Sketches of the Valley
King Gizzard meeting Mild High Club in a shared microtonal daydream. Destroyer painting watercolours into the ocean. My Morning Jacket leaning on Masterplan.
The Operator sits on the bank with a notebook, drawing the valley from twenty-seven angles, every record a sketch. North American songwriters in a row, then the wider world: AfroCubism, the Lijadu Sisters, Francis Bebey, Joe Hisaishi.
Frank Proffitt, a banjo player from these very mountains, closes the page with Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down.
27 tracks. Sketches of the valley. The water keeps moving.
Signal web
Artists in this transmission
A homesick, plainspoken plea for the rural and the real. Take Me Back To The Country. Self-released through the digital distributors (3249649 Records DK).
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Mild High ClubTwo bands' shared microtonal daydream. Sketches of Brunswick East. Melbourne's psych meets LA's soft-focus jazz-pop on ATO Records.
BADBADNOTGOOD, Charlotte Day WilsonToronto's jazz trio meets the city's velvet R&B voice. IV. Innovative Leisure, Third Side Music.
FKJ, ((( O )))French multi-instrumentalist Vincent Fenton. Ylang Ylang EP. Mom+Pop. Warm keys and slow water, named for the flowering tree.
DestroyerDan Bejar. Vancouver art-rock that never stays in one place long enough to be named.
Damien JuradoQuiet songs that land like a letter you didn't know you needed. Secretly Canadian.
My Morning JacketLouisville's reverb-soaked rock. It Still Moves. ATO Records. Jim James's falsetto ringing through a Kentucky grain silo.
T. GoldSelf-titled debut. Sleepy Cat Records. A quiet song about leaving one house for another.
Father John MistyJosh Tillman. Sub Pop. A wedding song about the impossibility of knowing anything for certain.
AfroCubismMalian griots and Cuban soneros in the same room. AfroCubism. Nonesuch. The cross-Atlantic conversation Mali and Cuba were always meant to have.
Don HutsonJamaican rocksteady from the vaults. Got To Leave This Place. Dub Store Records. A leaving-song pulled back into the light by Japan's crate diggers.
The Lijadu SistersNigerian twin sisters Kehinde and Taiwo. Danger. Numero Group. Yoruba harmony over funk grooves, decades ahead of their time.
Fred Williams, The Jewel BandWichita's Smart's Palace soul. Tell Her b/w The Dance Got Old. Numero Group. A 45 rescued from the Kansas jukeboxes.
Te'amirLA percussionist and producer Te'amir Sweeney. Abyssinia & Abyssinia Rise. Tru Thoughts. Ethiopian rhythms run through modern machines.
Nubiyan Twist, Nubiya BrandonLeeds' ten-piece groove collective. Jungle Run. Strut. Horns, breakbeat and a featured voice asking for nothing but room.
Oblique OccasionsVaporwave-adjacent collage. iMusician. Haunted Japanese mall music.
Letta MbuluSouth Africa's voice of the struggle and the dancefloor. In The Music The Village Never Ends. RCA Records Label. A praise-song for the hard-working woman.
Against All LogicNicolas Jaar's dancefloor alias. 2012 - 2017. Other People. Looped, crated soul stretched into house.
Francis BebeyCameroonian polymath. African Electronic Music 1975 - 1982. Ozileka. A satirical jingle that doubles as a small machine poem.
Abdel Aziz El MubarakSudan's golden-voiced crooner. Abdel Aziz El Mubarak. Ace Records. Standards from Khartoum's heyday.
El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance TroupeTraditional Palestinian dabke ensemble on DARNA. Dance as resistance, as memory, as survival.
Shintaro SakamotoEx-Yura Yura Teikoku frontman. Tropical soft rock. Let's Dance Raw. Other Music.
Joe HisaishiStudio Ghibli's first great score. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind Soundtrack: Towards the Faraway Land. Joe Hisaishi. The wind over the toxic jungle, set to orchestra.
Helado Negro, Flock of DimesRoberto Lange's warm electronic folk meets Jenn Wasner's silver voice. Lotta Love. 4AD.
Kahil El'ZabarChicago's AACM percussionist and bandleader. Kahil El'Zabar's America the Beautiful. Spiritmuse Records. Jazz as ritual, as healing.
Frank ProffittAppalachian banjo and balladry. High Atmosphere: Ballads And Banjo Tunes From Virginia And North Carolina. Rounder Records. The valley's own music, sung by a man who lived it.
Signals
Crate-Digger Signals
The show's devotion to the obscure, the overlooked, the record that sat in a bin for decades waiting to be found.
Songs of Exile
Music made by people who can't go home. Saharan displacement, Palestinian diaspora, Saharawi refugee camps, exile as creative condition.
The Creek
The first voice on BVA. Water over old stones, and the valley's carrier frequency.
The Operator
The voice of the Balm Valley Authority, host, narrator, creek-side philosopher, and keeper of the woolly worm oracle.
The Spoken Word
Poetry as transmission. Gil Scott-Heron, Yusef Komunyakaa, and the Operator's monologues, words that land with the weight of music.
Themes
Texture & Drone
The space between songs, ambient textures, atmospheric drift, and the sounds that hold episodes together.
Americana
American roots music in all its complication, folk, country, blues, and the sound of a nation arguing with itself.
Folk Traditions
Folk music as living practice, from Appalachian banjo to Saharan guitar, from old-time field recordings to contemporary folk noir.
Borderless Music
Music that refuses to respect national boundaries, from Saharan desert blues to Palestinian shamstep to Colombian cumbia.