pea" have taken it to heart. From it's pre-war origins, swing music's rhythmic style based on a triplet subdivision of the beat was what move...

This week we'll scan the skies of high altitude air travel. Nothing strikes the imagination like following contrails left behind a jet aircraft in the late afternoon sky. Who is on board? Where are they going? Are they beginning an adventure or heading home? Looking up can bring a touch of envy. Providing the lift for us this week are The Twombley Spiders, The Atomica Project, Ray Garrido, Metasta...

This week, we'll examine the drought. At any one time a goodly part of the world experiences Meteorological Drought with consequences measured in tens of thousands or even millions of lives. The images of drought, the cracked and barren soil, the dust clouds and snapshots of fishing boats stranded in a dry lake bed speak to the loneliness of emotional drought. So too do the 6 songs on this edition...

This week we'll look at chapters. Readers know how an author uses them to pace a story, setting up cliffhangers, jumping storylines and setting natural breaks at the end of a sitting so you can go to bed but chapters are even more apparent in our life stories. The titles of the 7 songs we'll hear on this episode of Idyllic Music simply sound like chapters and, perhaps, they are.

This week we'll look at life along the world's great rivers. Despite the fact that nearly every major inland city is located along side a major waterway, life down on the banks is often rough, hard scrabbled and often dangerous. McCarthy's Cornelius Suttree personifies the descent from sophisticated urban living to the hand to mouth life along the river. He's not alone.

This week, we'll celebrate Idyllic Music's 150th episode by looking forward. Fifty shows ago we offered up two CD ready mixes of the best vocal and instrumental tracks of the previous 100 programs. This time around we enter the new decade having kicked over the last and not looking back.

This week we'll look at beauty and terror as seen in the mythology of women. Stories though out history mostly told by men of power and tragedy, love and treachery featuring the likes of Aphrodite, Xi Shi, the Gorgon Medusa and Goddess Kali. These tales are endlessly fascinating yet rarely illuminating of the lives of actual women.

This week, we'll look at five artists making deeply layered dense and hypnotic electronica. In the early part of the decade Minimalism, glitch and even chiptunes were a reaction to what became a pretty predictable set of recordings featuring 4 chord progressions and pedestrian beats. Now finding a new mix of drama and subtlety are Ed Drury, Melorman, Northcape, Bitbasic and Wordless Poem.

This week we'll look at known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. For several weeks, half a dozen great songs have lingered on the desktop as I've looked for ways to include them on the show. They are by unknown, unsigned artists, well known indie bands and arena popular stars. All podsafe. This week I'll string them together and let you guess who they are. Film at 11.

This week, we'll look at the downcast and sorrowful. Baruch Spinoza defined sadness as the transfer of a person from a large perfection to a smaller one. All the songs on the show this week have an underlying sadness. They are small vignettes of personal loss and helplessness and yet they are not uncomfortable or painful. There is a soul cleansing purging quality that makes you feel raw and renewi...

This week, we'll look at the final day. It's something we all have in common. The fact that everyone of us will die. To some it's simply a transition from one world to another. While others see it as the moment our atoms are dispersed back into the universe. How we choose to approach the final day defines almost everything we do in all the days that precede it.

This week, we'll look at enormity and scale. Whether it's astrophysical or personal, size and distance is often difficult to gauge. Everyone has seen artist renderings of the solar system depicting the sun and planets but the scale of those drawing can't begin to reflect the actual distance between those satellites. The same is true with opinions and feelings. Often we feel so distant when in fact...

This week, we marvel at the July 20th 1969 landing on the moon. Although this achievement took place 40 years ago and great strides have been made is subsequent years on furthering our reach into the stars, It continues to awe and inspire. Celebrating with us this week are Canola Tenderfoot, the silk demise, Makaras Pen, Anonymous Horses and Gabriel.