Free City Radio

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Latest Anarchist Mountains album on CKUT 90.3fm charts

The latest Anarchist Mountains release, A Balkan Spacewalk, is on the CKUT 90.3fm music broadcast charts ! The Anarchist Mountains project is a collaboration with my brother Jordan Christoff, an ambient / electronic duet project. Our latest release is out on the Alien Garage label, based between Wisconsin and Tokyo, you can listen here:

A Balkan Spacewalk by Anarchist Mountains

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Free City Radio podcast on Spotify

Alright, now the Free City Radio podcast is live on Spotify also !

Right now the podcast is shared two times a week, while it also broadcasts on Wednesdays at 11h on CKUT 90.3fm in Montreal. 

Tune-in !

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Guest mixes on Free City Radio

An extensive and beautiful series of guest mixes for Free City Radio, many also broadcast on CKUT 90.3fm, listen here:

Free City Radio · Free City Radio guest mixes

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Rêves sonores album, Crépuscule

Rêves sonores has a new album out, Crépuscule, via Youngbloods records, I play piano on this album, listen, and / or order a vinyl here.

Crépuscule by Rêves sonores

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Important post on Face Recognition, and upcoming interview

I wanted to share this important breakdown on face recognition technology put out there by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). I recorded an interview with one of the post writers, Nathan Sheard, for Free City Radio that will be out on the podcast on Tuesday, Nov. 9th.

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Radio Alhara mixes راديو الحارة

I have been hosting a monthly mix residency at Radio Alhara mixes راديو الحارة in Palestine this past year, I put together the joint mixes worked on with various musicians and record labels, including Including collaborations with Jim White, Ken Vandermark, Narcy, AMEK collective, Xarah Dion, Sanjay Mistry (MailTape), Youngbloods records, Sessa, David Solnit, Jarrett Martineau, you can listen to all the mixes here.

Free City Radio · Radio Alhara mixes راديو الحارة

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Pedro Díaz and the Buffalo Hat Singers

Listening this past weekend to a solo album Vida, by Pedro Díaz. I know Pedro from exchanges and organizing efforts involving the Indigenous pow wow collective the Buffalo Hat Singers and also Pedro has shared some songs live on Free City Radio on CKUT. Listen to and learn about Pedro’s work here. Thank you for Pedro for passing on the album.

Also sharing a live performance of the Buffalo Hat Singers at CKUT studios.

Free City Radio · 49. Buffalo Hat Singers

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A note on Spokes album

Today, I listened to Spokes by szilárd, a project that musician Jeremy Young worked on. A couple months ago Jeremy passed on the album, in CD format, during a visit in Montréal. I thought the old school audio sound of the vocal passages was great, it almost sounded like that phone booth sound. The layers of guitar and tonal textures were also beautiful. I really liked this track.

Spokes by szilárd

The album is described this way: 'Spokes' is about dialogue and communication in four forms; man/nature, man/machines, nature/machines & tones/tones. Throughout the piece, sine and square sound waves reverberate against each other, vocal passages are dictated on damaged tape, and both the beauty and the clamor of the world outside our window is filtered through the lens of composition and structure, as Baudelaire's words also reflect that desire of the artist to register descriptions of the senses into their verse. Each track eschews the notion of one track = one song, as the piece constantly stops, starts, rotates and shifts within the limitations of track numbers. The album blends miniature guitar compositions with building tone textures, so its right there in between my roles in The Slowest Runner and Sontag Shogun.

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Musicians for Palestine podcast 3, Büşra Kayıkçı

Alright, the third edition of the Musicians for Palestine podcast is out. I interviewed Istanbul based piano player Büşra Kayıkçı. Nicolas Jaar did an awesome edit on the soundscape for the piece. Listen here. 

Musicians for Palestine · #MUSICIANSFORPALESTINE PODCAST 3 - Büşra Kayıkçı

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Joyful Rebellion.

Listening to Joyful Rebellion by K-OS. Always loved this album. I love the ways that there is a cosmic element to the words and vibe, also the acoustic guitar presence is excellent. Love the track Crucial. Also Man I Used To Be video is a beautiful take on downtown Toronto, also love how the focus of the track goes beyond the mood of an individual in the city and into the time travel space zone. 

This album always created a sense of inspiration while listening over the years, all support from my heart for the awesome pockets of inspired folks in Toronto making it happen. 

–– Stefan Christoff, Oct. 16, 2021.

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Five Days Over Seattle

Today I am listening to Five Days Over Seattle: An Audio Document of Free Radio Station Y2WTKO, a pirate radio station that broadcast across Seattle during the protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Nov 1999. 

This CD, released by the Cascadia Media collective, compiles broadcasts from this critically important protest convergence action that took aim at the colonial neoliberal economic policies of the WTO. Particularly, the radio streams aim to challenge the mainstream media broadcasts that were documenting the mass protests against the WTO that took place, successfully delaying the opening of the WTO and sparking the declaration of a police enforced “state of emergency” in Seattle during this time. 

The protests were opposing the ways that WTO policies work to open economic fields globally for corporate interests, while driving down labour, environmental and human rights standards by imposing multinational overarching conditions to corporate activity globally. The issues raised during the WTO protests in 1999 remain critically important today, as global corporations continue to grow in scope, scale and influence, as we have seen during the pandemic with the rising power of Amazon (a corporation that is facing a major wave of worker justice organizing right now). 

Also it is great listening to a pirate radio and also online radio expression of the protest movement from 1999, it mixes commentary, soundscapes, music and reports from the streets.  

This is part of an effort to document and recognize the CD collection that I have dragged between apartments in Montréal over the last years. Thank you to Joseph Sannicandro for suggesting this approach. Every day I will post one note about a CD and listen to the work also.

–– Stefan Christoff, Oct. 15, 2021.

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A beautiful album on Home Normal

Loving this album: "Day Falls" // Recently released on Home Normal.

Day Falls by Hawgood | Hüwels | Murray

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Musicians for Palestine project

Over the last months I have been working hard with some friends on the Musicians for Palestine project. Also there is a podcast, you can subscribe here.

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Interview on Carbon Democracy with Timothy Mitchell

The latest Free City Radio broadcast featuring an interview with author Timothy Mitchell on the important book Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil.

Free City Radio · CKUT 13/10/2021 - Timothy Mitchell on Carbon Democracy

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New Mexican Stargazers

Enjoying the album by New Mexican Stargazers out on Not Not Fun Records.

Highway Dreamscape by NEW MEXICAN STARGAZERS

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Awesome boat protest against Senator Manchin in West Virginia

This boat protest in West Virginia was really excellent, excerpts from an article in The Guardian.

For most people, kayaking on the Potomac is a leisure activity. For us, it was a desperate attempt to have our voices heard. We left our families and jobs in West Virginia to travel to DC in order to make sure Senator Manchin heard loud and clear from his constituents: it’s time to pass the Build Back Better Act. It just so happens that one of the only ways to get Senator Manchin’s attention is to launch a flotilla of boats around his yacht, where he lives when in DC.

(...)

After days of protesting on the water outside his yacht, we finally got Manchinto agree to sit down with us. And we stand by what we told him: he needs to pass the full reconciliation bill. It’s time to put the interests of working-class people first. For people like us, investments like an expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), paid family medical leave and childcare subsidies are a matter of life or death. 

Angi told him about her life as a young mother, working three jobs, barely seeing her kids and still needing to use food pantries. Loretta described a mom who was able to keep the lights on only because the CTC hit her bank account just in time. She explained that CTC work requirements punish children and hurt parents who can’t afford to pay for childcare to go to low-wage jobs. 

Our friend Zachary Fancher told the senator about how he was denied loans and grants to finish his schooling and how free community college would help young people get good jobs and slow the rate of exodus from the state, which is the highest in the country. Katonya Hart told Manchin about her struggles to assist elderly neighbors who cannot afford home care and about others attempting to perform their own medical and dental care. 

West Virginians also know better than anyone that the fossil fuel industry is dying. We’re bleeding jobs, and the Build Back Better Act is a prime opportunity for us to use federal dollars to move from the fossil fuel past into the clean energy future the world is already shifting to. We would rather have thousands of good union jobs than continue sending billions of our tax dollars to fossil fuel companies.

(Totally unacceptable that these two conservative Democratic senators can hold up legislation that is only beginning to respond to the urgency of this moment.)

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Interviews // Videos now

Good day friends, I have been working on a series of interviews for the Free City Radio podcast, while also sharing the interview videos on my personal Instagram account also, you can view here.