curated radio show and i talk about covers.culture.design and things.

Sorry I missed December.

The first cvr rvw of 2025! The new year has brought me some interesting feelings, some new and some old, and there is a quality of the ground quickening beneath me, think the sands of time through an hourglass. I liberally imply, in its essence, that sand, will be the sole reduction/ theme of this weeks episode.

This weeks show actually centred more around sound design than it did covers, sand is better “felt” or heard than seen, I think.

This song, Stardance, comes off a compilation “Music from the Mudd Club New York City”. The Mudd Club was an NYC nightclub and arts venue that operated from 1978-83. It was a space for the up and coming post punk and no wave scene of New York to seek respite from the unilateral glamour of Studio 54. I’m not utterly convinced as to why this song made it on the show, but I have two guesses, the first is its cover, appeals to me like often nostalgic media does- even nostalgia I cannot access. Artwork that is simply just a document, I find so appealing because, without its use, the design has no immediate purpose, ie, you are not getting into the Mudd Club by showing them that. It looks like the ticket, Infact, for all intents and purposes, it is the ticket. The song has that really nice, “old” texture that songs of a similar quality and period often have, weakly vibrating and sandy.

The second reason, was that my username on the late computer game Club Penguin, was Stardance05. #notalgic I picked this name because I had been gifted an adopted dolphin (named Stardance) for Christmas. It is my dirty little secret that I used to dress my penguin up in a blue football jersey and go to the pizza parlour to pick up penguin chicks. I’d ask them back to my igloo and then just undress my penguin. It was quite innocent.

I want to talk about Severance- it played a part in informing this weeks selection- which staccatod a slight surrealism. With reference to recent films like Nosferatu and the Substance, I sense a wave of surreal expressionism beginning to eclipse our media. The obedience to detail in this show is immaculate, but it has to be. From the intro (an absolute masterpiece) to the sound design to the cinematography- the entire show rests on this conducive tension, a knifes edge. The constant threat of violence mirrors that of which we are subjected to in this psycho-thriller-capitalist world. With the threat of violence manufactured and exploiting our animal response, we are locked into a sense of urgency and the relief of completing a task, ultimately what we crave, to be released from these shackles, is right there in Severance, symbolised by their jarring and mysterious work. The set and costume design of this show hosts an intensity in its banal arrangements. The blinding white and colour blocking furthers the tension, sooooooo corporately off kilter.

For the love of disturbances, I had to bring back, what I now believe to be considered a classic, Disturbia. I want to use this addition to explain part of my process in selecting the media I do, and why I choose to talk about it in such a manner. As a creative person, I often feel I am contained by and within the confines of my perceptions- I exist out there and in here, and in between there is an invisible set of processes which shape and inform my narrative, my thoughts, how far they will go is decided by whatever the nature of my current limitations. Sometimes I am open, life flowing through me, blessed and a blessing, other times I am stuck, reduced to my propensity to be dumb and human. I decide to smoke too much weed and therefore I just forget 90% of what I experience. This is the important fact. That I can live both through and outwith my experience. That I can learn and reshape the constantly changing narrative of existence, thoughts and feelings. I was feeling a bit disturbed, if you are a reader of these show essays, you might find this to be quite common, my hardships are frequent, human, and dare I say, important. I try to keep doing and eventually, I learn. Disturbia. I’m identifying with it due to my current state of mind. I am whatever I am thinking at any given moment. It can creep up inside you and consume you, a disease of the mind it can control you.

Basically, I like every other human on earth employ my intuition a lot of the time, but I am entirely obsessed with defining the interaction of avenues whereupon the intuition derives itself from.

Whilst the show wasn’t really so much about nostalgia as it was about sand, the past is definitely threaded through and peeking in. This song means a lot to me. It is entirely associated with a trip to Italy with my school friends Sarah and Mia. Mia had went for a month long holiday and towards the end of it me and Sarah visited her for a long weekend. She was staying in Lake Como which is nice, but we were like 18/19, and so the scenery wasn’t cutting it, thus, choking for some boys and some alcohol and some excitement.

We were losing all hope of any real antics on our second evening, when a group of local boys planted themselves amongst our plastic seats on a small bar terrace. Nobody spoke good enough English but in these types of situations, lack of communication can lend itself to a sense of ease in socialising.

They told us, somehow, of their plan to go to a bar in the mountains and it was clear we were being invited. Mia and Sarah were understandably dubious but I trusted my gut and wouldn’t let them give up on this. We demanded to see some identification first of course, we aren’t stupid.

What followed was still the best night of my life to this day. It was a tiny little bar, with a hallways sized smoking area, at the top of a mountain bordering on Switzerland. The music was being played off of a laptop and speakers and sourced from YouTube, which was then hooked up to a projector. It acted like a sort of jukebox, where you could play any song you liked, given that it was the karaoke version of that song, so every one in the bar could involve themselves if they pleased. The cloakroom to this bar was a table with a pile of jackets and bags. It was all honour based. Patrons ranged from much older Italian/Swiss? men to people our age, to people that were fourteen.

At some point, I requested Heat Waves. We had been supplied with triple measure drinks all night, which we were flinging back, to the absolute astonishment of the Italians, who couldn’t fathom that we would head to the bar for a drink when the one we were holding still contained 1/4 of its liquid. We had a great fucking time, and it was May, and not particularly hot, but fuck it, of course, the Lake Como vibe was that of life changing hedonism.

I’m not sure where the association of this song and that of a “coming-of-age”, comes from, probably a movie or something, but it was just right and I had to play it.

This episode really had sweet fuck all in terms of discussion of design in its content. So sorry about that- I did at some point mention the film Rango, because it’s such a surreal masterpiece, and is Infact kinda sandy. Though it’s more of a dirt desert, really. I’m going to end this here because I don’t have anything more to say, I’ve been a little disturbed, not to repeat myself, so the show wasn’t great, but I’m still glad I get to select songs to play on the airwaves and have a couple thoughts about them in between. From now on, these essays will be appearing in advance to the shows. I’m not fucking about anymore, with that-

Something baaaaads about to happen. 😉