Difficult Listening Hour

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"I was walking along the Nakasendo way in Japan on holiday and had taken a breather one day in the small town of Nakatsugawa. It was a festival day to commemorate Princess Kazunomi who famously walked the road to her arranged marriage. In the town square were a multitude of young bands dressed like their heroes. All angst ridden and nervous at their imminent performances. On stage were 2 girls dressed in khaki trousers and pink t-shirts. One screaming out like a latter day Kate Bush and the other sending thumping bass lines over a Sony Vaio laptop which was triggering samples of techno percussion against classical Japanese flute and Koto phrases.

I was impressed. The songs reminded me of the wild exciting songs I used to hear as a teenager. "The Real Adventure" by Bill Nelson and "Big Electric Cat" Adrian Belew. The song wouldn't leave my head for the rest of the trip and it got me thinking. I'd used samples before as colour to my keyboard washes but never as the basis to a song.
On return I upgraded my studio and built up a library of samples from a multitude of genres from techno to classical, African to Middle Eastern, Jazz fusion to Opera. The result was a fair distance from my previous soft and easy listening so...." 

1.  Welcome to "Difficult Listening Hour" 1:30
"A title justly stolen from Laurie Anderson"

2. Opening Title sequence 4:22
"What you get when the Halle Orchestra plays songs by the Prodigy"

3. Psycho Space Jazz 4:26 
"This always reminds me of the title track from "I Advance Masked" by Fripp and Summers which I used to play as background to my gig guide as a DJ"

4. Totally Photogenic 4:38 
"A homage to Stanley Clarke and George Duke. Funky stuff"

5. Transcendental Cryogenia 4:41 
"As a musical place this is a train journey somewhere between Dusseldorf station and Transylvania"

6. RoboDervish 3:14 
"I'm sure Devo touring into the next century would've ended up sounding like this" 

7. Saffron & Banana Jam 3:34 
"This always reminded me of the "God of Small things" and the sounds and smells that just emanated from the pages"

8. One Micron Long & Weighs More than Saturn 3:34 
"I thought this sounded like the Human League when they were really cool (Marsh and Ware version) so this gets christened with the best lyric from their worst song at the time."

9. Sleepers Awaken 3:30 
"I thought this sounded like a bizarre Z-Cars theme when I first put it together and I still think that a 2001 version of the program should use this as its theme tune"

10. Qeshm Boat Song 4:34
"Musically this is somewhere between the Middle East and India, which is where Qeshm lies. This reminded me of Michael Palin's voyage across the Indian Ocean on a Dow. All of the voices are sampled and all in different languages but strangely sound like they were meant for one song"

11. Walk Around a Circular Key 5:00
"Circular Quay has got to be one of the real jewels of the planet and somehow this reminded me of walking around towards the Sydney Opera house"

12. Careful With That SynthAx 4:10
"Another track from the Kraftwerk/YMO end of the musical spectrum. I always thought a synthAxe was a cool sounding instrument 'til I tried playing one".

13. Beauty of the Dawn 3:46
"Its 5:30 a.m. and the sun is just emerging over the Ganges and people are gathering to start their day"

14. Khaki Bhangra 5:14
"One of the funniest sketches from "Goodness Gracious Me" was an over the top choreographed number a la "The Gap". This sounded like the perfect accompaniment"

15. Scuba Diver 4:54
"Was called "Glorious Pastorious" because of its bassline until I started adding some naughty samples. After that the little plastic scuba diver in Pedro Almodovar's "Tie Me Up, Tie me Down" came to mind"

16. Kurt's Reposte 4:06
"Kurt is (or was) the principle percussionist in the LSO and so impressed me that this track, which sounds like a contest between a techno percussionist and concert percussionist, just had to be named after him".

Written and produced by Joe Little in the Basement, St.Albans July -
November 2000

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