the delightfully odd allure of Rare Charm
the delightfully odd allure of Rare Charm
Popping in real quick to wax about the internet radio show I started hosting last November—and, no, I don’t talk on it. Listen, I’m just not a good public speaker and it would be a disservice to the music I’m selecting if I talked over it.
Particle FM is a local community internet radio station located in San Diego whose objective is to prioritize artists from underrepresented backgrounds to showcase their own work and “their wildest tastes in music”. The station has expanded so much in just the few months it has been live, which seems like a clear testament to how much people crave a space to share and listen to music in an intentional way. When I applied I think there were about 4 shows, but now there are quadruple that amount. It’s been really cool to witness the station’s growth and I hope it continues to attract more hosts and listeners not only locally, but globally as well.
My show is called Rare Charm and, without over-intellectualizing what I am trying to do with it, the main conceit behind it is that I’m treating it as a sort of challenge or puzzle for myself to solve through the use of music. It’s basically another form of the types of word games I played in my head as a kid to entertain myself; like the one where you have to think of a word that begins with the last letter of the word preceding it, or the one where you give yourself two words, for example, ‘sock’ and ‘hamburger’ and you have to produce associative words that get you to a place that connects the word ‘sock’ to ‘hamburger’ in a way that makes sense. I’ll illustrate:
sock
shoe
step
shit
patty
hamburger
Do you see where my head is at? Each episode is built around a unique theme or inspired by a particular mood or concept. It’s not different from how I’ve always made mixes and playlists, I’m just trying to be more inventive and more articulate and intentional with the radio platform. I had (and probably still do have) the chance to increase the duration of the transmissions, but I really enjoy the constraint of an hour, it forces me to be more shrewd and creative with my selections.
It’s been a very rewarding experience so far as it allows me to share my extensive and ever-growing collection of digital music with more ease, purpose, and dare I say integrity, as opposed to using whatever tracks are available on Spotify or uploading to Mediafire, which is what I used to do in my Tumblr days of yore.
In addition, it’s nice that Particle FM has a chat built in to the site that gives hosts the opportunity to talk to listeners in realtime, which is truly a luxury if you want immediate feedback on your set.
So far I’ve hosted two shows which I present to you here, along with their respective track listings.
It’s been months since my last newsletter and Substack still doesn’t support Mixcloud embeds— a pity! I really have to trust that you, dear reader, will click through the hyperlinks. It’s okay, I know how the attention economy works!
November 2021’s mix was inspired by an insomniac night where I was fixated on this track “Suicide Common” by Other People’s Children, a leftfield electronica project by Australian musician Jason Sweeney. The song is quietly propulsive as Sweeney softly talk-sings about a string of terrible events (“students maimed,” for one) in a way that I hope I am interpreting correctly as a bit of gallows humor. It got me thinking about other songs with dark or heavy subject matter that employ the absurd in an effort to process tragedy. So this one track and its doomy lyrics inspired a whole mix of songs that I was mentally referring to as “cheeky downers” with a dash of bitter indie rock. I was really nervous going into this broadcast. It didn’t help that the technical difficulties I had anticipated actually manifested, but luckily Chris, who runs the station, swooped in by troubleshooting all of my frantic texts and screenshots via iMessage and helped get the show on the road!
December’s mix was a showcase of wintry and spiritual tracks that defamiliarize the everyday; sounds that reflect those moments when things feel slightly askew, yet that strangeness is ultimately what elevates any feelings of ambiguity and unease into a certain clarity. I had a lot of fun with this one and listening back it really is a strong sonic mosaic of myself, my interests, and my memories. I drew from different texts, including music composed for games and films, that all have personal significance to me from over the years. I can’t stress enough how much I appreciate the notion that all of these sources I’ve come in contact with in the past have collided into the ones I am now just learning about and loving. I dunno, it’s just cool to hear all of these past and present selves stitched together in a concise package.
For instance, whenever I hear “Barcarolle” I am instantly transported to 2015 and being astounded by The Tales of Hoffmann on the big screen at the Ken Cinema (RIP<333), and catching pieces of it when I’d do theater checks on my shifts the week we screened it; every time I hear this Masumi Ito song it will remind me of the inspiring experience I had watching the anime Haibane Renmei this winter, and discovering more of her beautiful music through it; “Spacelights” reminds me of a lonelier time in my life when I watched the documentary The Death of Nekojiru and those Tibetan bells in tandem with Nekojiru’s obsession with death, negativity, and her eventual suicide seemed almost like a harbinger of grief yet also prepared me in some ways for dealing with my cat’s sudden death a few months later.
Tony Soprano said it best with, “[r]emember when is the lowest form of conversation” so I won’t go on, but I hope the depth of my intention is felt when you listen to my mixes. I put a lot of myself into them! So, yeah, I’m really proud of this one. I encourage listeners to use what I’ve shared as a launching pad for their own deep dives and to demonstrate that there are no limits to what sources you can piece together to tell a story.
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In addition to these digital format shows, earlier this month I had the pleasure of joining the mind behind Particle FM, Chris “Atrevido” Gonzalez, at M-Theory Music, for an all-vinyl set. Particle FM invites its hosts to spin tunes in-store at M-Theory every first Saturday of the month. It’s a cool way of promoting the station and its respective hosts while also encouraging people to support their local record stores.
I figured I should write about the development behind that set at length here in a newsletter post that a few of you might read and which will be archived more accessibly on a web platform instead of in an Instagram caption that nobody will read.
I was afraid of tripping over my tongue, but if I had hopped on the mic I was going to say something about celebrating David Bowie, as the stream happened to take place on what would have been his 75th birthday, because it’s fair to say Bowie was the catalyst for my developing interest in music at a young age after watching Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. So what better way to pay tribute than to kick off the mix with “It’s No Game (No. 1)” and bookend it with Mark Stewart’s off-kilter cover of David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s legendary “Forbidden Colours” originally written for Nagisa Ōshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence starring David Bowie.
The first hour starts off with some wiggly new wave and avant-pop with seductive goo goo vocals from around the world then slows to a languorous crawl with some breezy and twinkling downtempo, ambient, and electronica in the second.
If you’re hungry for more, direct your ears here.
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I haven’t had a chance to check out every show on Particle FM, but I do wanna give shouts out to some of the broadcasts I have listened to: Cashmere w/ Xayn, CONSENT w/ Filoso, Noise Propagation FM w/ DJ Upsette, and Heart Station w/ Hammy Dj.
And while I’m here giving shouts out to internet radio shows hosted by people I love and respect, check out Possessed Radio on Lower Grand Radio, the punchy talk radio supplement to Possessed Fanzine for Slackers and Haters hosted by my very opinionated friend Andreas (he will hate that I reductively described him this way and it makes me laugh), and Normal Fantasy, a monthly show composed of readings and recordings exploring the quotidian, hosted by my friend Pablo Dodero on Nett Nett Radio.
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Rare Charm transmits every last Wednesday of the month. Its third installment broadcasts next Wednesday, Jan 26 at 8pm PST on particlefm.com ! I hope you’ll say hi in the chat if you’re able to tune in live. :-)
❤️💚💜