Radio Free Arcadia

Podcast: Radio Free Arcadia

Esoteric music generated by and assembled from from the growing archives of electronic musician Logickal’s Studio Free Arcadia.

  • 0210 – Radio Rituals

    Radio Free Arcadia
    Radio Free Arcadia
    0210 – Radio Rituals
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    I’ve been travelling a lot recently for my more mundane ‘real life’ responsibilities, which has made it difficult to experiment as much as I would like. Since many of those experiments find their way into episodes of the podcast, it means I recently seem to find myself under the proverbial gun more often than not.

    So, before I embark on more travels later this month, I figured I could use a bit of downtime this morning (a Sunnday) to feed some material into Thee Transmitter to see what happens. While I’ve been experimenting quite a bit with cybernetic systems as of late, this is NOT that – this is a traditional live performance using the Max For Live version of the transmitter devices with some light mixing and mastering after the fact.

    I do hope to share some of the more generative and cybernetic outputs soon, as I suspect they will be suitable fodder for the rest of the system. Maybe Thee Transmitter itself will gain some related capabilities…

  • 0209 – The Brigadier Equinox

    Radio Free Arcadia
    Radio Free Arcadia
    0209 – The Brigadier Equinox
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    I noticed that I had fallen slightly behind on podcast episodes, so I decided that there was no better time to catch up with a 9th episode in the 9th month sometime around the Autumnal Equinox and my own birthday.

    I’ve been working a particular tune to death recently with the aim of submitting it for consideration for a compilation. I started layering in more stuff, trying to bend it away from where it had begun. More melodic. More atmospheric. Less abstract. More rigid. The things I tried as I pushed it into different spaces was showing no immediate end, and I was getting tired.

    I then took all of the rhythms away, then took that and granulized and stretchified it. Now we’re here, and you have an episode of the podcast to listen to. I’ll probably end up submitting the original version of the tune, which was already earmarked for my next release anyway.

  • 0208 – Watchtowers

    0208 – Watchtowers

    Radio Free Arcadia
    Radio Free Arcadia
    0208 – Watchtowers
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    Wherein the Transmitter hath taken two works of sound, begotten of angelic converse and the visions thereby unveiled, and subjected them to the art of permutation: that the Voice might assume new vestures, and the Vision pour forth an ever-changing song unto the exhaustion of Eternity. The original works shall manifest in the forthcoming compilations of the Hermetic Library, ere this year hath run its appointed course.

  • 0207 – First S-4 Explorations

    Radio Free Arcadia
    Radio Free Arcadia
    0207 – First S-4 Explorations
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    In the last week or so I have made the first addition to my hardware collection in quite some time, finally pulling the trigger on a Torso Electronics S-4 after keeping my eye on it since before release and through the various software updates. I’ve been having quite a bit of fun with it, and it is ideal for making these sort of soundscaping pieces that this is an example of. I’m still getting stuck in and won’t claim to have mastered the instrument yet. Once I do, I’ll be figuring out how to include it into my live performances. Enjoy this excursion and more coming soon.

  • 0206 – Syntax Village Voyages

    Radio Free Arcadia
    Radio Free Arcadia
    0206 – Syntax Village Voyages
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    What happens when you feed the stems from a reclusive tropical techno artist’s music into the Radio Free Arcadia transmission device? You get a deeply psychedelic and ambient journey into spaces unknown, that’s what.

  • 0205 – Road Risen Transmission

    Radio Free Arcadia
    Radio Free Arcadia
    0205 – Road Risen Transmission
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    I have spent 4 of the last 6 weeks travelling, which has made it somewhat difficult to put myself into a more creative mental space, but I have been occasionally tinkering with my Max devices and creating things I can feed back into the broadcaster – iteration after iteration.

  • 0204 – First steps with Sinewives II

    Radio Free Arcadia
    Radio Free Arcadia
    0204 – First steps with Sinewives II
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    This episode collects a few of my first recordings with the second iteration of the Sinewives concept. Unlike the first, which moves largely of its own accord, this iteration is intended for more direct interaction, ultimately for live use. It is rudimentary at this point – 8 sinewave oscillators with pitches generated randomly based on scale, root, range and harmonicity – but with fully flexible fm routing between the 8 voices.

    My plan is to build some triggerability to allow for long evolving sequences, as well as parameters driven by location, weather, and – perhaps most importantly – current lunar state.

    More recordings forthcoming.

  • 0203 – Sinewives at Unease

    Radio Free Arcadia
    Radio Free Arcadia
    0203 – Sinewives at Unease
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    A collection of recordings made by my newest Max/MSP patch Sinewives, combined and mutated by my other patch, the Free Arcadia Transmitter.

    The world is burning, but we are aware of the emptiness inherent in all things. This too, shall pass.

    May all beings find and achieve happiness.

  • 0202: Éliane

    0202: Éliane

    Radio Free Arcadia
    Radio Free Arcadia
    0202: Éliane
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    I first heard Éliane Radigue’s work sometime shortly after I started my own journey into Tibetan Buddhism. I stumbled upon a reference to her “Songs of Milarepa” and suddenly was captivated by her music. Shortly after, I found a cassette copy of Jetsun Mila that doubled that captivation. It is a sublime, slowly moving piece, and was everything I loved about Coil’s Time Machines but seemingly tilted specifically in my direction.

    I started slowly accumulating a few of her recordings, each more compelling to me than the last. She has become an enormous influence on my music, which I think is obvious to hear when you listen to my more drone-oriented work.

    Yesterday, when I found out she had passed, I was actually listening to Sinewives (my newest Max 9 project) very slowly feeding me with FM tones, and her influence on me was thrown into stark relief. In her memory, I post this episode of Radio Free Arcadia, which is made largely from recordings of the output of Sinewives using the Free Arcadia Broadcaster device. Upon listening back I think it’s appropriate, if not coming close to her brilliance.

    In horror of death, I took to the mountains—
    Again and again I meditated on the uncertainty of the hour of death,
    Capturing the fortress of the deathless unending nature of mind,
    Now all fear of death is over and done.

    -Milarepa

    May all beings be happy!

  • 0201: Intersections I

    0201: Intersections I

    Radio Free Arcadia
    Radio Free Arcadia
    0201: Intersections I
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    After what must be more than two decades of attempting to properly learn Max/MSP, this holiday season I took some time out and made one more attempt. I’m very pleased to say that this time it appears to have clicked for me, and I’ve actually got a proper device I’ve been thinking about for some time.

    I’ll go into details about the device as it continues to take shape, but it is beginning to fulfill my desires to have a machine that crawls my library of bits and pieces and re-contrextualizes and re-assembles them, creating a shifting stream of sound that can be guided or left to its own to continue churning out music on its own. A Radio Free Arcadia broadcaster and DJ, if you will.

    This first example was assembled from a few different sessions with the machine, including:

    • some explorations of the intersection of ambient and experimental music with traditional Irish music and the uilleann pipes;
    • explorations from a highly influential recording of a folk song in played on an acoustic guitar in DADGAD tuning;
    • a collection of my own ambient demos from 2023;
    • finally, I fed it with its own output.

    This device will continue to evolve, and I hope to start broadcasting live with it in the very near future.

    Don’t forget to check out the first release on the new Offnominal imprint – Treces by Mail Order Mystics, who are myself and my very good friend and collaborator Ryan Dempsey. I suspect the next episode will involve the broadcaster being fed with that album.