24 May 2016 Black Moth Super Rainbow & Robert Rich

The first half of tonight's program will feature Black Moth Super Rainbow and their 2012 crowd-funded release, Cobra Juicy.
Black Moth Super Rainbow's music contains elements of psychedelia, folk, electronica, pop and rock. Their distinctive sound is characterized by analog electronic instruments including the vocoder, Rhodes piano and Novatron.[2]
A Graveface insert included inside the album Dandelion Gum describes them as such: "Deep in the woods of western Pennsylvania vocoders hum amongst the flowers and synths bubble under the leaf-strewn ground while flutes whistle in the wind and beats bounce to the soft drizzle of a warm acid rain. As the sun peeks out from between the clouds, the organic aural concoction of Black Moth Super Rainbow starts to glisten above the trees."
 During the second half of tonight's show, we will feature Robert Rich's latest release What We Left Behind.
Across four decades and over 40 albums, Robert Rich has helped define the genres of ambient music, dark-ambient, tribal and trance, yet his music remains hard to categorize. Part of his unique sound comes from using home-made acoustic and electronic instruments, microtonal harmonies, computer-based signal processing, chaotic systems and feedback networks. Rich began building his own analog synthesizers in 1976, when he was 13 years old, and later studied for a year at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).
 
I dreamt of the earth after us,
As mountains erode and time helps the cities crumble.
So easy to think that the earth revolves around us,
That after us, the planet stops.
We who can change the weather.

When we make our world so inhospitable we can’t survive,
Life crawls blindly forward,
Consciousness revives, organisms organize.
Cells of the earth join together to create new minds.

Small lives build new worlds,
Cast a net across the surface and through layers below,
Constant construction, destruction, erosion, rebuilding.
After us, on a scaffolding of rust and ashes, salt and sand,

Digesting through it, stumbling numbly,
Vagabond life picks through the detritus and continues unconcerned.
Profligate Earth pays no mind to the foibles of her creation.
She scatters choices for those who can still choose.
  
Recorded 2014-2016 by Robert Rich at Soundscape, Mountain View CA.
Mixed and mastered by Robert Rich at Soundscape in 2016.
Sonic additions by Forrest Fang (2016) on #8 and #9.
Abstractions of Chari Chuang on #1.
All crows unofficially non-union and paid peanuts.
Instruments: prepared piano, Haken Continuum, PVC flutes, lap steel guitar, percussion, DSI Prophet 12 and 6, Korg Wavestation and M3, eowave Resonator, MOTM and Eurorack modulars.
Thanks for assistance from Paul Schreiber, Dave Smith Instruments, Ed & Lippold at Haken, Chuck at Noise Bug, Old Crow, Andrew at 2C, Izotope, STG, Audio Damage and so many others, plus of course Dixie and all of you who listen.

Cover art by Romanie Sanchez (www.romanie.net)
Design by John Bergin