Popdose: Mix Six: “The (Last) Last Airbender”
Jack Feerick
· 1 year ago
Thanks, Ted. I should probably say something about the songs themselves, eh?
The ambient bits here include environmental sounds from the BBC sound effects library and One-Minute Vacation, chanting sampled from Yungchen Lhamo’s Tibet, Tibet (Real World), and a snippet of a long tamboura meditation by Thomas Ashley-Farrand.
Libana are a women’s world-music collective based in Cambridge, MA. Their presentation bears a heavy weight of second-wave feminist politics and New Age spirituality, but the music—traditional songs and chants, unearthed and newly-arranged—is direct, lively, and highly accessible.
In the 1990s, Rabbit Ears Media paired celebrity narrators with an eclectic array of composers, and turned them loose on some classic children’s books to create a series of animated videos and a public radio program. In the original Rabbit Ears Radio production, the Mark Isham music underscored a reading of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor and the Nightingale” by the actress Glenn Close.
The Lords of Percussion seem to have been a one-off group, appearing on one 1974 single. It’s obviously a product of the same cultural moment that gave us Carl Douglas, but with a tougher, funkier sound, probably due to the involvement of the late synth-pop oddball Mort Garson.
If you slept on either Eggstone or Cowboy Bebop, I feel bad for you. If you missed Hex, though, it’s hardly surprising. A turn-of-the-90s collaboration between Steve Kilbey from The Church and Game Theory’s Donnette Thayer, Hex went cassette-only, on the ill-fated Ryko Analogue label. Much of it sounds pretty dated and/or silly, but there’s some great, atmospheric dream-pop spread across their two releases.
I’m having a blast doing these mixes, by the way—it’s a great format for addressing personal and cultural moments as they go by, especially for people like me who tend to use mixtapes in lieu of keeping a diary; I hope to have the opportunity to do some more.
buffalochipz
· 1 year ago
Hex was not cassette-only as I have both Vast Halos and their earlier self-titled release on CD. Kinda boring stuff but I was a big Game Theory fan so I picked them up at a mall Camelot store.
Jack Feerick
· 1 year ago
Huh. I definitely have 'em on cassette, under the "Ryko Analogue" imprint. There was a bit of a foofaraw when Ryko Analogue started up in '88 or so — up 'til that point Ryko had been a CD-only label, and Analogue's material was supposed to be exclusively vinyl-and-cassette. Not sure what the point was supposed to be, except perhaps as a loss-leader.
Jack Feerick
· 1 year ago
And if you've never seen the show, get a taste by checking out this trailer on YouTube.
MarlboroTestMonkey7
· 1 year ago
This is the kind of thing that sets my mind on wandering mode. Great! The Quiet American link is excellent too. thanks!
onebrownjeff
· 1 year ago
I love this show. I've tried to get my eight year old daughter and five year old son into it to the bewildered protestations of my mother-in-law who once asked my why on Earth was I letting my children watch this odd show?
I told her that any program that both taught tolerance AND that there were somethings worth standing up and fighting for were rare and needed to be seen by my children. She looked at me like that classic RCA dog staring at the Victrola.
I then said that I cherish a show where sometimes the good guys stumble and do bad things AND that sometimes the villains do good things and maybe even find redemption. To me the Avatar shows that life isn't all packaged and pretty. Life is sometimes messy, the Avatar shows this wonderfully.
My mother-in-law still does not understand. Too Bad. I'll be both happy and sad to see these stories end. I'm still hoping that Aang & Katara are together in the end. And that Uncle Iroh shows up with an army of the White Lotus to once and for all put down the Fire Lord.
All Comments
The ambient bits here include environmental sounds from the BBC sound effects library and One-Minute Vacation, chanting sampled from Yungchen Lhamo’s Tibet, Tibet (Real World), and a snippet of a long tamboura meditation by Thomas Ashley-Farrand.
Libana are a women’s world-music collective based in Cambridge, MA. Their presentation bears a heavy weight of second-wave feminist politics and New Age spirituality, but the music—traditional songs and chants, unearthed and newly-arranged—is direct, lively, and highly accessible.
In the 1990s, Rabbit Ears Media paired celebrity narrators with an eclectic array of composers, and turned them loose on some classic children’s books to create a series of animated videos and a public radio program. In the original Rabbit Ears Radio production, the Mark Isham music underscored a reading of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor and the Nightingale” by the actress Glenn Close.
The Lords of Percussion seem to have been a one-off group, appearing on one 1974 single. It’s obviously a product of the same cultural moment that gave us Carl Douglas, but with a tougher, funkier sound, probably due to the involvement of the late synth-pop oddball Mort Garson.
If you slept on either Eggstone or Cowboy Bebop, I feel bad for you. If you missed Hex, though, it’s hardly surprising. A turn-of-the-90s collaboration between Steve Kilbey from The Church and Game Theory’s Donnette Thayer, Hex went cassette-only, on the ill-fated Ryko Analogue label. Much of it sounds pretty dated and/or silly, but there’s some great, atmospheric dream-pop spread across their two releases.
I’m having a blast doing these mixes, by the way—it’s a great format for addressing personal and cultural moments as they go by, especially for people like me who tend to use mixtapes in lieu of keeping a diary; I hope to have the opportunity to do some more.
The Quiet American link is excellent too.
thanks!
I told her that any program that both taught tolerance AND that there were somethings worth standing up and fighting for were rare and needed to be seen by my children. She looked at me like that classic RCA dog staring at the Victrola.
I then said that I cherish a show where sometimes the good guys stumble and do bad things AND that sometimes the villains do good things and maybe even find redemption. To me the Avatar shows that life isn't all packaged and pretty. Life is sometimes messy, the Avatar shows this wonderfully.
My mother-in-law still does not understand. Too Bad. I'll be both happy and sad to see these stories end. I'm still hoping that Aang & Katara are together in the end. And that Uncle Iroh shows up with an army of the White Lotus to once and for all put down the Fire Lord.