BBC Mix

The Mixing It radio show on the BBC (homepage here) is one of the network’s best, at least as experimental electronic music is concerned. Today’s broadcast (yes, today’s — ah, the immediacy of the Internet; it’s already archived in streaming form) opened with a track of Spring Heel Jack’s recent Sweetness of the Water (Thirsty Ear), and eventually wended its way around to a brief interview with Bjork (see yesterday’s Downstream entry on her upcoming, vocal-heavy Medulla album, here), talking about choir arrangements, remixing, and so forth, and filled out with examples off the new record, featuring such collaborators as Robert Wyatt, Valgeir Sigurdsson, Gregory Purnhagen, Mark Bell and, indeed, Matmos. Also featured this week, tracks by Opto (Carsten Nicolai and Thomas Knak, divining ambience from a found cassette tape), Mum (Bjork’s fellow Icelandic natives) and others.