This is your cat. This is your cat on drugs.

Tell me this isn't an ad for ketamine.

This starts with a dog but ends up with cats in a psychedelic cosmos.

I love the feline face-melt here, when the cats get too high and start chasing imaginary mice.

until further notice

the weekly riding high podcast is suspended until further notice, while I do things like have a life. please don't go kathy bates on me.  be on the look-out for special mixes in the interim, followed by a podcast relaunch in the near future. yay. 

riding high podcast 1.06.09: glacial lakes

download mediafire (re-up)

download divshare

jonathan forgang and william rauscher reconvene as glacial lakes for 2009, sending you more echoey downtempo bliss, cooked with brazilian nuts and marinaded in dub, but this time beginning with a little AM radio muscle. as is the GL tradition, the real gems here are some exclusive jams borne on the backs of smooth grooves, which take flight under a glowing moon before finally leaving you face down on the beach at sunrise. you know, we just can't help ourselves - we try to stay on the shore, but when the oceanic birds of paradise begin to call, the synth solos and echo chambers come out and it's all over. 

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file under: balearic twilight, infinite smoothness, so bearded 

tracks:

doobie brothers - long train runnin' (gl edit)

kongas - tattoo woman

tim buckley - sweet surrender (gl edit)

glacial lakes - deep release (south beach demo)

henrik schwartz, ame and dixon  - D.P.O.M.B. (version 2)

glacial lakes - carla

michel hoeullebecq depresses the shit out of me

edu lobo - feira de santarem

caetano veloso - canto do povo de um lugar (gl epic edit)

glacial lakes - raindance

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as we're dealing with a lot of original material here, in lieu of track commentary, some things should be noted:

FIRST, don't bother trying to edit the doobie brothers sober. you're going to need one, maybe two brooklyn brown ales in you at least before you can even approach the doobies' wavelength. 

SECOND, if you screw up and accidentally record yourselves talking trash about contemporary european fiction while digitizing vinyl, leave it in. 

THIRD, if you're composing spacey shoreline tunes, don't restrict yourself to test-running them in your drab apartment in a frozen northeastern metropolis. in this case, jonathan personally went all the way to florida just so he could be absolutely certain that these new glacial lake jams are the real deal. he literally floated in a saltwater pool and listened to them coming out of speakers hidden in palm trees while babes walked by. scientific proof.  

ridin' high podcast 12.30.08: cavalier

download link

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to bring the year to a close and counteract the chill of last week's holiday disco darkness, cavalier presents thirty minutes of lullabic, syrupy-smooth grooves and heavy-petting edits, which bottoms out in the vocals of terry callier's 'you don't care' as they unspool down to 50bpms, disappearing into a black codeine abyss of infinite retardation. roll into the new year in breezy easy-lover style. 

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file under: deep repeat, chilling hard, jammy sinking

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tracks 

andreas vollenwieder - caverna magica

joni mitchell - passion play (unknown edit)

fleetwood mac - never goin' back again (tom croose edit)

the delegation - oh honey (gold code edit)

venus gang - love to fly

plastic bertrand - stop encore (ron hardy re-edit)

jurgen paape - so weit wie noch nie  

seth troxler - love never sleeps

terry callier - you don't care (cavalier mix)

1. vollenwieder is a German new-age wizard. He is also, along with Martin Denny, one of the occult forefathers of Quiet Village: Vollenwieder's "Steam Forest," from the same album as "Caverna Magica" is one of the backbones of the second half of QV's Silent Movie, that heavenly medley of maritime delight that feels like you're face down in the sand at sunrise. feel the drift.

2. I forgot who edited this. If it's you, write in and let us know. You should be proud. 

3. I got this on 7" from Phonica. 

4. If this isn't a blue-ribbon make-out on the couch with your girlfriend jam, then such a distinction is meaningless. It's also nicely kind of chaste. It sounds like you're smooching fully clothed with two feet on the floor. A warm-up, as it were, literally so. The edit is by gold code, which is the excellent blog where I found this. Very nice work.

5. this is from an insane compilation of prog-disco madness by Jean-Pierre Massiera, a David Alexrod/Joe Meek type, who has a rather incomprehensible discography full of amazing pseudonymic efforts - "Sex Convention" being only the best of many greats. Massiera's entire output can be found here. "Love to Fly" by the Venus Gang is officially up there with "Ridin' High" by Faze-O as a jam so saturated with funky erotic bliss, you can't re-edit it. It's already too high, it may never ever come down. 

6. Hardy edit! 

7. Acknowledged Kompakt classic. One of the most soulful dance tracks ever. Really. Guess what? it sounds just as good at about 100bpm. Vocals are sampled from "Vielleicht schon Morgen" by Daliah Lavi, a smoking hot Israeli singer. Here's the original: 

8. Soulful, minimal deep house, one of 2008's best tracks. Has that kind of moody, murky, elegant atmosphere that feels like Wong Kar-Wai at the disco. Put it next to Luomo and Superpitcher and that. 

9. The only words to this song are the title phrase, which confuse me. Either way I can think of interpreting them is weird. Either the You is Me, and I'm being told I don't care, which sounds slightly brainwashy, or they're being told to someone else who doesn't care, in which case, why would that be such a great thing as to warrant this exceptionally smoothed-out yacht jam? In any case, it sounds great slowed down, like really slow. I mean it. 

Ridin' High Podcast 12.23.08: Night Plane

just in time for christmas, it's the darkest ridin' high podcast yet, the soundtrack to fiercely frozen streets during the longest night of the year. featuring a new solo track by the singer from the knife, a special kanye remix, and for closers, a balearic cover of metallica. dark and shadowy, yes, but running the gamut from steel-edged midnight horror to smoothed-out twilight grooves.

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file under: moody machines and paranoid androids

download link

track list

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excellent swoon - dear scott

fever ray - if I had a heart

eno, moebelius & roedelius - the belldog

woolfy vs. projections - return of starlight (invisible conga people remix)

night plane - walls of stone

lawrence - miles

anthony rother - welcome to my laboratory

ssion - clown (glass candy remix)

kanye west - welcome to heartbreak (night plane remix)

nine inch nails - down in it

motor city drum ensemble - stripped down

killing joke - almost red

honey bane - guilty (jd twitch edit)

leda - endless race

tiedye - nothing else matters

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if i had a heart: a new solo track by the singer from the knife, singing the tin man's solitary 3am lament.

the belldog: one of my favorite eno vocals tracks, a collab with cluster. a haunting interlude about technology and transformation. because you see, there are two kinds of art, the kind that tells humanity about itself, and the kind that reminds humanity that it is actually at its core something other than itself, that the essence of the human is inhuman.

walls of stone: inspired by a late night trek through the financial district, with ghostly facades of financial institutions staring back at me. 

clown (glass candy remix): cool remix by johnny jewel, nicely italo with good vocal line. 

welcome to the heartbreak (night plane remix): my detroit version. every piece of art has two parts, it has itself, and it has that penumbra of possibilities around it that were never realized, but that glow like a halo. it's the dj's job to capture and engage with this halo, like those old photographs that claimed to capture a person's aura around them. in a good mix, the halos from two songs, when placed together, appear to be of matching colors. that's how I feel about placing kanye next to nin. In other words, if you think about it, 808's and Heartbreak = Pretty Hate Machine. enough said. the move from kanye's crying robot to trent's screech is really satisfying.

guilty (jd twitch edit): another of optimo's awesome punk edits. This is some more echoe-y postpunk with sexy girl gasps. 

endless race: much sought-after cosmic disco track by one of the dudes from tangerine dream. far-out twisting outer-space acid synth with ghostly girls riding high. the guys from bumrocks put this on their new el bum comp. 

nothing else matters: lars, james and crew set off towards the sun as it disappears over the ocean.

Ridin' High Podcast 12.16.08: Night Plane

download link

track list:

night plane - anatomy lessons

le pamplemousse - le spank

animal collective - my girls (np I need a leak mix)

la pena - A1 (white label)

sis - nesrib

vanity 6 - nasty girl

nite jewel - weak 4 me

booka shade - sweet lies (patrick baumel remix)

love & rockets - so alive

connie chase - get down

pulp - do you remember the first time? (np save a piece for me mix)

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1. me. plus khia screwed, I'll admit. plus some other stuff I'm not telling you what.

2. some disco jam.

3. the lyrics to this animal collective chorus could be a J.Lo song. I mean that in the best possible way. Does anyone know if animal collective has any songs about sex? Seems like most of their songs have this virginal innocence about them, in a beach boys way, in a prelapsian world prior to sexual difference. Could there some animal collective lover's rock? I doubt it. But I wish there could be because it would be awesome. Oh wait: "open up your open up your open up your throat." nevermind.

4. White label cuban-latin house put out by the same guys who are Einzelkind. They were raised in Cuba but emigrated to Frankfurt. The rule these days is, if you want to have a deep latin house track, it has to have the word 'pena' in the title.

5. some deep house with an infectious looped vocal sample.

6. is it cruel to bring this in for like a minute? that's kind of all I wanted to hear of it. the 'nesrib' sample reminded me of it for some reason. I don't like to drop random shit in too much, because then it sounds like girl talk or something.

7. i didn't mean to go 80s pop, it was nesrib's fault. Nite Jewel is cool, she's a lo-fi bedroom singer from LA who has stuff on Italians Do It Better. It sounds a bit like Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam but underwater. Or like if you took beach house-y narco-haze and applied it to 80s girl pop instead of 70s folk rock.

8. this booka shade remix is seriously the business. It has a wonderfully oscillating tightly-delayed synth, really abstract for a while, and then it plunges into full new order gloom-pop, complete with those gorgeous tinny pads.

9. and it goes sick with nite jewel and 'so alive,' which is also my jam. I first heard it on the bus in tenth grade at some theater competition, after I made out with shanna dawson.

10. I don't know anything about this song.

11. there should be more house remixes of pulp. I have a specific person in mind every time I hear this song. (not you)

RH Podcast 12/09/08: Night Plane

ridin' high on 12/09/08: night plane

track list

night plane - here on earth

bombers - shake

the jackson sisters - i believe in miracles

downtown party network - days like these

lykke li - little bit (loving hands remix)

aeroplane - whispers (hercules & love affair remix)

runaway - just got paid

tantra - hills of kathmandu

jeanne shy - night dancer (beat broker dub)

del shannon - gemini (pilooski edit)

night plane vs. tweet vs. michael watts - turning red (oops oh my)

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this week, I ride high alone, delivering to you some choice deep disco bookended by two new cuts by myself, the first, some post-coital nuzzle disco, an edit of the outro to "you make your own heaven and hell right here on earth" by undisputed truth. The finale is a housed-up take on dj michael watts' chopped and screwed version of "oops oh my" by tweet. The lyrics to which remind us that there is little, if anything, sexy about male autoeroticism. Why is hearing about female self-stimulation something erotic while the male equivalent the stuff of bro-bonding conversation? Because female sexual arousal is fleeting and overwhelming, it seems to descend and inhabit the body like an electric phantom. Male arousal on the other hand is a given. No one wants to hear a song about a guy stroking it, because on its own it's a highly banal topic, like shaking hands or buying chewing gum. There seems to be little secret to it, whereas the womanly erotic mood, in my experience, is something more to be summoned with smoke signals and raindances. At least that's how I do it. 

As for the rest of the tracks, I should tell you that deep disco is like a woman whose affections I could never wholly extract myself from, no matter how low my grift might go. Even if I have flirtations or intense affairs with other styles of music, deep disco knows deep down, my love is forever. 

bombers - shake: I love lumbering basslines like this. Plus when the synths come in, it sounds like the enterprise is about to dock.

the jackson sisters - I believe in miracles: not the "I believe in miracles" song from 'Boogie Nights.' Thankfully. A serious deep one that I heard at Phillipe & Ed's birthday party last friday night. 

downtown party network - days like these: nice band name. A new one on Eskimo records that stays in a blissful loft classic vein.

lykke li - a little bit (loving hands remix): I've never heard lykke li but I heard she's popular with people who like things. Her voice reminds me of the chick on that "joe le taxi" soulwax remix, breathy and little kiddy.

aeroplane - whispers (hercules & love affair remix): here is a list of people who own in dance music right now: aeroplane, kathy diamond, and H&LA. Kathy's singing style is tailor-made for lush disco-house productions, and H&LA just crush whenever they show up doing their bonky chicago-house remix work. I fucking love this song.

runaway - just got paid: Wurst Edit from Jacques Renault and that other dude. when the girl vocal kicks in for the first time with "you got the magic touch.." it's like getting smacked in the face. 

tantra - hills of kathmandu: I'm into travel disco. The disco group Voyage is great for this, they have a whole album where every jam is going to a different country, and it's real goofy-exotic. Their jam "Souvenir" is on Metro Area's Fabric mix. This track from Tantra is just killer, stripped down freight-train disco, the kind where you understand why James Murphy first thought that he could make disco that would appeal to rock fans.

jeanne shy - night dancer (beat broker dub): From the new El Bum LP put out by the guys who run the Bumrocks site. Bumrocks completes a triumvirate along with Lovefingers and Robots in Heat of impeccably-curated crate-digger sites that ceaselessly turn up all manner of severely weird, compelling tunes. 

del shannon - gemini (pilooski edit): beautiful melody, smashing edit. I love that pilooski and the dirty crew focus way more on groovy soul tracks than on weirdo disco. Like the 'crawfish' edit, this has kind of a baseball stadium gary-glitter type stomp.  

Ridin' High Podcast 12/02/2008: Glacial Lakes

download - mediafire (re-up) 

RH podcast 12/02/2008: Glacial Lakes 

A special podcast this week, courtesy of Glacial Lakes, an edit team composed of myself and J Forgang. Except for the milton and eddie jams, all tracks are either new material or substantial remixes, composed in the last seven days. This cast spends its morning hours bathing in fresh dubbed-out grooves before ascending midday for some precarious peak-time climbing. 

please enjoy

track list:

grifter's cove (theme from glacial lakes)

mi ami - clearlight (GL mix)
super mama djombo - festival (GL Mix)

night plane - the foxhole

milton nascimento - os escravos de jo

quicksilver messenger service - wolf run (GL mix)

night plane - mantra

eddie gale - the coming of gwilu

Ridin' High Podcast

Now available:

The Ridin' High podcast. 20-30 minutes a week. Because new shit has come to light, man. Indie, electronic, psychotropic. Accessible to the public every monday night/tuesday morning. 

Ridin' High Nov. 24th / beats of no country 

Terence Trent D'Arby - Sign Your Name (Lee Perry Remix)

Babytalk - Chance (Hercules & Love Affair Remix)

Mi Ami  - African Rhythms

Azymuth - Avenida Das Manguieras

Minilogue - Mustafa (A1)

Animal Collective - Brother Sport

Voyage - Point Zero

Stimming - Una Pena

Spencer Parker - The Improvised Minotaur

Nina Simone - Sinnerman (Luciano Remix)

Edu Lobo - Vento Bravo

Honeymoon Killers - Decollage (Prins Thomas Mix)

Rainbow Arabia - Let Them Dance

Shocking Blue - Love Buzz

all edits by William

The Plane of Infinite Seduction

Terry Callier - You Don't Care

Jefferson Starship - Miracles

Faze-O - Ridin' High

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These tunes define a subgenre known at AC as "infinite smooth." 

I shared a demo track with my friend. Of the intro, which seemed to have captured most of her attention, she wrote it reminded her of "Less Than Zero," adding, "i mean the less than than zero comparison is a dreampoint for me. i dont really recall the movie or the soundtrack but it signifies 80's LA sex and easiness. i dont see tits shaking...i see sex at dawn." When I replied that I wish I could make a track that was just a seductive sex at dawn in the 80s intro for five minutes, she said "i wish the first 5 minutes of seduction lasted infinitely.."

Should you find yourself wanting to approximate such a condition, or target it as a sublime goal approached in endless hyperbolic ascent, I recommend starting with these three. 

1. Terry Callier - You Don't Care

Last weekend I went to London. In order to catch Villalobos playing at Fabric, my friend and I woke up quite early sunday morning and showed up at the club for some breakfast beats, Ricardo's set having begun at 530am and terminating sometime before noon. This was a really smart way to see him play, instead of staying up all night. Nonetheless I was thoroughly, deliriously exhausted come early evening, and needed a super-calm aural tonic to serve as nap soundtrack. I found Terry among my friend's records and quickly passed out, waking only during the last song, a gorgeous extended outro where ladies sing only 'you don't care...la la la la la" into the setting sun. 

2. Jefferson Starship - Miracles

I don't want to be weird but I'm giving you the short version here. I know that infinite smooth seems to scream 'extended mix' but trust me on this. The same friend who told me of her wish to stay in a warp of infinite seduction gave me this track several years ago, and it's one I treasure. Opulent, sensual, swirling, it sounds like a velvet-draped opium den. Although I'm troubled by the lyrics that go "If only you'd believe in miracles, so would I." Why does he need her to believe? 

3. Faze-O - Ridin' High

Who or what is the mysterious Faze-O? First of all, this track is the namesake of my monthly dj gig, which you can catch tonight at Savalas in Williamsburg. Because where else do you want to be, other than riding high? The song itself is some blissful slo-mo smooching funk that appears to be stuck on repeat. Really, I tried editing this song once. The point of editing a song is to make it more hypnotic and repetitive and emphasize the groove more. Except the original version is already so perfectly spaced-out and repetitive that there's nothing you can do it. 

Ridin' High @ Savalas: Thurs at 11pm

The temperature has dropped. Don't let your spirits go with it. Join us this thursday night at 11 for Ridin' High at Savalas, on Bedford between Grand and South 1st, where you can warm your sweet flesh to some afro-brazilian heat and then some disco-house fire. It's better than a coal-burning stove. 

Resident: Weekend Prince aka Billy Rauscher (Disco-House Fire)

Special Guest: Sex Panther aka Jonathan Forgang (Afro-Brazilian Heat)

Liquor Store Event: Michael Schmelling

A gentlemanly reading, featuring sophisticated beverages, at the Liquor Store, corner of White and West Broadway in Tribeca. Afterparty: Ridin' High @ Savalas in Brooklyn (duh)

U R Invited

11pm @ Savalas, Bedford btw Grand & S.1st 

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w/ Resident DJ Weekend Prince (Narcos Discos, Open Secret) - Weirdo Disco / Yacht Rock / Minimal Beats. Special Guest: DJ Bravestar spins rare Chopped & Screwed Avant-Progressive Dub Trance

 - With Halloween & Election night both looming, it's a special horror edition, aka a night of  ghosty beats and haunted house.

 - Weekend Prince controls to the fullness.

 - As always, this is our turf, NO Rasta takeovers.

- Enjoy!

Ridin' High @ Savalas, this Thursday

Featuring the Weekend Prince Soundsystem

Weekend Prince Podcast: Ridin' High #1

Weekend Prince - Ridin' High #1

Franco Battiato & Juri Camisasca - Himalaya

Track List:

Fox - The Juggler
Faze-O - Ridin' High
Cole Medina - Love You Inside Out
Lee Ritenour - The Countdown
Stroer - Don't Stay Till Breakfast
Vivian Vee - Alright
Patrick Cowley - Mind Warp (Remix)
Tussle - Rainbow Claw
African Suite - Grass
Trouble Funk - Trouble Funk Express
Franco Battiato & Juri Camisasca - Himalaya




The WP podcast series is now officially named "Ridin' High" after the cosmic love stonker by Faze-O, brought to my attention by Zade. It's one of the horniest, most stoned-out escapist psychedelic jams I've heard. It sounds like you will never have any problems again, because it's 3am and you are in another world. I tried to do an edit of it once, except that you can't edit it, because editing involves taking out the not-cool parts of a song and looping the cool parts more, and "Ridin' High" is already just perfectly cool parts looped forever.

The mix ends with a looped break from DC go-go masters Trouble Funk underpinning a weirdo 1975 T.Rex-y mystical pop track from Italy called "Himalaya" - it's compellingly, hypnotically goofy-glam enough, with great two word chorus "Himalayyyaa.....Katamandu!" with a general misty-mountain hippie vibe, that it's one of my recent favorite dug-up oddball tracks, so I present it to you in full as a bonus treat from my heart. Plus the album cover is an awesome iron death ship. Or a gladiator mask, I can't tell.