Idyllic Music Podcast | Trip Hop - Downtempo - Electronica

This week, we’ll listen to The City at Night. From the time the sunsets until dawn, the city changes neighborhood by neighborhood, from glittering to gritty, from evening to the early morning it sound different, somehow more distant than daytime.

This week we’ll hear from seven artists who are not what they seem. Not entirely anyway. We make assumptions and have expectations that are not always met at first blush. Like the name of a band or the music from a particular place.

This week we’ll lay out a spread of Cheesy Beats and Firecrackers. Embracing the schmaltz and finding our inner groove. It's cinematic music with modern beats nostalgic for camp Hollywood tropes and tv variety shows but ultimately it all leads back to Walter Wanderley’s elevator classic ‘Summer Samba’.

This week we will reflect on how artificial intelligence is influencing music culture.  People's ability to learn from each other, from teacher to student, from mentor to novice, is how we build knowledge and transmit culture.

This week we take a look at the second generation of electronic music artists. Standing on the shoulders of giants like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and Wendy Carlos, a decade later these artists were marrying a dyi-punk ethos with the widespread availability of synths.

This week we will look at personal correspondence. Any private communication revealing private thoughts usually between just two people. It is often easier to put your true feelings down on paper. Shared thoughts of devotional love. Despair and hope of lovers on the edge. The loyalty of close friends and letters written with no intention of ever being sent.

This week, we will look at change beyond the tipping point. The “no going back.” Before and After. How we accept and adapt to our new situation will take every effort. Embracing a new future takes courage and a sense of practicality. Seeing it as a new morning requires faith and adaptability.

This week we’ll look at Anima Mundi or the ‘Soul of the World’. Thought to be a vital force that permeates the world, the Anima Mundi is believed to be the feminine creative power of God.

This week we will celebrate our Crystal or 15th anniversary of podcasting independent Downtempo Music and Artists. Looking back I am happy to report most continue to make music or have a presence on the web. We will hear from six artists from our freshman year who, 15 years later, are still going strong.

This week we’ll look at the luminescence of candles, of wax and tallow. Mostly used in celebrations and ceremonies these days, candles brought light to the darkness for early lives constrained by the rising and setting of the sun. It meant extra hours beyond daily work to gather, socialize and create. Candles lit the way and we followed.

This week we will focus on mind wandering. When your attention drifts from the task at hand. Most of us feel this mild disassociation routinely. When you feel a million miles away. While it can be distracting daydreaming can lead to more creativity through decoupling and self reflection. We will hear six tracks that exhibit some of this dreamlike quality including Red Wine Riots, Aphilas, Dreza, Eva Schlegel, Azoora and Just Banks.

This week it is Pastoral Beats. Warm gentle Electronica that evokes memories of carefree and less stressful times. It is music of comfort and consolation led by deceptively simple melodies over increasingly intricate rhythms. The arty side of chill-out where each has their own unique style of swing.

This week we will look at our tricky relationship with darkness and light. Light shows what is apparent and actual. We see things for what they transparently are but in the darkness all things are possible. It is where we keep our anxiety, fears and desires. It allows us to keep secrets. Darkness does not judge.

This week we will look at espionage. It is spies and spooks, coups and active measures. It is a shadowy world. All cloak-and-dagger. Carried out by those we will never know. Of the things that are supposed to stay secret. Aiding with the reconnaissance on this episode of Idyllic Music are Karmacoda, Hector Zarate, Frank Dorittke, Tommy Ptolemy, DTR, and the Policy Wonks.

This week, we look back at the golden age of online music distribution. For much of the past two decades netLabels and OMD communities have provided a safe and easy way for musicians to upload their songs for distribution via a Creative Commons copyright.

This week, we'll look at the ability to forgive. It's a mistake to think forgiveness is universal. While nearly everyone agrees the aggrieved and forgiven find the experience positive, not everyone is wired with the ability to move on from an insult. Research seems to suggest it could be genetic. Sharing a mixed of views on the subject are Dive Index, Fascinating Earthbound Objects, Soft and Furious, Rich Sudney and Down Review.

This week, we'll look to quiet the mind. It's a defense mechanism really as we try to cope with a world that has seemingly sped up beyond our capacity to keep up. The stress and anxiety it creates is often covered over by the cacaphony that is 21st century life.

This week, on the 200th episode of Idyllic Music, regular listeners of this podcast will find another best of mix unencumbered by the usual patter so that you can burn them directly to the blank CD of your choice. We have a podcast mp3 file of nearly 60 minutes worth of the best music featured over the past years.

This week, it's headphone electronica. Music created with the meticulous detail that only listening through headphones can reveal. It's electronica mixed, produced and, ultimately, consumed by people wearing headphones. It's created by indie musicians working with twenty first century tools to create, edit and sometimes perform their work. Headphone electronica isn't for dancing yet it can be danceable rather it is for focusing or letting your mind drift.

This week we'll examine a life at sea. Joseph Conrad wrote that "There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting and enslaving." More troubling is what lies beneath the swells and awful stirrings of what Melville called the "hidden soul beneath. Hoisting the main sail for us on the episode of Idyllic Music are Band of Mad Women, IOTA, MMPSUF, Sleepy Town Manufacture, beat.dowsing and Leon Somov.

This week, we'll listen for harmonics. We mostly think of harmonics as an element of music but there is a more fundamental physical quality underneath it all. Wave patterns are all around us. We know its how sound and light move and that changes in these wave can influence our perceptions and moods. Checking the frequency with us on this episode of Idyllic Music are Sleepy Koala, Garaz, Dlay, MindsEye, Cutside and DU3normal.

This week, we'll try a little empathy. The ability to understand and share another person's feelings, experiences and emotions. It is a power sorely missed these days. Research seem to suggest there is a genetic basis to empathy, that some individuals are more prone to perspective taking. Now would be a good time to step up in the face of intolerance.

This episode of Idyllic Music is brought to you by the number ten. It sits comfortably between nine and eleven, matches our fingers quite nicely and is the base for the decimal system nearly everyone uses every day.

This week, we'll look at the final season, the end of the cycle, of winters past and cold. It's a time many of us would like to hold up in bed for the duration, with it's shortened days and cold nights. Winter is a time for putting your head down and plowing ahead reassured by the certainty that this too shall pass. Our musical sweaters on this episode of Idyllic Music are Hungry Lucy, Winterstrand, Sara Grey, Mystral and Gorowski.

This week, we'll look at the effort it takes to pull yourself together after a relationship ends. Some seek sympathetic ears while other withdraw into solitude. We'll hear just what it takes from General Fuzz, Kognitif, BASIC, The Ganzfeld Effect, and Reflection.

This week, it's regrets and reconciliation. Regrets? I've had a few but by and large, I've moved on. It seems a measure of success by how little regret we take to our graves. The trick, of course, is in deciding how much of your personal past you are willing to overlook. Making that judgment on this episode of Idyllic Music are We came as Strangers, Surek, Vienna Ditto, Knoto, Zebrat, and Helicalin.

This week, we'll look at proximity and happenstance. The idea that just by being near another person or event can change the future for better or worse. Mostly the difference is unnoticable in the noise but sometimes you may just think you see a pattern.

This week we'll look at word salad with Peterloo Massacre, Broke for Free, Sweet Play, Daddy Scrabble, Northbound and Small Colin.

This week we'll try to imagine the ends of the universe. It's one way to restore some perspective while your world is spinning around you. The vast emptiness of space, its cold, hollow expanse is the fact that we ignore while conjuring up tales of Death Stars and Restaurants. Taking a more expansive view are Rukirek, Dive Index, Jagoa, Me Zion Dread and Strad.

This week, we'll look at recovery and contemplate the possibilities inherent in second chances. Do they bring new focus and opportunity or squandered through indecision and inertia. It is a dilemma facing those who have faced traumatic situations and survived. Is survival enough? Helping us sort it all out are Aris H, Garmisch, Nic Bommarito, Jazzafari, Citizen Crane, and Ishdub. Thanks for waiting.

This week we'll look at tipping points. The value of the parameter in which the set of equilibria abruptly change. Sometimes we are quite aware of these changes other times not but they occur in everything from climatology and economics to personal relationships. We'll hear from Minds Of Infinity, Karmacoda, Zoungla, Phone Booth Robbers and Max Lilja.

This week we'll look at episodic or semantic memory. Where we store past events and learned meanings long-term. Memories of place,time and sounds. Memories we can't actually have had but still resonate are considered genetic semantic memory possibly harboured in our DNA. Think about that the next time you find yourself doing something you have no experience with.

This week, we'll look at the Chronology of the universe. Don't blink because most of the important stuff happens between 10 to the 43rd seconds and 1 second after the Big Bang. From the planck epoch to Heat death some 10 to the 150+ years from now. Hurrying up and waiting on this episode of Idyllic Music are Tycho, Skeleton Trees, Arne Mulder, Artemis, Chad Lawrence and Dubsalon.

This week, we'll look at intimacy. The need for, the mechanics, complications and consequences of. William Butler Yeats lamented that The heart-revealing intimacy,That chooses right, and never finds a friend. Opening up for us on this episode of Idyllic Music is C85, Howard, Hayward, Frith and Laswell, Alma-me-gretta, The Orb, Smooth Gene-star and Saltillo

This week, we'll look at the illusion of permanence and the inevitably of change. The tricky thing about change is that it is often not even perceptible. Gradual and incremental, it often takes a change in perspective to see the change happening all around us. Pointing that out for us on this episode of Idyllic Music are Module, Canola Tenderfoot, Musetta, Scopes, Philip TBC and JIXJAX.

This week we look at emotional isolation. It seems the more we reach out the less we feel. It might be the continuing reliance on the intrawebs or fragmentation of society but increasingly many of us are alone and not by choice. Next time you are at a restaurant and see a couple glowing with the bluish tint of their separate mobile phones or simply sitting together but not talking, you'll understand what I mean.

This week, we'll look at loves first heartbreak. When young untested emotions are at their most potent and everything seems so damned important. As George Eliot so aptly put it. There is no despair so absolute as that which comes from the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and recovered hope.

This week, we'll head to the sub-continent for inspiration. In particular, Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, music, arts and science. While it's not unusual for ancient cultures to personify this manifestation of consciousness through art, Saraswati expands to include the sciences. We can all take as our Muse this expression of modern progress.

This week, we'll look at mirages. In particular the superior mirage known as Fata Morgana, named after the fairy shapeshifting half-sister of King Arthur. We come to rely on the normally stable optic perceptions that make up our daily experiences but now and again the physical world will throw you off. It's those moments that are the true reality of our existence.

This week's episode of Idyllic Music is brought to you by the number 3. It is, I believe, the most ubiquitous symbol man has created throughout history. From religion to physics and beyond, the number 3 is found everywhere. The atom is made up of 3 components. Almost all faiths have a core aspect containing 3 parts. Shakespere, Tolkien and a host of modern authors have found the trilogy or number 3 irresistible. All of this despite the overwhelming dominance of the number 2 in our own biology, 2 eyes, ears, arms and legs. What is it about that added digit?

This week, we'll explore the many paths to spiritual enlightenment. It might come in a journey, a ritual of repetition or a chemical. Each method is personal.

This week, we'll experience Epic Dreams. Dreams that are so compelling and so vivid the details remain with you for years. When you wake up from an Epic Dream, you feel that you have discovered something profound or amazing about yourself or about the world. They are the dreams shaped by Morpheus and dreamt by Siddhartha and Gilgamesh.

This week we will consider those times when things get wobbly. Not the early 20th century trade union but the feeling that things that once seemed solid and unchanging are now less so. They may be in politics and sexuality, personally or sonically. We will hear from 6 artists finding their footing in an unstable world. They are The National Pool, Auma, Metaharmoniks, Lovespirals, The Esoteric Gender and Korev.

This week we'll look at the Zeitgeist. This moment in time, our collective meme and the era of uncertainty. It's an era that portends the age of human technology while celebrating a kind of spirtitual nostalgia. On this episode of Idyllic Music we'll hear from seven artists reflecting "the spirit of the times". They are Esza Kaye, All India Radio, Andreia Dacal, Daybehavior, Aphone, Giyz and Curly Jefferson.

This week, we'll ponder the summer travel season. The world's a mighty big place filled with destinations that can be both beautiful and dangerous, often times in the same city. We'll hear from six artists with a musical itinerary stretching from Copenhagen to Christchurch, Calcutta to Brixton. Leading our tour on this edition of Idyllic Music are Jordan Reyne, Secret Archives of the Vatican, Tikki Masala, Project 5am, My Bubba and Mi and Chris Pettit.

This week we'll look at women and men and the equally compelling perspectives they bring to music. We have come a long way from days when gender roles were specific and restricting. Now we find even in parts of the world where traditional divisions between men and women remain, within the arts those walls are collapsing. Helping illustrated that on this episode of Idyllic Music are Endless Blue, Boleros En Femeni, Fuji Kureta, Babbaracos, The Crisis Project and Sarah Fimm.

This week, we'll consider the contemplative life most often associated with religious devotion. On this episode of Idyllic Music we'll focus instead on the secular. The conscious decision to notice things. The little details of life that we often skip right past. We get help from Orange Crush, Natalie Walker, Motionfield, Vitamins for You, Text Adventure and Asaguare.

This week, we'll look at deceptions and delusions and how the two often blend into the other in a sort of symbiotic fashion. It requires the need to believe and ultimately deceive. It is one of our most powerful tools in coping with emotional pain. Providing a bit of regression therapy for us on this episode of Idyllic Music are PlanetsCitizens, Naoned, Dave Gerard, Floating Spirits, Ovalys and AlikProject.

This week, we'll explore the search for self. Looking for the light that makes us strive for something better. It might be the agonizing reappraisal of one's efforts and motives over a lifetime or the search for enlightenment contained in so many faiths. Finding your true self is so daunting a project that many simply never try. We'll hear from six of the bold ones on this episode of Idyllic Music. They are Dr Freebs, Cling, Twin Muses, PiliPili, Merlune and Dub One!

This week, we'll explore the belief that all that we know of God can just as easily be attributed to the sun. Of course, sun worship is as old as civilization and even in an Old Testament context, the sun can be just as punishing or life sustaining as God. So rather than worship, we'll marvel at the hope and happiness, love and warmth we get from the sun with help from Adam and Alma, Artemis, Blear Moon, Massive Attack, SackJo22 and Sunspot and Sect23

This week, we'll welcome the cleansing power of fire. It's a concept so broad as to include ancient elements of Egyptian, Christian and Druid rituals as well modern ideas about the birth of the universe. On a personal level, Fire can lead either to brilliance or devastation. As Tennessee Williams noted "We all live in a house on fire".

This week, we'll look at abbreviations and acronyms. You see them everywhere from texts and license plates to government forms and love notes. They might be cute and clever or confusing and inscrutable but these brevis or shortenings have become the bane of writers and lovers of language everywhere. We'll hear from six artists, PDQ, who use them in name and title only. LOL. They are 2 percent, The Reverend Shortboy, WEED, Alien S, Alec Troniq and Rho.

This week, we'll look at the unbearable sadness that marks the end of relationships. Whether the result of the discovery or admission of infidelity or the euphemism of 'growing apart', the cold numbness deep inside of those unaware and most pained lives on in a hundred ways. Its never about them as protested but the left behind deal in anger and recriminations, self-doubt and what-ifs. It is a sadness that lessens over time but never heals. Seven heartbreaking tales are offered up this week by Delgarma, Garmisch, Cobrider, Billy Cote and Uniit Carruyo, Tumc, and Full source.

This week, we'll breathlessly await a world of possibilities. The future is more open, blended and diverse than it was even a generation ago. That means there is more opportunity for progress and enlightenment even in the face of retrenchment. The tide is inevitably against the forces of the status quo. It's called progress and it's not limited to the macro. Everyone has the possibility of growth.

This week, we'll try to fathom the hidden world of Esotericism. It's a fool's errand; really, because the point is certain things are kept by a narrow circle of the enlightened or initiated away from the rest of us. The most obvious are in the government or religious arena but the idea cascades down to much smaller things like school or office politics. Holding the torch whilst we search the catacombs are the x-structure, Tang Kai, Dive Index, Sister Overdrive, Sekotis and Secret Archives of the Vatican.

This week, we'll look at the wars men wage with all its glory and tragedy. How something so awful can be a source of honor and how Napoleonic ego can lead us into horrific conflict. It's the story of mankind for better or worse and war's moral paradox largely defines the human race. Informing us in ways large and small are Kate Martin, Drifting In Silence, Jelle, Bill Laswell, CC Asia and Peter Gabriel.

This week, we'll lay back and take in Camus' invincible summer. In times of ambiguous environments, artificial seasons, climate controlled offices and 24 hour shopping malls, its nice to revel in the easy season. Summer. Its sprinklers, beaches, vacations and slower pace.

This week, we'll look at Promises and Lies. When Ali Campbell sang of the sorrow and pain from the serpent's song of a lovers deceptiveness, he also implied that acknowledging those lies led to hope and healing. Setting down that road this week are Sabian, Vela, Null Device, Wordless Poem and Lucky Cat.

This week, we'll marvel at the plant world. Turning the sun's energy into life from nutrients in the soil and atmosphere is so fundamental to our existence that it is hard to believe we would do anything to disrupt it. Taking us through the first trophic level are Rho, Hands Upon Black Earth, Analog Fury, Sitchin, and Seth Master.

This week, we'll look at tall tales. Stories and fables of exaggeration and entertainment some fantastic and others with morals. They often contain a morsal of truth spun out to the absurd across every culture but reaching a zenith in 19th century American folktales like Paul Bunyan, Brer Rabbit, Little Babaji and John Henry. Ixtlan, Erosops, Refrag. Sounda, Botany Bay and Capt. Beefheart.

This week, we'll look at migrations and aspirations. For millennia, people have moved from one place to another seeking better lives. Whether it was for better hunting, soil or jobs the migration was like rivers to the ocean, constant and inevitable. The sorrow of leaving behind the old and struggles to establish the new have marked every one of us. Immigrant and resident alike.

This week, we'll look at at the sweet and lowdown. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. Ellington knew it and Irving Mills codified it but many of today's singer-songwriters from Jack Johnson, John Mayer, Nora Jones and notably Amos Lee's "Sweet Pea" have taken it to heart. From it's pre-war origins, swing music's rhythmic style based on a triplet subdivision of the beat was what moved hips out on the dance floor.

This week we'll scan the skies of high altitude air travel. Nothing strikes the imagination like following contrails left behind a jet aircraft in the late afternoon sky. Who is on board? Where are they going? Are they beginning an adventure or heading home? Looking up can bring a touch of envy. Providing the lift for us this week are The Twombley Spiders, The Atomica Project, Ray Garrido, Metastaz, Boneshaman and Innereyefull.

This week, we'll examine the drought. At any one time a goodly part of the world experiences Meteorological Drought with consequences measured in tens of thousands or even millions of lives. The images of drought, the cracked and barren soil, the dust clouds and snapshots of fishing boats stranded in a dry lake bed speak to the loneliness of emotional drought. So too do the 6 songs on this edition of Idyllic Music.

This week we'll look at chapters. Readers know how an author uses them to pace a story, setting up cliffhangers, jumping storylines and setting natural breaks at the end of a sitting so you can go to bed but chapters are even more apparent in our life stories. The titles of the 7 songs we'll hear on this episode of Idyllic Music simply sound like chapters and, perhaps, they are.

This week we'll look at life along the world's great rivers. Despite the fact that nearly every major inland city is located along side a major waterway, life down on the banks is often rough, hard scrabbled and often dangerous. McCarthy's Cornelius Suttree personifies the descent from sophisticated urban living to the hand to mouth life along the river. He's not alone.

This week, we'll celebrate Idyllic Music's 150th episode by looking forward. Fifty shows ago we offered up two CD ready mixes of the best vocal and instrumental tracks of the previous 100 programs. This time around we enter the new decade having kicked over the last and not looking back.

This week we'll look at beauty and terror as seen in the mythology of women. Stories though out history mostly told by men of power and tragedy, love and treachery featuring the likes of Aphrodite, Xi Shi, the Gorgon Medusa and Goddess Kali. These tales are endlessly fascinating yet rarely illuminating of the lives of actual women.

This week, we'll look at five artists making deeply layered dense and hypnotic electronica. In the early part of the decade Minimalism, glitch and even chiptunes were a reaction to what became a pretty predictable set of recordings featuring 4 chord progressions and pedestrian beats. Now finding a new mix of drama and subtlety are Ed Drury, Melorman, Northcape, Bitbasic and Wordless Poem.

This week we'll look at known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. For several weeks, half a dozen great songs have lingered on the desktop as I've looked for ways to include them on the show. They are by unknown, unsigned artists, well known indie bands and arena popular stars. All podsafe. This week I'll string them together and let you guess who they are. Film at 11.

This week, we'll look at the downcast and sorrowful. Baruch Spinoza defined sadness as the transfer of a person from a large perfection to a smaller one. All the songs on the show this week have an underlying sadness. They are small vignettes of personal loss and helplessness and yet they are not uncomfortable or painful. There is a soul cleansing purging quality that makes you feel raw and renewing.

This week, we'll look at the final day. It's something we all have in common. The fact that everyone of us will die. To some it's simply a transition from one world to another. While others see it as the moment our atoms are dispersed back into the universe. How we choose to approach the final day defines almost everything we do in all the days that precede it.

This week, we'll look at enormity and scale. Whether it's astrophysical or personal, size and distance is often difficult to gauge. Everyone has seen artist renderings of the solar system depicting the sun and planets but the scale of those drawing can't begin to reflect the actual distance between those satellites. The same is true with opinions and feelings. Often we feel so distant when in fact we share much more in common with each other than not. Other times not so much.

This week, we marvel at the July 20th 1969 landing on the moon. Although this achievement took place 40 years ago and great strides have been made is subsequent years on furthering our reach into the stars, It continues to awe and inspire. Celebrating with us this week are Canola Tenderfoot, the silk demise, Makaras Pen, Anonymous Horses and Gabriel.

This week, we'll examine the Phoenix. The Firebird, Feng-Huang, Ho-oo, Benu, or Yel. The myth of this self- rejuvenating bird cuts across almost every ancient culture often symbolizing death and rebirth. The Phoenix is said to consumed by fire every 500 years only to be reborn from its own ashes. Aphone, Eigenheimer, The Orientalist, Phour Trakk, Hands upon Black Earth and Ecovillage

This week, we'll look at Angels and derivations, warnings and votaries. These nine artists are unafraid the bare the unvarnished, emblazon their influences and balance the devilish with the angelic. Some of the tracks are complete others remain ideas to be fleshed out but all compel. We'll hear from J.S. Marti, Idyllic, Will Kriski, Tronic Koi, Scarlet Hideout, Half Past Sun, The Flavor Foundation, One Blue Nine and Jardin Solar.

This week, we'll look at the increasingly antiquated idea of old world versus new world especially in music and art. Cultures measured by millennia rather than centuries are borrowing and incorporating sounds and instruments in ways unthinkable in the past

This week, we'll look at the human tendency to put off until later what we could do today. It is the period of time between when we can exercise influence over events and that moment when they are decided for us. That fine line between free will and fate.

This week, it's world studies as we look at education and educators from around the world from ancient Greece to the local school down the street. The syllabus is wide open as we hear from Bangguru, Nobara Hayakawa, Artemis, Jikjax, Elam, PiliPili and Bruce McCosar.

This week, we'll look at memories and the way we twist them inside out sometimes to serve our own purposes. Looking back on this episode of Idyllic Music are 46 Bliss, Pierre the Moon, MoVox, Screenatorium, Classic SciFi and Catsauce.

This week, we'll look at the great American art form as it finds its way into the 21st century. Jazz continues to evolve in ways that are both striking and familiar. Just as Charlie Parker and Charlie Christian took popular music and stripped it to its core before radically making it their own, today's musicians are taking the cut and paste technology of hip hop and using it to disassemble, rearrange and rethink the process of improvisation.

This week, we'll look at solids. The two hardest things to grasp about them are that objects that appear to be solid are made up of molecules that are never actually in contact with each other and that because solids have thermal energy, their atoms vibrate. Firming up this concept for us are Mujaji, Proviant Audio, The Orb, DJ Limpet and Dr. Ektoplazmic.

This week, we'll look at the shortcomings and foibles of the post modern character. Not nearly the deadly sins but some common universal human weaknesses we all can recognize. Pointing them out to us on the episode of Idyllic Music are Band of Mad Women, Margareds, Mat's,Gosprom, Stockfinster and Line.

This week, we'll look at the unlikelihood of finding true love. Not that it doesn't happen all the time, it's just that's it's amazing that it happens at all. Bookstores are filled with attempting to explain how and why relationships succeed or fail. The odds of finding someone with whom you are truly compatible with is daunting. Taking the plunge anyway are Cris Tanzi, Prototype 68, CDK, The Reverent Shortboy, Steen Throtrup and iambic

This week, we'll look at the many aspects of melancholia. In particular, German Renaissance master Albrecht Durer engraving of the same name. We can linger over the many symbols of mathematics and alchemy portrayed in the work but ultimately it's all about how one feels. Expounding and deflecting for us this week are All India Radio, Plastik Joy, Matisse and Deeper Sublime, Eskazed, Blind Divine and Gate Zero

This week, we'll look at the life giving and restorative power of water. While water is the most abundant molecule on Earth's surface and nearly 60% of the human body is water, we often take for granted is enormous importance. Since all water is essentially the same, it is what is dissolved into it that accounts for the differences we consume whether our freshwater comes from deep in Lake Baikal or from the muddy Mississippi. And so the show is all about water. Drink up.

This week, we'll look at the need to move beyond our troubled pasts and embrace hope for the future. Each of these tracks evokes a specific moment particular to American political history. We'll hear from Downliners Sekt, Naoned, Sans Edge, Tryad and Silence.

This week, we'll look at the path to redemption. Waiting to hit bottom to know when to climb back up often ignores the notion that the journey may well be circular. Redeeming them selves for us this week at Owen, DigiTube, Argon 40, Vate, 33Canales and Babbaracos.

This week, we'll look at the mind expanding possiblities of travel. Whether global or microbiological, it the movement of bodies, objects and, ultimately, ideas, that allow us the benefits of progress. And so We'll hear from enLounge, Victoria Mosley and The Sublimes, Indidginus, Null Device and Electric Salmon.

This week, we'll look at a human weakness. Whether physical, emotional or spiritual, we all make blunders and mistakes. It's what we do afterward that counts. We'll hear from five artists who realize this and take the next step toward growth and healing. We'll begin with something new from Peach Stealing Monkeys.

This week, we'll look at what's underneath. Not necessarily inferior, lesser, or subordinate but from the unique perspective of looking up. Gazing upward are Dive Index, Alikproject, Under, Asa Zen Sei and Nenes.

This week, we'll take a look at idea that the visible world is pervaded by invisible forces or spirits, which affect the lives of the living. It's a belief that predates most mainstream religions and remains in many ways we may not immediately recognize. Much of today's electronic club music employs many techniques shared by shamanism. The beat, repetitive vocal samples and binaural beats. There is a reason we call it Trance.

This week, we'll look at Strange Overtones. It's not only the title of a new collaboration between modern music Giants, David Byrne and Brian Eno but also in a harmonic sense, it's a complex and intriguing musical tone. We'll hear from six artists who take this familiar but different approach to their sound. There is Dikital, Cling, Lesley Dodd, David Byrne and Brian Eno, J-CLX and Vincent Wood.

This week, we'll look at cosmetics or altering the appearance without affecting the body's structure or functions. It's by definition superficial but can change perceptions of oneself and others often for the better but not necessarily. Musical remixes are in essence cosmetics but so are tattoos and eyeliner. Setting the foundation for us are Pipo Pegoraro, Obedientbone, Mavro, ElodieO and Crystal Palace.

This week, we'll listen to the percussive side of World Music. Seven bands will add subtle electronics to the inherently primitive act of striking a note. Providing the variation for us are Sub Dub, Conduct Unbecoming, Fraud Fix, Lendi Vexer, DJ Diganta, Queenie and Siberian Newspaper.

This week, we'll look at the essential symbiosis of independent artist and podcaster. This mutualism is best put forward by an association of cooperative relationships. In particular, an Association of Music Podcasting. Visit myspace.com/musicpodcasters to learn how artists and podcasters can help each other in a world of tight play list and tighter labels. We'll hear from Anneke Laurent, Yimino, Gilo, Nihaya Tree and Annie Goliath.

This week, it's the many flavors of America's great art form. Jazz. For more than a century this style of music has refused strict categorization. From Bop to Rag, Funk to Swing the cool sounds of Jazz are always mixing with and attaching itself to other genres. Today the polyrhythms, syncopation, and blue notes blend seamlessly with electronic beats, bass and melody.

This week we'll try unlikely pairings. Nowhere are they more readily accepted than in music. When Joe Venuti's violin first played jazz, or Kraftwerk hit the top of the charts with computer music, listeners nodded and said "Yeah'. When Kate Bush brought the mystery of Eastern European harmonies to the west or the Beatles covered Little Richard new rock n' roll music, the world got a bit smaller, less separate and more inclusive.

This week, it's feedback and reverb, the mathematics of sound and physics of music. Looking into this super symmetry are Way, The Stringed Theory, postscript, Roll Film and Ronan Dec.