RadioPeng doesn't usually dip into the glossy waters of mainstream pop. Our orbit tends to favor the cosmic, the obscure, the droning, the free-jazz freakouts and the ambient abysses. But every so often, a song comes along so unabashedly human-so universal in its naked sincerity-that it breaks through the firewall. Enter Endless Love (1981): Lionel Richie and Diana Ross's gloriously over-the-top hymn to devotion, a duet so pure it could […]
Tangerine Dream’s Zeit is a slow, dark, and patient record. It came out in 1972. It is four long pieces. The mood is heavy, quiet, and cosmic. There are almost no rhythms. There are long drones, soft waves, and deep tones. It asks you to listen closely. It rewards you if you do. What listeners say Many fans call Zeit a tough album. They also call it unique and powerful. […]
The story begins with songs moving by Bluetooth from one phone to another across the Sahara. Cheap handsets held MP3s on memory cards. People traded tracks in markets, at roadside stalls, and at weddings. Bluetooth was the wire. The phone’s tiny speaker was the radio. This was a music network built by people, not towers. Sahel Sounds listened to that network and became a bridge. The label found the songs […]
Genesis is what happens when a group of posh schoolboys accidentally invent three different genres and then spend the next twenty years trying to outrun themselves. Formed in the late 1960s at Charterhouse School, they started as mild-mannered psychedelic folkies and ended as global pop deities with laser lights, gated drums, and Armani blazers. Along the way, they became a sort of evolutionary chart for British rock itself, one band […]
Welcome to the shimmering, softly pulsing universe of Brian Eno—composer, sonic tinkerer, ambient architect, and possibly an alien trapped in a British man’s body. If you’ve ever heard music that sounded like a ghost whispering in a rain-drenched cathedral and thought, “This slaps,” you may already be under Eno’s spell. Glam Rock’s Most Mysterious Synth Wizard Long before he was ambient royalty, Brian Eno emerged from the art-rock primordial ooze […]
Piero Scaruffi (born 1955) is an Italian-American polymath whose work spans cognitive science, artificial intelligence, cultural history, poetry, and, most famously, music criticism. Best known to the public for a sprawling website—often called the “Piero Scaruffi Knowledge Base”—that houses decades of reviews, essays, and syllabi, Scaruffi has also authored multi-volume histories of rock, jazz, and avant-garde music, as well as studies on consciousness, Silicon Valley, and the history of knowledge. […]
The Reissues as a Portal Journey of the Deep Sea Dweller (Clone, 2011–2013) is a four-volume reissue series that reintroduces Drexciya’s early EPs, singles, and deep cuts to new listeners while restoring historical context for longtime fans. Far more than archival housekeeping, the series functions as a curated portal into an undersea mythology—Drexciya as a Black Atlantis—which reframes Detroit electro not merely as machine funk but as speculative narrative and […]
Recording the suite On December 9, 1964, at Rudy Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs studio, John Coltrane’s classic quartet, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones, tracked the four-part suite in a single, charged evening. Coltrane then explored an alternate “Acknowledgement” the next day with Archie Shepp and Art Davis, but the released album preserves the intimate quartet performance, including small postproduction touches like the doubled chant on “Acknowledgement” and a second […]
Bad Brains are a force-field in American music—speed, precision, and spiritual intent fused into a singular continuum that rerouted punk, widened metal, and folded reggae into the hardcore engine. Formed in Washington, D.C., in 1976 as the jazz-fusion outfit Mind Power, the core quartet—Dr. Know (Gary Miller, guitar), Darryl Jenifer (bass), H.R. (Paul Hudson, vocals), and Earl Hudson (drums)—began by studying the intricacies of Return to Forever and Mahavishnu Orchestra. […]
Kendra Smith’ s musical life reads like a dreamer’s continuum—alchemy and psychedelia braided through underground scenes, whispered departures, and quietly luminous returns. A founding force in the Paisley Underground, Smith co-created The Dream Syndicate in 1981 after a KDVS-era garage apprenticeship, shaping the group’s feedback-kissed minimalism and contributing bass and vocals to The Days of Wine and Roses (1982). Even at that origin point, her voice felt like a compass […]
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