Skip to content →

Category: podcasts

Calm Pills: Echoes in the Valley

Published March 5, 2024 by Warren Ellis

Once upon a time while wandering through ethereal realms of ambient music landscape, I encountered a label that embodies the essence of what I seek to share through my mixes: Echoes in the Valley. This label with its deep commitment to releasing music that blends ambient with the natural world, has always been a source of exquisite music that was featured on this podcast. I was also fortunate to discover several of my now favorite ambient artists through this label.

Listened this morning. Really nice.

Comments closed

Desert Oracle: The Typing Life

Published February 17, 2024 by Warren Ellis

Well here’s an episode that fits with the past couple of episodes, as your host Ken Layne dredges up some tales from too many decades as a writer & whatever else. We got our newspaper/podcaster pal Matt Welch on the line to talk about the turn-of-the-century sensation that got everybody very excited for a little while: Weblogs! It sort of became a long career for a lot of people, and many have never quite recovered. We’d like to think that we recovered just fine. (Back to the desert on our next episode, don’t worry.)

Listened to this while raking, digging and lopping trees. Very good.

Comments closed

Calm Pills: Antarctic Wastelands

Published February 11, 2024 by Warren Ellis

This was this morning’s podcast listening while outside.

In my series of mixes dedicated to phenomenal artists that continue to inspire this podcast, I present to you Hong Kong-based producer Ben Tatlow, the man behind Antarctic Wastelands project.

Drawing inspiration from an imaginary beautiful and desolate environment, Tatlow’s ambient compositions, aptly taglined as “soundtracks for wandering souls”, are characterized by luminous textures and depths that immerse you in a realm where tranquility intertwines with profound sense of introspection and awe.

With his two featured tracks in this mix as source of inspiration, I strove to seamlessly fuse soundscapes that transport you to abandoned, weather-beaten landscapes. Wander with me on this sonic journey. Let’s embrace both the vastness of space and the intimacy of solitude.

Comments closed

A Survey Of Shamanic Options

Published February 10, 2024 by Warren Ellis

This is one of my favourite Terence McKenna talks. I log it here because I sometimes lose it and want to track back to it.

During the 1980’s, before the birth of the Web, Terence McKenna’s workshops were just about the only source of information about psychedelics that reached the streets. While there was some information about psychoactive plants available in professional journals and university libraries, it took Terence to pull out this information and repackage it for the rest of us. In this June 1989 workshop, he does what he did best back then, give us a detailed inventory, continent by continent, of the psychoactive plants native to each area, along with a brief history of how humans interacted with them in the distant past.

Comments closed

Podcast List, September 2023

Published September 25, 2023 by Warren Ellis

If I’m lucky, then, other than the above noted, I’ve clipped out all the dead podcasts and these are all live and active.

Comments closed

Hypnagogue 391

Published September 25, 2023 by Warren Ellis

Okay, this one might start off a little strange, but we’re getting toward the bottom of the Holding Tanks and it’s getting time to reload ’em. Back half of this one is a trip to the library. You like the library, right? (There’s even one of those artists…) Off we go!

Download

The first piece is as woozy as I feel today, only nicer. (Beluga Brando, Become My Lungs, Become My Lungs, for future ref)

Comments closed

In Our Time: Solon The Lawgiver

Published September 24, 2023 by Warren Ellis

Listening to In Our Time (Solon the Lawgiver): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001k7wb

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Solon, who was elected archon or chief magistrate of Athens in 594 BC: some see him as the father of Athenian democracy. In the first years of the 6th century BC, the city state of Athens was in crisis. The lower orders of society were ravaged by debt, to the point where some were being forced into slavery. An oppressive law code mandated the death penalty for everything from murder to petty theft. There was a real danger that the city could fall into either tyranny or civil war. Solon instituted a programme of reforms that transformed Athens’ political and legal systems, its society and economy, so that later generations referred to him as Solon the Lawgiver. With Melissa Lane Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University Hans van Wees Grote Professor of Ancient History at University College London and William Allan Professor of Greek and McConnell Laing Tutorial Fellow in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at University College, University of Oxford Producer Luke Mulhall

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001k7wb

Comments closed