Going to Scotland tonight. Gonna see Actress tomorrow.

EXCAVATION SERIES 5 - ... Tapes 1
This is a really fascinating project. It's a set of recordings made from Indian radio in the 90s by Phong Tran. He goes into detail in the inlay on what each recording is. It features a variety of artists (and I mean that literally here) on different forms of the veena instrument, as well as news reports and interviews. The detail provided is so thorough compared to many such archival releases, so that's to be commended.

Space Jam - Early Morning / Late Afternoon
The lovely Stephanie Neptune is behind the second contribution to the Styles Upon Styles mix tape series. She has a weekly morning show with Kroba on NYC's Lot Radio, which is notable if only for their charming booth pics (like this one for example). This is a real mix of two sides, with Early Morning offering up soothing jams and blissful tones (Dozzy plays Bee Mask, for example). Late Afternoon kicks things into sunny BBQ territory, fun 80s rnb/funk jams moving into bright classic house sounds.

The Blue Tapes House Band - vol. 2: C∞
Another "project". Dave from Blue Tapes invited a bunch of artists to create short tape loops, which would then be spooled together and used to make something new and interesting. A doomed process, some of the tape players refused to work and many of the loops were destroyed. Dave did manage to fashion something from what he had, however, and this is the result. It's fluid and murky and quite confusing, but still engaging and lovely in its own strange way. 

VA - Sonic Little Cat - Experimental Music For Children
I will probably not play this for my son, because he doesn't have the attention span for this kind of thing yet, but I'll hang on to it until the time is right. It's full of music that's relaxing, intriguing, exciting and fun. Not just for kids! Very cool.

SoundCloud playlist

Manja Ristic - Zither, Gutter, Vase
Title says it all. It sounds great though. It's easy to write off conceptual art like this as being silly but it's also easy to say that it's more than the sum of its parts. I honestly, genuinely like this though. It's calm and tense, almost prefiguring an explosion.

Liew Niyomkarn - Medicine For A Nightmare
This is a long piece of moving water, insect song and hissing electronics from Thai composer Liew Niyomkarn. Hints of musical expression float in the distance, undermining any notion that one form of sonic art is more important than another.

Nina - Uvijek
An extremely special pair of mixes here from the peerless Nina, released on tape by
J S M Ë. I missed this release but caught the SoundCloud posting thanks to the always on it Tony Poland. If you've listened to her mixes before, the sounds should be familiar - dank creaks, shrieks, horrendous soundscapes and such. Chilling and enlivening. 

intrinsic Ario
Ario is behind the Astral Industries label, which has put out some super ambient reissues this year. I've dipped in and out of this mix at different points and each one is lovely, lush and hazy, hush and lazy.

Patricia Wolf - Prodding Memory
A track made from one single sample, played and replayed, effected and altered. Nice.

MG-Raconteur - The Clown's Pet Rock (A Lullaby)
This ties in with the music for kids up above. It's a lovely short synth lullaby. 

That's it for this week. I keep my inbox open all day in the hope of hearing back from some of you. Don't be afraid to share your thoughts - on Bandcloud, or life in general!