Since closing the metaphorical doors to Patient Sounds Intl. on the last day of the decade, Chicago-based “ambient humorist” Matthew J. Sage has refocused his open hours into a new hobby: ceramics. Somewhere around the edges of spinning clay, recording, and teaching college students about cinema, he put some time towards this somnolent turntable set designed for winter. As he frames it:
“This mix — 100% vinyl — is a postmeridian fantasy suite built to transport you, fair listeners, out of your bundled days and woolen dens through your ears and into an after-hours reverie. The holidays are long over, but we are still in the throes of winter here in Chicago — Late-January/February is by far the cruelest time in the Midwest, having just wrapped a record-challenging stretch without the sun breaking through cloudcover, and now descending into a week of cold and snow — so I created what could be considered a fairytale. A story built to be heard near a crackling hearth (or the 4k facsimile of a hearth). This is what narrative is for in some cases, a flash of escapism. Consider it starting in a leather-couched living space where, after a rich meal of fresh bread and baked root vegetables from the cellar, and maybe a strong glass of wine or two, you float off into the words of a kind friend about their wanderings in the woods of those past warmer months. You spiral into an unfamiliar kingdom that is still uncannily comfortable. Light from those flames in the hearth dance about the room, throwing shadows like flitting fairies into your drooping eyelids.”
“Again, if you don’t have a real fireplace, I highly recommend cueing up a little crackling birchwood while you listen (we run this video in our house quite often in the winter and it has become a much loved cold-season tradition!). Stay warm and imaginative out there (or in there), and have a good tale on me.”
Emily A. Sprague – Piano 1
Josh Mason – Cracking the Juice Code
Billy Gomberg – Openness
Nick Butcher – Cozy Kitchen
Rene Hell – Metaconcrete
Charlie Morrow – Wave Music III – 60 Clarinets and a Boat
Wendy Carlos – Variations for Flute & Electronic Sound
Forest Management – A Smell so Sweet
Robert Casadesus (Faure) – Prelude in Gmin by Gabriel Faure
Sean McCann – Nightfall
Theodore Cale Schafer – Hunter
Tomita – Dawn at Bermuda
Tom Van Der Geld and Children at Play – Alison
Ernest Hood – Saturday Morning Doze
S&S Radio broadcasts every now and then on Newtown Radio.