3am, a good hour.

...I've always been a nighthawk, a nightowl, a nightanimal. And I've always been fascinated by late night radio. It's always had a weird kind of mysterious, melancholy magical appeal to me. Even songs or genres of music in which I had no interest gained a strange kind of appeal, took on a certain emotion when I heard them in the late night/early morning hours. The DJ's on the nightshift sounding like they were talking to me from far far away, off in the darkness, yet intimately close. Ethereal, sinister, comforting, nostalgic are all words that come to mind thinking about it now.
     When I was twelve or thirteen I would listen to 640am and 680am as I went to sleep. I was naive to music then, and didn't care what the stations played(top 40 mostly). I just enjoyed the sounds of the radio in the quiet of the night.
     About the age of fifteen, having discovered Guns n Roses, Jimi Hendrix and The Doors, I began listening to the Overnight Show with the legendary Andy Frost on Q107. I'd sit in bed, in the dim glow of the light coming from the display panel of my stereo receiver and listen for hours every night. Songs by The Doors, Pink Floyd, Tom Petty and Bob Seeger took on a whole new power in those early hours. But the real treat was listening to Andy Frost and his deep baritone voice. Telling me stories and strange interesting facts about the songs and bands he played. Telling me what was coming up, just talking to me really. In those hours, in the warm darkness, it felt like only me and the radio exisited. I could picture the radiowaves travelling through the night sky, through space, across the sleeping world. And I can't describe how peaceful it made me feel. Listening to songs like The Crystal Ship, Radar Love, Breakdown, and Time in the dead of night,in that warm Toronto summertime air.
      Around the time I was seventeen or eighteen I began listening to late night radio on my walkmen. I remember finally trading in my old clunky black walkmen with the equaliser on the front, for a fancy silver superslim sony walkmen. I'd put in the ear buds late at night, round 2am or 3am and scan the channels for something interesting. I had discovered that if you scanned the edges of the dial a little bit, late at night when the world was quiet, you could find pirate radio broadcasts and obscure college radio broadcasts, that weren't on at other times. I was completely fascinated. I'd listen to dance music shows, hip hop shows, classical music shows, talk radio, it didn't matter. Good signal or weak fuzzy signal, that didn't really matter either. I was totally and completely under the spell of this beautiful secret world. I loved discovering weird music I'd never ever heard of before. Listening to people from a seemingly different world from mine discuss things I never understood or at least never knew the context of.
      Going down this road, it wasn't very long till I discovered what will probably always be my favourite radio show ever, the brilliant CBC radio 3 late night show, Brave New Waves. Tragically, since 2006, no longer on the air. When I first stumbled upon this show, hosted by the great Patti Schmidt, I never even understood what I was listening to. She'd play hours of music by artists from all over the world. Japan, Iceland, Sweden, France, England, Canada. Music I'd never ever heard in my life. Weird experimental noise, electronic soundscapes, obscure hip hop. Whatever genre she played, it was always cutting edge and experimental. Groundbreaking. It blew my mind open. I purposely started staying awake in bed even later just to listen to more of the show.
       A couple of years later when I was working as a security guard in a head office in west Toronto, quite often doing the midnight to eight shift, I'd relish the hours I spent in the main office, or in the gatehouse alone with the radio on. Still Brave New Waves every night. Quite often Patti Schmidt would take a whole section of a show and play the music of a single artist. It was in this way I discovered the music of Amon Tobin. Then known as Cujo. She played a selection of songs from his groundbreaking album Adventures in Foam and I was excited(It was about this time I became obsessed with the Ninja Tune label.). Not long after I heard Buck 65 in the same way. I'd only recently discovered his music, first through the song Pants on Fire, having watched an interview with him on the great Muchmusic television show Mucheast. During the interview Buck gave the interviewer a tour of a pants factory, directly afterwards Terry Mulligan played the video for Pants on fire and I was in awe. Hooked from the first line. I still am to this day. I immediately, the very next day after watching Mucheast, ran down to Rotate This and bought a copy of Man Overboard. Goddamn I was excited in that moment. I felt like I'd really discovered something. Anyway, it wasn't long afterwards, maybe a few months, half a year, that Patti Schmidt told me over the radio she was about to play a selection of Buck 65 songs. That really cemented it for me. Both my love for Buck 65 and Brave New Waves. I also first heard the Japanese mad geniuses the Boredoms on here too, but it would be many years later before I really understood what I'd been listening to in those late night hours.
       Finally, the last great late night radio show I remember listening to, in genuine excitement and anticipation, was Little Stevens Underground Garage, on Q107. A different kind of radio show to Brave New Waves in terms of the music it featured, but really very similar in terms of introducing me to music I'd never heard before. Music I drank up just as eagerly. He'd play, and actually I think he still does play, garage rock from the sixties and seventies, mixed with old soul and a few songs by new bands. He'd play obscure songs by Sam the Sham, The Zombies, The Kingsmen, and The Troggs, as well as new songs by bands like The Mooney Suzuki. But aside from the great music, the real treat in Little Stevens Underground Garage is "Little Steven" Van Zandt himself. The legendary guitar player for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, the man is a fountain of musical knowledge and has a natural talent for storytelling,
       Unfortunately in recent years,I have (I am very sad to say) grossly neglected late night radio. For several reasons, travelling and the dawn of the digital music age being the two most obvious. I can't remember the last time I purposely stayed up till 4am just to listen to a great radio show, or to merely scan back and forth across the radio dial in search of the weird and the strange. The ever declining quality of radio programming in general hasn't helped either, it must be said.
     But anyway, somewhere in thinking about all this, an idea came to me. This was way back in September or October. One night I sat down at the computer about 12:30 or 1am and started compiling a mixtape, with the idea of late night radio in mind. I was thinking about the feelings I used to get from late night radio, and what kind of music I'd play if I had the opportunity to host a late night radio show. With each mixtape I tried to create the feelings one gets from listening to music at 3am. I thought about different situations, the comedown after a great house party, late night highway driving(another passion of mine, but we'll talk about that another time), working the night shift, sitting around with good friends, laying in bed with a girl, laying in bed by yourself.
     I've made five of these mixtapes so far, since October. And I've simply named the series Electronic Night Music. I don't have the technology or the knowledge required to actually put the tracks on this page for you to listen to, but I figured what the hell, I'll put the first mix in the series on here for you to take a look at, and if you want, you can search the songs down. I think the song names alone make interesting reading, but I'm weird like that. I'll put up the rest in the series over the next few weeks. Hope you enjoy.


Electronic Night Music: Vol. 1 (October 2nd, 2009, 3:20am)

1. Windowlicker - Aphex Twin
2. Cendre - Fennesz & Sakamoto
3. Sixtyniner - Boards of Canada
4. Radio Void - Chris & Cosey
5. Happy Ending - Manitoba
6. A Letter From Home - Ulrich Schnauss
7. 2/1 - Brian Eno
8. Radioaktivitat - Kraftwerk
9. Rhubarb - Aphex Twin
10. Electricity - The Avalanches
11. Last Night Over Norway - Funki Porcini
12. June 9th - Boards of Canada
13. Temple Bar - Chris and Cosey
14. Idioteque - Radiohead
15. Red Light - Tomas Jirku/Robin Judge
16. I Wish You Could Talk - Squarepusher
17. Gwely Mernans - Aphex Twin
18. We Have A Map Of The Piano - Mum
19. Understars II - Brian Eno
20. Dundas, Ontario - Manitoba
21. Aware - Fennesz & Sakamoto
22. Sprig - Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton
23. Inside - Moby
24. K/Half noise - Mum

I also made a shorter version that would fit onto cd, this version has been reduced from 24 tracks, down to 13. And contains mostly instrumental songs. I aptly named this version Vol. 1.5 less vocal short version.