Futuristic

The future is now, or maybe a second from now. THE FUTURE is also a vibe, and we’ve got music to match it or maybe even set the stage for it. No transhumanistic fantasies here, just some transcendent tunes to cope with the downfall of humanity perpetrated by tech billionaires. 

SONGS:

Jantra: Gedima (2023)

Javelin: Estevez (2011)

RESOURCES AND REFERENCES:

Jantra on Bandcamp (Ostinato Records)

The Making of Synthesized Sudan (Short)

Trailer for the Synthesized Sudan Album

All About Jantra’s Synthesized Sudan (PAM)

Electronic Jaglara: The Cosmic Dance Music Rocking Rural Sudan (Middle East Eye)

Jantra: the Sudanese Synth Wizard Waging Raves Against War (Far Out Magazine)

Synthesized Sudan Review (KLOF)

Interview with Jantra (The Guardian)

Background on the Civil War in Sudan (Council on Foreign Relations)

Amnesty International - Emergency 2X Match for Sudan

Example of Sera Rhythm

Sudanese Electronic Music (Refuge Worldwide with Cosmos and Tabidee)

Interview with Vik Sohonie on Jazziz Podcast (Not related to Jantra’s album, but a great interview and you can learn more about Ostinato’s other records)

Synthesizing the Silk Roads / Sounds from 1980s Soviet Central Asia

Recording Special: Javelin (American Songwriter)

Canyon Candy: Javelin (Luaka Bop)

Riding Into Canyon Candy: Q&A with Javelin (Kickstarter) 

Javelin and Mike Anderson Dream Westward (Interview) 

UNSOLICITED ADVICE:

Memorize By Heart 

Connect with us on Instagram (to share your song picks or troll us), Spotify (for our ever-growing playlist), and Stereothematica.com (for extra fun)!

If you like what you’re hearing, please subscribe, and if you love it, a five-star rating and review would send us into the exosphere of excitement.

And email us at stereothematica@gmail.com! We will write back! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

I'm Christine. And I'm Christina. In 2024, I moved to Texas from LA. And to keep in touch, Christine and I started a weekly game where we each pick a song that fits a chosen theme.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

This game deepened our understanding of each other and the songs that shape us, inspiring the podcast you're listening to now. Each week we share our picks, swap stories, and dig into tracks you might love and a lot of the time have never heard of.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Welcome to Stereothematica, your favorite atypical music podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Hey Christina.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Hi Christine.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Any hot takes on the future?

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Uh yeah, we're all going to die.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Okay. Yeah. That's pretty much. What'd you expect me to say? No, I mean, do you have any, I I don't know, like sci-fi fantasies? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Robots that can kill. Yeah. Yeah. They all already exist. The future is now.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Exactly. Or the future is like in a second from now.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Did I tell you I just read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheet?

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Really? What made you decide to read that?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Nihilism. No, I'm kidding.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

I mean, wait, why not?

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Stupid. Um fantasy. Sometimes I like sci-fi and fantasy. Yeah. Have you read it?

SPEAKER_00 1:19

I didn't know this about you. A little bit. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

It's a genre I'm into.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

That's good.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Are you into futurism? Futurist stuff?

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Not at all a futurist. I am not like I have no delusions, no fantasies about what the future holds in store. I do not believe in transhumanism. I don't, or rather, I just don't care about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Is that like what Elon Musk wants to have like chips in our brain? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Anything he wants, I don't want. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So um, yeah, I just I kind of don't care. Now, when we you kind of bring up a good point about the future. The future is now, the future is tomorrow, one second from now, whatever. In my mind, I was kind of imagining a future like 20 years from now, say, I I think 20 years because the movie 2046, the Wonkar Wai movie. Have you seen that? I don't think so. It came out, I think, in like 2004. Beautiful movie movie, wonderful music, very futuristic music. And that's kind of my image of the future, I guess if we're we're going to have an image. 2046 is 2046, but I would say yeah, you gotta watch that movie. And so in my mind, 2046 plus.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

So that's the future.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

So I don't know. One thing I've always maintained, and I'm not pandering to you, but I feel like in the future, everyone will be a vegetarian.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Cool.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

And and that's one positive thing. And now I I am not a vegetarian, but I feel like the more evolved society will be vegetarian. Or maybe it's not so much that we're more evolved, but people, as they become more stupid, the animals become more powerful. And then the people are just like, well, we can't eat animals, they're like smarter than us.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

This is a planet of the apes situation.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Maybe I don't know. So that's like my only sort of image of the future, if that makes any sense.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Yeah, it's much brighter than what I was thinking, which is just that all the animals are going to go extinct because the climate is going to be so bad. And we won't be able to have meat anymore.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

That's going to happen too.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Yeah. That's true.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

But oh no, it's going down a dark path. Sorry. Okay. So yeah, we should probably just get to the theme then. When I thought of this theme, it was purely vibes-based. So what the future feels like sonically. And I kind of touched on that with 2046, one of maybe top 20 best soundtracks, in my opinion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Cool.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

And and yes, when I pitched the theme, I did have the song in mind first. So once again, this theme was an excuse to share a song, an album, really. But before we get into our songs, what were your thoughts about this theme specifically? Like, did you know what I was talking about?

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Oh, for sure. I definitely had choice paralysis, though, because I love futuristic music or what I perceive to be futuristic music. You already know I love craft work, dark wave, like a lot of stuff that feels very, you know, it's Flock of Seagulls, Space Age love song. You know, like these kind of I love that. I love electronica music. So it it was like, how do I just pick one? Yeah. And I had to get creative. So I appreciate your challenge.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Good. I'm glad to hear that. Well, so the future feels less and less human to me, but not because of actual robots or even AI, but because the people who are willingly like not thinking for themselves. And it's almost like we're surrendering our humanity for a loop of fear-based chaos. I kind of already feel that way a little bit. But I worry that in this far-off future, the loop will be harder to escape and the music and art will be our only relief. So being a child of the 80s, the film that shaped my ideas, I didn't read the book, but of course, it was Blade Runner.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Whoa. Yeah. No, that really sorry, I didn't even know you were going to talk about this.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01 5:18

I love Blade Runner, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

It's a beautiful movie. So I it's weird because like I thought the future wasn't necessarily a place I wanted to be with that loneliness and the danger around every corner, but that Vangela soundtrack made the struggle almost romantic, especially for like a young person who's seeing like 2019, which you know that already happened as this like big deal. And I I always identified with a Shan Yang character because of her curly hair. That makes sense. Yeah. But um, anyway, with that context in mind, my pick for a futuristic song is from Yantra's debut album, Synthesized Sudan, Astro Nubian Electronic Jaguara Dance Sounds for the Fashaga Underground. And the song is Gedima. Christina, were you familiar with this album?

SPEAKER_01 6:35

No, but immediately I feel like you shared it with me, and I was like, oh my god, I love this. Yeah. Like it reminded me a lot. Remember when I shared that um music from Saharan cell phones? Yes. Yes. It reminded me of that a little bit. Just like, but so cool. Like I turned this on last night and it was so good that when I it finished, I hit repeat and like have to listen to it again.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

Oh, that makes me very happy. Now I only learned about this, well, in 2023 when it came out. And I want to give credit to another friend and our former colleague, Matilda. She shared this with me. I think it had just come out and I immediately loved it. Like vibe-wise, it made me think of Blade Runner. And I'm gonna say this movie, I've said it before, The Sheltering Sky. I haven't seen it since it came out, so I don't know if it still fits. But yeah, this Bertolicci film, it's beautiful. There's something about it tonally. Maybe it's the expansiveness of the desert that taps into my perpetual sense of longing. And I think Blade Runner definitely has that as well.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

But those movies represent longing for something, anything, as an existential condition. And I do feel like that's going to be a big thing in the future. This, like, I don't know, the sense of longing. And not that this album or Jantra's music or the song that I just played is sounding like that, but it definitely like it just allows me to wallow in that feeling. But like, it's not a sad thing. It's it's weirdly joyful. Like, if the future gives us this type of music, I'll be grateful to be alive despite all the bleakness of the universe because there's something hopeful and energizing about these sounds.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Damn, dude. Right? It's so good. It's just like it's it's you want to live a little bit longer so you can hear this music. Yeah, which means now.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Okay. But I want to be clear in Sudan, this is kind of a party album. Or rather, Yantra's music is designed for partying. Makes sense. Yeah. So before I would party to it. Oh, you would, yes. See, for me, I feel like I would prefer I prefer this as I prefer a lot of music, which is by myself, secluded, not interacting with other people.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Well, I will say I enjoyed listening to it by myself yesterday because I could do as funky of a dance as I wanted to without being perceived.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

So yeah. No, I know you don't like to be perceived. But but I think you do. Anyway, so before the album's release, he was already a cult figure at weddings and street parties around Fashaga in the Sudanese countryside, where he set up his blue Yamaha keyboard and played this trans-inducing music for hours. And his name means craziness in Arabic. And his sound is part of a tradition of African synth innovation where imported keyboards are reworked by local musicians until they can handle the regional scales and timbers. And in Yantra's case, that meant a tricked-out blue Yamaha with his own tones and rhythmic materials.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

That was so cool.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

It's really cool. And there's a video of this. Oh, we'll we'll share that. It was very cool. But the founder of Oceanato Records, Vic Sahoney, learned about Yantra through a YouTube video during the pandemic, and he tracked him down in hopes of recording him. And I'd like to take a quick detour on Vic and Oceanado Records. And the label is cool. There are a lot of great releases there. It's been around since 2016. The Black and Brown owned label's mission has been to recover, preserve, and share the artistic legacies and music of countries and societies torn by civil war, natural disasters, and displacement. And their motto is What the Truth Sounds Like.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Damn.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Yeah. I know. Aren't you glad I took this little sidetrack? That's really cool. So when Vic went to Sudan to record Yantra, he learned he was more of an improviser, reshaping melodies in the moment. So he and the producer Yanto Kwate turned fragments of earlier recordings, media data, and field recordings from Yantra's parties into this album, Synthesize Sudan, Astro Nubian Electronic Yaglara Dance Sounds from the Fashaga Underground. And I have to say that title again just because the title alone is so futuristic.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

And according to an article in Pan-African Music, Yaglara, this otherworldly dance music, is Yantra's creation. And in the same piece, Vic is quoted saying, he doesn't want to tell anyone where the melodies come from. He likes to go missing and takes inspiration from his wanderings. The melodies just come to him. He says they're a gift from God. I know from God.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Well, or something.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Yeah. So this celestial music, as many have called it, is built for crowds, and his performances are so intense that people have waved swords and fired guns into the air, but like as a part of this frenzied celebration.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

That's just what we do in Houston. Y'all don't do that in LA?

SPEAKER_00 12:17

You really do that.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Well, some people do shoot guns into the air, but not me. I don't have a sword either. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

So the album came out just as Sudan was being consumed by civil war, which made Yantra difficult to contact. He couldn't even get a copy of his own record. And then that contrast is part of what made the release so striking. Amid the horror of war. Yantra's music brings so much joy. And you never have to sacrifice that. And maybe that's some hope for the future. Always have the defiance to dance, even in the worst conditions. And in fact, the UN recently called the war in Sudan the world's worst humanitarian displacement crisis, with millions displaced and millions more in urgent need of food and medical care. So I'm sharing a link to Amnesty International's matching fund in case anyone feels compelled to donate. Yeah. Something we don't hear a lot about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Thank you for calling that out. Because I know that it gets overshadowed a lot. I know.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

The media, especially with our own country fucking things up all of the time.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Yeah. So, and and I also share an article if anyone's interested about the background of the war. But yeah, so um on that somber note, Christina, can you take it away with your pick?

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Sure. Yikes, what a segue. Considering this is the futuristic episode, maybe we can manifest a brighter future for Sudan. Nice. And Lord knows they deserve peace and relief. Well, my futuristic pick comes from the Brooklyn-based duo Javelin, aka Cousins George Langford and Tom Van Buskirk, who started making music together in Providence, Rhode Island in 2005. Here's their song Estevez from the 2011 album Canyon Candy.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Okay, what I think it sounded, I think that slide guitar for me was what made me think futuristic. Slide guitar, of course, I think of Rikuter. Of course, Rikuter makes me think of the movie Paris Texas. Paris Texas makes me think of like surveillance. And I think the future is like all about surveillance. So slide guitar, a part of it.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

I absolutely love this. And no, I hadn't even considered any of that in my selection. Good, good, but like so, so good, so thoughtful, maybe more thoughtful than mine. But I did win, I went on a little bit of a weird path for this because the whole album, in my opinion, is a bit of a concept of futuristic Western music.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Like almost a spaghetti western soundtrack with a new age feel to it. So every song on this album has a Western vibe with accompanying tracks like Gaucho, Cowpoke, and Sagebrush, to name a few. But when I poked around to learn more about the inspiration for this album, I found an interview in American songwriter where Tom Van Buskirk said they were inspired by a country and western motif and the records that people owned in the 50s because he said they had like a mythical imaginary sound achieved by excellent session players on old country recordings. So you're you're getting close with Raikuter and I mean Raikuter was his own, of course, excellent person. But while the Western motif is heavy, he said they tried to steer clear of any of Moracone's direct influence, but you can still kind of hear it.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

It's I don't know. I this is very unique. This is like I loved it when you shared.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Yeah. Oh, good. Some of the other songs on the album are like maybe a little bit funkier, but it's so funny to me and interesting because it's coming. This this whole like concept album is coming from an electronica band who are known for their like super fun stage presence. And really, they're quite zany. Really? I have no idea who these people are. Oh, really? I don't think they've made many albums recently. Like there might their last album might have been in like 2014 or 16. I used it up to double check. But learning about what went into the creation of this album that was very like had a theme and a concept, it felt like seeing growth since their earlier work is like much zanier and sillier. Yeah. Like they had a song called O Santra, which is about a cat, and a song Soda Popinski, which is essentially sounds just like video game music. So did I share this with you when I originally shared my pick? When I listened to this album, and especially the song that I chose for this week's theme, it makes me think about what kind of music aliens might make if they access a bunch of old Western soundtracks and tried to recreate it themselves.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Oh, I you know what? That makes complete sense. But I don't think you shared that with me.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

For some reason, I felt like we had a conversation about it, and then I was like, girl, you were just having that conversation in your head.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Probably. I mean, I think that happens a lot with this because we're we like hold back on what we share. Exactly. But it's in our mind, and then we're like, oh, stifling ourselves so we save it for the pod. 100% save it for the pod.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

I know. So their record label's website, Luakab, do you know whose record label that is, Crystal? I do. Badfave David Byrne, which I didn't realize he started that record label in like '88.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Yeah, I didn't realize that it's been around that long either, but I just bought a record from him or he he put out a Korean band, Linalchi, who I'm going to see at the Getty Center in just like a couple of weeks.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

But um I wanted their the record on vinyl, so I bought it from the website directly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

I love that. And I'm pretty sure Javelin's been on this label for a long time. But on the on the label's website, they, you know, share some information from Tom where he mentions their time spent touring the American Southwest with Ye Sayer. Do you know this band?

SPEAKER_00 18:55

No.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

They're kind of another very futuristic, like weird, funky band, which I like. They have a cool song called 2080 that was really popular when I was in college. And Tom also talks about playing shows for South by Southwest. Uh, so the time in the West and in Austin and everything that influenced their creation of this album. And speaking of South by, I actually booked this band, Javelin, for a South by Southwest show in 2010.

unknown 19:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Oh my god. The radio station had like we had multiple shows that we would do, like a nighttime one, a daytime one. Yeah. Yeah. Like two daytime shows and a nighttime show. Very fun because I was the PR director. I had the opportunity to like do some of this stuff, which was really fun. Oh, wow. I looked back in my email to confirm this, and I found an exchange between me and Tom where I had sent him some photos from their set, uh-huh, which was like a hilarious, very DIY set where, and speaking of like their stage presence, it's like two guys with like keyboards, you know, just kind of like banging it out. Well, an uninvited like person just jumped in and started freestyling on the mic over their music. And the band handled it like very graciously. But in the email, because I sent him photos of this guy crashing, which I'll I'll be sure to post in our Instagram. Tom goes, the guy offered our friend cocaine and then told him, I like your swagger, which I thought was an interesting asylum.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Huh. Okay, that's a crazy connection.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

It was a I I mean, I didn't forget that I booked them, but like I was just trying to check the date, and then I found that and I was like, wow, because that was from 2010. I'm like, Yeah, interesting. And of the album's title, which I actually really like Canyon Candy, uh-huh. It reminds me of like, have you ever had cactus candy? No. I feel like I see it all the time in Arizona, it's made out of like prickly pear. Oh, actually, yeah, oh, like it's just a thing out there. That's what I was thinking of with Canyon Candy, but they say the name Canyon Candy was coined by Lucky Dragons, who's another band that they were touring with because it sounded like a euphemism, but it also conjures up the peyote button, the desert's psycho candy. Oh. Ever tried peyote, Christine? Um, no. Yeah, me neither. I don't think I'm like I mean ready for that.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

You know, if the opportunity arises.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

What if it lets you see into the future?

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Uh if I get to hear this kind of music, I'll be okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Bingo. Yeah, I love that. Well, much like my quest to find the human scab documentary, there's a short film.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

Oh no, why do you have to bring that up? Everything was going so well, and it still will.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Okay. But there's a short film called Canyon Candy that was made by Mike Anderson, but it seems like it's no longer available. I checked Vimeo and lots of articles from 2011 that mentioned it, but all the links are broken and the video is missing, which I'm pretty curious about because it's a it's a companion piece to this album. But maybe they shared some futuristic truth that we might not be ready for, and thus they can't share it again until who knows.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

I know.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

The government might get you hold on. Well, the government's just now started to admit that there's aliens. So what else don't we know? Okay. Yeah. I didn't need the government to tell me that there's aliens to believe that there's aliens, by the way. They're out there. Anywho, great theme, Christine.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

Yeah, thank you for indulging me and for sharing this because it is especially the song. I'll have to like listen to more of the album, but I do love Estevez. So nice. Yeah. Um, well, you know what? I think it's time for some unsolicited advice that takes Christina's wonderful advice from last week, just a step further. Don't just read a poem, memorize it. Though I prefer the term learn by heart, because when you memorize a poem or a passage from a book, you really are internalizing it. You feel it, you live it, and then when you recite it, you become part of it.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

Talk about hyperbole.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

The fact is, we memorize poems all the time, but they're called songs.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Yeah, but that's because music makes it easier and more fun.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Very true. And when I wanted to memorize a Lorca poem, I found one set to music so it would stick. And some five years later, I can still recite it, though I may take a pause here and there for a guitar break. Well, I can certainly take this tested device to heart. And if you can't find something set to music, I've got an app for you called Memorize by Heart. No need for flashcards or ridiculous memory palaces. I've tried that. That's that's just another whole complicated thing to get yourself into. It's just some simple science-based low stress activities to help you remember what you want to learn. And if you don't know what you want to learn, they've got a library to get you started.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Hamlet anyone? To be or not to be memorized. That is the question.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

And we have the answer in the show notes. Advice over what's going on next week? Next week, let's go to the game. Thanks for listening to Stereo Thematica. If you like what you're hearing, please consider a review, a rating, or sharing with a friend.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

And follow us on Instagram at Stereothematica, where you can share your favorite futuristic songs. We've also got our Infinite Spotify playlist linked in our show notes.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

And visit stereothematica.com for more fun.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Insert robot voice.