♪ Rare Charm 005 & 006

🍸 For Your Ears Only + Air Travel in Spring ✈️🌷

Hi hi hi. Still playing catch-up with archived shows. After next week I’ll be on track. Phew! Thank you to friends who had nice feedback to share with me regarding Rare Charm 003 & 004, and the show in general. On deck this week are March and April’s shows in which we take to the skies and travel around the globe in style!~

Bon voyage!

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March 30, 2022 - For Your Ears Only: A James Bond Tribute

For Your Ears Only is a two-hour dossier of ‘90s and 2000s electronica evocative of James Bond or, more broadly, an exploration of the enduring spirit of Euro-spy aesthetics: Inventive interpretations of spy-fi fantasy and sneaky film score paraphrasing as sly as the MI6 playboy himself; some obvious picks, some not-so-obvious. Intended to conjure images of international intrigue, luxurious jet-setting, and the perils of espionage.

Honestly, I credit Alan Partridge for making me think twice about James Bond, but the persistent associations with Bond are unavoidable when you’re wading in the waters of trip-hop, downtempo, and breakbeat replete with woozy-boozy, bombastic brass matching the arrogance only a British op with a license to kill could exude; fluttering flutes like brush contact; breakneck bongos; paranoid percussion; slinky, suspenseful strings; silky-soulful-soaring vocals. I initially formulated this idea a few months before I started putting it together and when I came across a Pussyfoot compilation dedicated to Bond-inspired music while on a Discogs trawl, it further fueled my own take on the concept. Funnily enough, the Pussyfoot label released a compilation called Pussytoons which seems to me to be big beat and breakbeat evocative of cartoons, which may remind you of January’s Cartoon Chaos show. Great minds! (It’s just pattern recognition.) 

Pussy Galore! album & CD design by Toshio Nakanishi (founding member of Plastics!)

In the weeks leading up to this broadcast I watched Goldfinger (1964), You Only Live Twice (1967), and GoldenEye (1995)— in addition to Mission: Impossible (1996), which I’ve already erased from my mind because it was such a rough watch (weird pacing!) and Get Carter (1971), a gangster film, sure, but Roy Budd’s jazzy score, especially that plucky bass and the resoluteness of the harpsichord he employs, is one among many that have had a lasting impact on this class of electronica inspired by silver screen images and compositions which is evidenced by Mono sampling the theme in their track “Silicone”. I realize these latter two are not in the Bond universe, but cinematic tales of espionage and gritty crime films draw from the same well of sonic drama, suspense, and, abstractly, ‘cool guy’ energy.

What I’m interested in is the strong cultural hold the Bond phenomenon had on music production during the ‘90s and early 2000s. One reason is presumably the lasting aesthetics of and fear begotten by WWII. Secret intelligence imagery and Iron Curtain narratives were abound in cinema with action-based spy thrillers, such as the Mission: Impossible reboot franchise and the Bourne trilogy adaptations, and eventually took a turn for the ironic with parodic characters like Austin Powers and Johnny English. Additionally, the ‘90s does ‘60s revival was rampant with bohemian Left Bank- and swinging London-inspired fashion, festival attempts at recapturing Summer of Love ideals, and coffeehouse Beat worship. 

Yeeeaaah, vavy, YEAH!

Technologically speaking, it is indebted to sampling techniques. Hardware samplers and ample access to bargain bin lounge, “exotica”, and easy-listening records of the 1950s-1970s provided the backbones for crafting songs characterized by moody atmospheres inflected with a sense of danger and an aspirational bent for worldly finesse. Moreover, sampling made it easier to bridge cultures into a new and vibrant fusion, a sonic wish for global coexistence via media technologies. Electronica, then, became the soundtrack to how information travels, thus assuming the role of travelogue or passport in the way that Bond films represented different parts of the world, for better or worse. 

Perhaps what has made Bond scores endure in music producers’ imaginations is that many of its elements exist in the space where youthful ‘60s and ‘70s bohemian flair knocks up against the crisp suit of a mature and restrained sophisticate, and invariably spills cognac all over it—Watch where you’re going! / I would, but I was too distracted by your devilishly good looks. (You get the idea.) It’s within these clashes that something seductive, flirty, and indelible manifests, like a sonic meet-cute—and it’s enough to fuel the imagination for decades. 

Consumed by thoughts of that eternal bachelor and the elite underworlds he occupies, I experienced several instances of Bond confirmation bias—Bond Rules Everything Around Me—including but not limited to the moment my ears perked up at the melody of “You Only Live Twice” sounding from above while browsing the aisles of Daiso and Shazam-ing it to discover it was Robbie Williams’s "Millennium", the music video for it is rife with parodies of Bond iconography. 

And on top of it all, I didn’t even realize until the Academy Awards brought it to my attention, 2022 marked 60 YEARS OF BOND!! 

From the introduction to Jaap Verheul’s The Cultural Life of James Bond: Specters of 007. Copyright Date: 2020 Published by: Amsterdam University Press

Now, I’m definitely not on the path toward becoming a full-blown Bond scholar, but there really is a lot to mine from the character, what he represents, and how he functions in the cultural landscape. This excerpt from the introduction to Jaap Verheul’s The Cultural Life of James Bond: Specters of 007 is particularly of interest to me because it elucidates James Bond’s position as a “mobile signifier” meaning he is a constantly evolving launch pad for adaptation and articulation across different contexts, which I believe is a notion demonstrated by this broadcast!

And, yes, a part of me regrets not waiting until Rare Charm 007 to release this mix, but it really felt urgent to me to put it out back in March and those B.R.E.A.M. experiences seemed to me like spiritual cheerleaders urging me on, lol. Ah well!

Funniest track in this mix is “Feminax” by Cinerex. I think it perfectly channels the neglected desires of a Bond girl and hints at potential revenge.

April 27, 2022 - Air Travel in Spring

“Technology could forge a postindustrial link between the apparatuses of entertainment and of social engineering.” 

—Joseph Lanza, Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong (23)

Mediated through the lens of electronica characterized by elevator music pastiche, in this broadcast you can expect the far-out synthesized hallmarks of space-age bachelor pad pop, along with caressing “ba-ba-ba” vocals, aircraft cabin & airport ambience sampling, and the smooth sensuality and saudade of bossa nova—keeping things light and airy, wistful but not without a sense of humor. Gentle skies and Dodo Airlines vibes.

This mix was assembled in anticipation of a trip to the Bay Area to visit my friends Andreas and Vivian. It was my first flight after lockdown and “the return to normalcy” so I thought this theme would be a fun idea to honor the occasion while also using it as an opportunity to further explore and contextualize sonic threads related to my personal research.  

Around the time I was conceptualizing this mix, I was reading Joseph Lanza’s excellent book Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong. Clearly I’m fascinated by all that falls under the umbrella of ‘90s & early ‘00s electronica (I won’t stfu about it!), but I wanted to get a deeper, historical understanding of the various styles of easy-listening and mood music of the ‘50s & ‘60s that inspired many artists active during the ‘90s & early ‘00s as these soundscapes and arrangements provided evocative and pliable sample material to be molded and repurposed into new shapes through new technologies, attitudes, and cultural worldviews. 

I’m not an expert musicologist or anything, but here are some very loose and disorganized notes I took while considering turn of the millennium electronica as it pertains to sampling from ‘50s & ‘60s “exotica” (ersatz musical renditions that evoke non-native, fantasy impressions of tropical destinations in Oceania, Southeast Asia, South America, and more; think ‘tiki culture’) and library music (production and stock music typically intended for commercial use in TV, radio, and film), but also extends to elements borrowed from international eclectica such as the London sound, India’s Bollywood musical filmi, the bossa nova wave from Brazil, Germany’s Kosmische Musik and Neue Deutsche Welle, and more. I have much to research and many threads to weave together!!!

+ effects of globalization; sampling of global cultures and nostalgia for the ‘50s/’60s and technology in shaping an aestheticized global union of the world; “Model UN” with an emphasis on hipness, connectedness, luxury

+ cultural tropes sampled/remixed from different countries

+ projecting and sampling fantasies of countries; romanticized imagery associated with cultural identities; transposing an ideal or fantasy upon a country

+ sound as a way information travels; so if you’re using reified/invented /reductive samples of cultures, you’re shaping/mutating images in people’s consciousnesses; reconfiguring their sense of space and place as well as cultural identity

+ what is the affective value of these extracted & remixed sounds? how did they contribute to the conception of/portrayal of these countries to listeners?

+ selling a fantasy; an aspiration; a possible way of living; a vision of the world/future by drawing upon the past and using new technologies of the then-present (idealistic)

+ if music is world-building, emotion/mood-influencer, and stage dresser, then sampling from cultures is a way of fashioning a world with no gaps/divisions (global visibility?), but also a privilege…making a spectacle out of/commodifying other cultures (dependent on authorship/intent and original source material and how it is incorporated, manufactured, or manipulated). does it disrupt? is it making a declaration or statement as resistance against socio-political constraints/imposing narratives or is it mere cherry-picking and Othering/exoticizing? what defines an embrace or celebration? the need for practicing respect for global cultures by recognizing their intricate musical histories and perspectives thru deeper understanding/engagement

Lots to untangle…

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On behalf of Rare Charm Airlines, I’d like to thank you for joining us on this trip and we are looking forward to seeing you on board again in the near future. Have a nice day—Oh! Looks like you have a connecting flight so that means the airline vibes don’t end here! I highly recommend that you check out Hammy Dj’s mix, which was also inspired by air travel, from their May broadcast of Heart Station on Particle FM.

Enjoy the music. 💗♫✧˖*°࿐

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Rare Charm airs every last Wednesday of the month at 8pm PT on particle.fm ♪

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