Technological Retreat Greg Carr

This episode of Technological Retreat features mixes from three nights in November of 1988. Lots of varied sounds that go around in this hour. Tibetan Monks & Humpback Whales in dub – Stravinsky & The Marx Brothers & John Michael Jarre fight it out – Muhamad Ali battles Mr Tooth Decay in an alternate reality – more media manipulations and somewhat witty banter. Thanks for tuning in and checking it out.

This is the second episode in this set of 1-hour re-broadcasts. All of these sounds that you’ll be hearing were originally broadcast in October and November of 1988, somewhere in the middle of the night. During this period, I was making lots of background audio tapes of radios and TV flipping from channel to channel. Enjoying the static and fragmented dialogs along with pieces of popular mass media bouncing source to source. A lot of this was noise, sometimes very sweet noise, sometimes not. I would use these as sound beds, layering more and more into them, like a visual collage.

I’m here to announce more of the same! Beginning this Sunday at 4 pm, available online through KFAI’s “Irregular Audio (FA2)” stream will be the next series of one-hour Technological Retreat programs, featuring the audio sound collages from my 20th century radio program, that was broadcast from 1985 – 1989, and on between 1am – 6am on Sunday nights – Monday mornings.
Several years ago, I digitized over 100 cassettes of these shows and have been taking the sound collages or mixes, and putting them together in 1-hour presentations. 15 of these programs are available on KFAI’s website and on Spotify.

Sound collage is the live layering and mixing of different audio sources to create new pieces. Similar to the creation of a visual collage. Not an idea that I invented, but one I certainly played around with. My stuff never was sample based or a dance mix, more like a soundtrack for the subconscious. Radio & TV chatter, ambient city sounds and musical beds all mushed up. Now it’s called mash up.

Technological Retreat is available online through KFAI’s “Irregular Audio (FA2)” stream in conveniently sized travel packages, ready for your own personnel usage. Please listen Sunday at 4pm or at any time of your choosing through KFAI’s archive. I’m excited to be presenting these experimental radio programs through KFAI’s digital media stream.





 

And the sounds keep coming. Podcast number 15 contains 5 mixes from 3 nights – and that equals 15… Three summer nights from 1988 to be exact. Listening in to these old radio shows again has been enjoyable. I’m actually impressed with how contemporary these sound collages sound. Maybe the noise in this world is finally catching up to the way the world sounded like to me back then. Listen in for spacey ethereal feedbackery, crazed dialog and a completely over the top homage to William Shatner performed by Cap’n Caffeine himself, an irregular regular caller-in to the show if there ever was one.

 

Find the other episodes here.

Hello and thanks for tuning in. Podcast 14 contains 3 minutes from July 4th that didn’t fit in the last episode, and almost 56 minutes from August 22nd. It sounds like there was a lot going on up in the studio that night. Lots of little sounds making bigger sounds in these long mixes. Listening to these shows again has reminded me of that unhindered creative energy I felt and how much fun it was to do these shows live. I hope you are enjoying these as well.

Find the other episodes here.

Welcome to the Thirteenth Technological Retreat podcast. Thanks for staying tuned and coming back. The five mixes presented here are from July of 1988. The first two are from the fourth and the other three from a tape that just says July ’88. This episode is action packed and full of nuts: Angry self-help teachers, freaked-out religious fanatics in DUB, classical nightmares and helpful literary advice from Captain Caffeine, among other late-night tales.

Find the other episodes here.