Sweet Seals For You, Always
Claire Keane
Keni
Monterey Bay Aquarium
almost home
macklin celebrini has autism
oozey mess
h
Cosimo Galluzzi
Kiana Khansmith
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
No title available
Doug Jones
KIROKAZE
One Nice Bug Per Day
taylor price
Fai_Ryy
official daine visual archive
No title available
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from Lithuania
seen from Colombia
seen from Indonesia
seen from Spain
seen from Netherlands
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Türkiye
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Singapore
seen from Argentina
seen from Türkiye
@omegaremix
Omega Radio for July 20, 2026; #446.
Converge: “Hum Of Hurt” REZN: “Cloudfall” Russian Circles: “Empath” Mastodon: “Your Ghost Again” Hot Load: “Blood Damage” + “Petroleum Express” Die Spitz: “American Porn” Siyahkal: “The Decide For Us” No Man: “Poison Darts” Deule: “Du Sucre Dans Le Beton” The Body: “The Crying Out Of Things” Inferno: “With Raving Mouths They Utter Things Mirthless…”
Deluxe metalcore, sludge, and doom.
Omega Radio for July 6, 2026; #444.
Parts & Labor: “Haunted Limbs”
Broker: “How’s It Going”
Clamm: “The Licensing”
Wipes: “Stone Eater”
Young Widows: “The Darkest Side”
Gilla Band: “Giraffe”
Bitter Branches: “Along Came A Bastard”
AAA Gripper: “The Arcade Claw King”
Art Star: “Rodeo Boots”
Lower Slaughter: “Hindsight”
Knub: “Bogus Remedy”
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs: “Reducer”
Gre/ay: “Culturally Insensitive Ritual Suicide”
Pound: “x-.+.+.x-.+.x-.x-.+”
Piss: “How Can You Act Opposite To This Emotion?”
Broadcast #444; deluxe noise- and math rock.
Allesandro; 2010.
During Record Store Day 2010, I ran into my industrialist friend Maniak at Looney Tunes in West Babylon. He was a plus-one who I initially met at the Stony Brook Press’ annual Beerfest and became immediate friends when we learned that we went to see Ministry at alternating dates. We had an hour to catch up in-store during our purchases and drove to High Fidelity in Amityville which was close because it didn’t take part in our holy holiday. Maniak then gave me directions to his friend Jae’s house, whom I thought couldv’e been any average faceless “Jay”. We arrive at his house and it was Jae from Failure 2 Comply who I went to Stony Brook with and haven’t seen in several years. Fellow industrialist Maniak was curious as to what Jae was working on so he showed us his electronics rig and demos.
Our night wasn’t finished. We all were bored and decided to go to his neighborhood bar where they had a local hardcore showcase. That’s when I first met my co-worker Allessandro. We ran into each other by accident and he stopped dead in his tracks. He said I looked very familiar to him. I told him we both worked at our location for several months and another in a long line of re-connections was made. Allessandro and I stood before the stage enjoying the local hardcore bands while Jae was serving behind the bar and Maniak was being busy swatting (or threatening with his cold stares) the windmill-kick enthusiasts that were flailing themselves. The shows were over and both Allessandro and I would say our hearty goodbyes, guaranteeing we’d see other at work. I drove both Jae and Maniak back to their houses and called it a great eventful Record Store Day.
At the end of the year, Allessandro shared the wealth and offered me his favorite finds at the time. He was one of the only hardcore kids I known from six years working at our location, leaving before our other co-workers Rick and Jesus who formed the original Champ. Allessandro gave me a small blue shell worth of about 100 songs consisting of plenty of e.p.’s, full albums, and random finds along the way. He gave me the music in Winter 2011 but had the time to really enjoy it a few months later. Some made the partial soundtrack to what became a very involved Camaro summer involving friends, allies, family, randoms, and many extras.
Allessandro was unceremoniously fired one Christmas Eve with no thanks to our scumbag jack-mafioso store ‘manager’ for not having a ride to work. He really did great for himself since disassociating from ever being there. He focused on going to more shows, took up graphic design and illustration to become an ambassador in the Long Island hardcore / grind scene. Go, Allessandro, go.
This is only 20% of what he gave me. It’s extremely brutal. Most of what’s here is very concentrated in sound, so it’s way more heavier, meaner, and dense in terms of physical sound than a good substantial number of bands before them. New York City hardcore, demos, and face-punching music in general. By the way, Maria Ruiz of Orange Is The New Black was a member of Everyone Gets Hurt. I didn’t say shit.
World Of Pain “Buried In Sin”
Billy Club Sandwich “Bodega”
7 Angels 7 Plagues “Away With Words”
Acirema “The Devil’s Work”
Taste The Steel “Racial Beaurocracy”
Brooksite “Focus”
Ruckus “True Testament”
Cold As Life “Police”
Everybody Gets Hurt “Scumbag”
Fang “Burn It Down”
100 Demons “Destiny Never Came”
Back Of Tha Neck “Worthless”
Locked In A Vacancy “Woke Up Swallowing Blood”
Billy Club Sandwich “Narco Cabron”
Without Remorse “28g Later”
Brooksite “Destiny”
100 Demons “Never Surrender Virtue”
Mushmouth “Here To Stay”
Out To Win “In A Perfect World”
Blood Has Been Shed “The House Of Fists”
Strife “Stand As One (Redemption)”
36 Deadly Fists “Everything Burns”
Billy Club Sandwich “Veteran’s Day”
World Of Pain “Drowning”
Out To Win “Persist And Destroy”
Sampling Genesis.
Living in Brentwood meant you were in a hip-hop demographic. At least half of the less-than-18′s we knew were exposed to the golden-era of it. We had 2Pac, The Notorious B.I.G., The Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep…you name it, we had it. There was never a day we didn’t listen to it on our Walkmans roaming down the street, made tapes off the radio, hear it blasting on backyard basketball courts and out of cars, or you and four of your friends pumping Nas’ Illmatic while playing Mortal Kombat in your room late at night.
I have plenty of dubs going back to the early Nineties when WBLS was hip-hop, and many other from Kiss FM and Hot 97. Cassettes were the only thing we had to record on. Maxells and TDKs were our leading go-to brands, sometimes Recoton and Sony, even having to buy the low-quality drugstore brands if we had nothing else. Tapes were iconic in hip-hop and always used in boomboxes, breakdancing, and for homemade mixtapes before sidewalk CDr’s and downloads were the norm of the new millennium. Let’s not forget those stickers, too, where we tagged our shells with markers for that real-deal hip-hop look. I have plenty of these Nineties moments as they happened, now sitting on the shelf waiting to be digitized. You can certainly put your money down that hip-hop made me and my formative years.
Before the turn of the millennium, I came across hip-hop not played on commerical radio on my FM dial. It was that moment that I re-discovered WUSB, the station I select for. Ghetto Radio played Jay-Z’s “Feelin’ It” and some other unknowns that had me see more than what those other stations were peddling us. For a late-night slot, they were throwing up a lot of fuck- and shit-bombs on the air. And that was from the dee-jays themselves. Luckily, no one got fined. Of all the hip-hop shows we had, Ghetto Radio was the grimiest. The others were Eminent Audio, Street FM, and The Basement; full of graffiti heads, backpackers, and those who preached the real hip-hop and its culture. I was sold on all four of them.
The next summer, Asmar of The Basement played Lonnie Liston Smith’s “Expansions” and it forever changed where I was heading. I felt something from “Expansions” that I haven’t felt in a long time. It was a time long gone with no going back, survived only by the discourse of other music, sitcoms, game shows, board games, video games, and other things I experienced when I was living as Brooklyn kid. That very cut made me a jazz / fusion fan, and Smith would be the first on my list of favorite artists from that genre. Asmar then flipped “Aspirations” and “Colors Of The Rainbow” and hit me like unlike anything else. All three of Smith’s tracks aren’t known to be heavily sampled but they’re part of a genre that is inseperable from hip-hop as it samples from it.
That same summer, Eminent Audio and Ghetto Radio held sample sets which I recorded off the radio as it happened. It was their own sample appreciation night. They flipped one record after another, playing anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute of each original. Those sessions became a part of me. My enthusiasm for jazz, fusion, R&B, and soul started to grow, and “Expansions” to me would be forever credited for my fascination with samples and crate-digging. The samples they used ranged from the mid-Sixties to everything Seventies. Jazz, fusion, blue, funk, soul, vocal, R&B, theatrical, and more. Nothing but vinyl. They way hip-hop and original sampling was meant to be. Complete with static and pops but no skips. You know how authentic those sounds were because, back then, vinly records was the only thing your folks’ generation had. It’s not ephemera, it’s document of an era. The soul, the experience, the events and feelings were all written on wax as it happened. There’s nothing like traveling back in time just by hearing some of these classics.
As time went on, the discourse traveled further. My affinity for jazz, fusion, and everything Seventies bolstered because of these sampled sets I archived. Because of The Breaks, Youtube, and now WhoSampled, I now have a sizeable vinyl collection of originals and still going. Just by visiting those sites, a whole new world opened up and continues so. It’s very interesting the twists and turns an original sample leads on its own by comparing itself to the final newer product. New favorite artists and producers were introduced. Madlib, J Dilla, Buckwild, DJ Premier, MF Doom. Even on that very rare occasion, sampling had identified some impossibly elusive holes that for years I couldn’t identify. Now, some of our bonus Omega WUSB broadcasts feature our own sample and crate-digging sets, as a payback to the very station and our dee-jays that got me into sampling archaeology in the first place.
Now, here it is. From my personal collection. Found below is the tracklisting to this very sampling mixtape, made from other tapes in my collection. How ironic. That’s how hip-hop started. You’ll hear our dee-jays shout them out on air, and even some legends shouting us out. See if you can find them. As with mixtapes, there’s some unlisted artists and track names. That’s because our dee-jay’s never i.d.’ed them, adding to the elusiveness and nature of crate-digging, finding sampling gold, and possessive spinners who don’t want others biting their style. Now you know what we go through. Don’t let these blanks keep you from discovering something new. I know I did. Enjoy.
WUSB hip-hop sampling sets, 2000-2001:
??? “???”
Olympic Runners “Don’t Let Up”
O.V. Wright “Let’s Straighten It Out”
Blue Magic “Born On Halloween”
??? “???”
??? “???”
??? “???”
??? “???”
Roy Ayers Ubiquity “Ain’t Got Time”
??? “???”
Ahmad Jamal “I Say A Little Prayer”
Weather Report “Young And Fine”
Slum Village “Climax (Girl Shit)”
Steve Miller Band “Fly Like An Eagle”
Soft Machine “Carol Ann”
Group Home “Supa Star”
Isaac Hayes “Hung Up on My Baby”
Willie Mitchell “Groovin’”
Isaac Hayes “Buns O'Plenty”
O'Jays, The “For The Love Of Money”
Staple Singers, The “Let’s Do It Again”
Lonnie Liston Smith “Expansions”
Marvin Gaye “After The Dance” (INS)
Grover Washington Jr. “Knucklehead”
Isaac Hayes “A Few More Kisses to Go”
Mtume “Juicy”
Brick “Fun”
Ray, Goodman, & Brown “Another Day”
Andrea McArdle “It’s The Hard Knock Life”
Kool & The Gang “Summer Madness”
New Birth, The “You Are What I’m All About”
Steely Dan “Black Cow”
Maynard Ferguson “Mister Mellow”
Zapp & Roger “More Bounce To The Ounce”
Jerry Butler “I’m Your Mechanical Man”
Seals & Croft “Sweet Green Fields”
Minnie Riperton “Baby This Love I Have”
Weather Report “Young And Fine”
Billy Joel “Stiletto”
Jack Wild, Shani Wallis, Sheila White, Kathe Green & Ron Moody “I’d Do Anything”
Betty Wright “You’re Just What I Need”
Norman Connors “The Creator Has A Master Plan”
??? “???”
Hamilton Bohannon “Singing a Song for My Mother”
Cissy Houston “Nothing Can Stop Me”
Gil Scott Heron & Brian Jackson “Vidgolia”
Grover Washington, Jr. “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)”
Grand Puba “Don’t Waste My Time”
??? “???”
Gang Starr “The Planet”
Steve Davis “It’s All Because She’s Gone”
??? “???”
??? “???”
Galt MacDermot’s First Natural Hair Band “Ripped Open By Metal Explosions”
Nas “It Ain’t Hard to Tell”
Michael Jackson “Human Nature”
??? “???”
Les McCann “Vallarta”
??? “???”
??? “???”
Randy Crawford “Street Life”
Earth, Wind & Fire “Brazilian Rhyme (Beijo Interlude)”
Dilated Peoples “Work The Angles” RMX
Mahavishnu Orchestra “Resolution”
Maynard Ferguson “Mister Mellow”
Richard “Groove” Holmes “Onsaya Joy”
Bob James “Carribean Nights”
??? “???”
Leon Haywood “I Want’a Do Something Freaky to You”
Mikey Dread “Saturday Night Style”
Rick James “Mary Jane”
Keni Burke “Rising to the Top”
Mary Jane Girls “All Night Long”
Gap Band “Outstanding”
Incredible Bongo Band, The “Apache”
Whole Darn Family, The “Seven Minutes Of Funk”
??? “???”
??? “???”
Beginning of the End, The “When She Made Me Promise”
??? “???”
??? “???”
David Axelrod “The Warnings Pt. II”
??? “???”
Busta Rhymes “Show Me What You Got”
??? “???”
??? “???”
??? “???”
??? “???”
Slum Village “Players”
Singers Unlimited, The “Clair”
Jean-Jacques Perrey “E.V.A.”
??? “???”
??? “???”
??? “???”
Parliament “Do That Stuff”
??? “???”
??? “???”
??? “???”
??? “???”
Zulema “American Fruit, African Roots”
Guru & Bilal “Certified”
??? “???”
Foster Sylvers “Misdemeanor”
??? “???”
Omega Radio for July 18, 2026; #445.
Rabit: "Meet The Devil"
Antwon: "1 Million Limos" (ft. Cities Aviv)
King Vision Ultra: "Below"
Ommed Norouzi: "Fountain For Memory"
Soren Roi: "Camm"
Video Blue: "Iron Crucifix"
Peacetime Death: "Barytt" + "Cyrxce"
Somali Extract: "Tribal Debt" + "Locked"
Nick Klein: "Guy Combo"
Blue Krishna: "Scorpio Rising"
Lower Tar: "Lacquer And Dust"
Deep Pill: "Hard Extrct"
Cienfuegos: "Contros Occultos"
Foreplay: Vicarious
Appetite: "Anxiety" (Dust)
Jock Club: "Morphose"
Granite Mask: "7th / Black Market"
Lust For Youth: "Perfect View"
Boy Harsher: "Country Boy"
Andrew Flores: "Sesto San Giovanni A1"
Kali Malone: "Fifth Worship"
Horoscope: "Common Ground"
Varg2: "Suede And Velvet Combination"
Helm: "Dakhma"
Sorrowing Christ: "Dissolve"
Puce Mary: "Obedient Grounds"
Ligature: "Finally Letting Them In"
Dealing: "'83 A2"
Sublimation: "Brain Ded"
Shredded Nerve: "First, Second, And Third Exposure"
Marshstepper: The Transgression Continues (excerpt)
Boys Of Paradise: Death Is An Imposition... (excerpt)
JS Aurelius: Hallucinognosis Loops (excerpt)
Maurizio Bianchi: "Menstrual Bleeding"(excerpt)
Otro Mundo: "Midnight Oil Burner"
Tempe SS: "Heroin Heaven" + "I'll Kill You Pt. 1 & 3"
Destruction Unit: "Do Drugs"
Ukiah Drag, The: "Nina Came Knockin'"
Avon Ladies: "2 For $15"
Acid Dawgz: "Play The Oboe And Bagpipes Merrily! etc."
Pigeon Religion: "Warm Insides"
Psychic Blood: "Burning Wave"
First of four bonus Summer label showcases.
Utopia (Hicksville); 2011:
The Summer of '11 reminds me of a time when I drove a yellow 1991 Camaro and had the week off to catch up on record-shopping. We have a shop called Utopia where they not only specialized in tattoos and piercings but also sold punk, kink, stoner, skinhead, and even sex lifestyles. They had two locations in Centereach and in Hicksville. Being I just made a purchase in their former store, I had the urge to visit the latter.
There was no access to their upstairs where the music and tees were kept, so all of it was now downstairs. I seen several boxes of their remaining music stock in proximity, the boxes itself were somewhat disorganized and disheveled. I look up and they were having a final sale. All discs were $3.99 each, vinyl was half-price, and seven-inch records were face value.
I always went to Utopia to clean out as much seven-inch records as possible, but a visible sale on vinyl and discs focused on some much-needed genres was a given. I spent an hour picking and choosing, adding and subtracting what I could be taking home; all the while hearing the female employees being very snippy and nasty towards anyone who dared asked for the smallest of help and waited ten minutes for it.
One of the staffers came over and was very nice to offer help which I didn’t need any, but it was very nice of him. He did remind me that they were closing shortly and told me that although I just missed a Cold Cave release, that they would be playing at the Guggenheim. It was a show I would’ve loved to go to but it was placed in-between two consecutive work days so the opportunity to feel special and elevated couldn’t be possible.
Five minutes to go and out of nowhere he now tells me that since Utopia wanted to really get rid of their physical stock, he knocked the price down on all discs to just one dollar apiece. That was when I took all I initially passed up back into the basket and high-tailed it to the register to make one of these least expensive purchases I ever made. It gave me fodder for some of Omega Radio's future St. Patrick's Day hardcore / punk specials.
Minute Manifesto / Shank split 7”
XBXRX O 7”
Fed Up Lashing Out 7”
Turmoil Anchor
Subterfuge 1996
Tear It Up The First Four Months
Frightener Guillotine
Suburban Lockdown Laid To Waste
Reform, The Stand In Line
When Tigers Fight self-titled
In Control Another Year
Crucial Unit These Colors Get The Runs
Broken Heroes IToldUOnce
Premonitions Of War The True Face Of Panic
Whiskey Rebels / Hanover Saints split
Taken Back! Atrocities
Reflection Eternal Revolutions Per Minute
Bitter End Guilty As Charged
Jenny Lewis Acid Tongue
Out Cold / Voorhees split
Spitfire Hardcore Discography 86-89
Slug / MURS / Aesop Rock Felt
Thirstin Howl III Skilligan’s Island
Baby Elephant Turn My Teeth Up
No Turning Back Damage Done
Devoid Of Faith / Voorhees Network Of Friends 5
Cropknox Rock And Rot
The National Acrobat Complete Recordings
Striking Distance The Bleeding Starts Here
A-Team, The A Is For Asshole
Hellcat Records label Give Them The Boot II
Until The End Blood In The Ink
Federation X X Patriot
RRRecords, 2006.
As I was putting together some playlist posts over the weekend, I made a few trips to Discogs to grab some album art. Then it hit me. All of it. Wolf Eyes, Black Dice, Jim O'Rourke, Carlos Giffoni, Burning Star Core, The Magik Markers, Rogers Sisters, Ecstatic Peace, Lightning Bolt, etcetera. The amazing burst exploded in my head. These were artists prominently featured in everyone’s minds and conversations on campus, online music sites, and in select cities everywhere during the last decade. These were artists I played on my original show, discovered during my time as WUSB program director and at The Stony Brook Press.
Some people go as far to say that the mid-Oughts were the golden-age of hipsterdom ("peak hipster"). They’re not far from the truth. There could be many more but these are the ones that happened. Whether they were taken from Pitchfork, found in our new release bins at the station, or I even bought from the shows they performed, most if not all of these artists mentioned became a significant factor during my time at Stony Brook. The nostalgic burst made me feel that something has to be done sooner or later. Cornflower agreed that I better do something about it.
One that I neglected to mention was RRRecords. Somewhere along the way I discovered the Lowell, Massachusetts record store and noise label that is Ron Lessard, who is better known as noise artist Emil Beaulieau. Documentaries were made with his inclusion and is known for his strange oddball behavior during performances, but he is given credit for putting the New England noise scene and aesthetic on the map, sharing that honor with the now-finished Load Records.
RRRecords was the label that gave away xeroxed catalogs for more than 15 years before putting its listings online where I found them. Going through the list that RRRecords had to offer, I noticed him selling a sizable list of “recycled tapes”: low-priced cassettes which the originals are recorded over with noise artist’s material, and their J-cards physically duct-taped and written with magic marker. Really, tapes designed as samplers for those wanting to try out new noise artists at low risk. That was how I ended up buying a substantial order from the label.
The tapes were $4 a piece so I ordered a lot of them. I also ordered for $5 each Masonna’s Inner Mind Mystique on 3x7" vinyl (1996) and Merzbow’s Pornoise 1KG five-tape set (1987) with filthy Trevor Brown art. Everything was sent to my residence within the week. Aside from the titles I purchased from Lessard, he was also kind enough to throw in stickers, postcards, flyers, and even rare memorabilia having absolutely nothing to do with music, including old music advertisements, train schedules, and small bank pamphlets.
Most of the artists you see here are of recycled tapes. Recycled tapes from Sparkle Girl, Athenian Mercury, NxFxTxEx, Cherry Point, and DCLXVI were the introductory point in finding these artists and eventually made it to some of our Omega Radio noise specials and personal mixes. I also discovered that the Prurient tape made was from a split with Wolf Eyes called The Warriors (2005).
His online shop is still there. (As of this posting: so is his physical store.) Going through his current stock, another order is way overdue. There’s potential to grab some interesting marquee releases for a low price. The probability to fill some empty holes and enjoy the golden-era that I experienced at Stony Brook is high. Wish me luck.
Jennifer Wolski (recycled)
Sparkle Girl (recycled)
AT&T (recycled)
Prurient (recycled)
Aube (recycled)
Incapacitants (recycled)
Haters, The (recycled)
Masonna (recycled)
Merzbow (recycled)
Achim Wollscheid (recycled)
NxFxTxEx (recycled)
Bruce Carkiss (recycled)
Athenian Mercury (recycled)
f/I (recycled)
Cherry Point (recycled)
Bastard Noise (recycled)
Japanese Torture Comedy Hour (recycled)
DCLXVI (recycled)
Masonna Inner Mind Mystique (vinyl)
Merzbow Pornoise 1KG
Seasonal Mixtapes.
I met Mercy in my second semester at community college. A short skinny Irish / Italian / German girl with long black curls, olive tone, a lilac scent, and a old-school Brooklyn accent. It was an already dicey situation to begin with. By month’s end, I had my own friends and other minor bit-player friends of hers join in to harass me and threaten to assault me. There were times when Mercy and her friends were openly shit-talking about me - in front of me - for me to see, and then panicked to keep quiet when I walked towards them to get to class.
But that wasn’t enough for her. We ended up having an astronomy class together a few semesters later. That was loads of fun; spending another four months feeling awkward and uneasy having a saboteur sitting in the same room as I. After class I sat in my seat while I saw her play that same game on me - this time to our professor. She had to let everyone she came in contact with know how much of a danger I was. Meanwhile, her sidecar friends still took shots and threw insults at me when when we crossed paths. I had those former close “friends” shake their heads and laugh at me and others who gave me hateful looks every chance they had.
It’s my second semester in community college and already I’m dealing with heavy drama, and there was no shortage of it. Superficiality, change of face, carelessness, exclusion, and good ‘ol classic stuck-up uptight attitudes were the social highlights of a horrid three-and-a-half years of ‘higher’ education ("13th Grade").
Not all moments during that era were a bust, however. My Brentwood-era friend Brandon had a string of relationships that went nowhere. The pale strawberry blonde with the pierced nipples. The goth girl with the coke dust on her black nightstand. The brunette at the mall who deliberately ignored me when Brandon and I came to see her. Those potentials only lasted mere months before they reached their expiration date.
Being the good diplomat that I was for everyone whom never reciprocated, I had one person in mind who was mostly good to me during the Plainview era. She was Manzana, the cutest Italian-Jewish girl of short stature, shoulder-length black hair and big brown eyes. I was introduced to her and her other Jewish friend Theresa through an acquaintance of ours and we dated briefly. She was the final hope when all my ties from Plainview started to crumble. and she became the last surviving contact I had there.
I haven’t seen her since the Halloween party where she gave me an unsolicited hug and had her feelings hurt by another nasty-mouthed girl that I also dated. (Don’t look at me. I had absolutely nothing to do with it.) So I called her and she was happy to hear from me. I told her I had someone for her and a few nights later we all got together with some other friends of hers. Oh, and this kid Lucas whom I previously met at the high-school spooktacular.
My last-ever night in Plainview would turn out exactly like my first-ever visit there.
Brandon and Manzana were happy to see each other. Matt and I would catch up and trade notes on everyone we hung-out with at that party. There was another friend of Manzana’s, Mike, who sat cross-armed and kept to himself. Baseball cap, black shirt, tattoos and…Jnco jeans with a long chain to boot (sigh). He didn’t seem to laugh or crack a smile at any time we were there. But she wasn’t serving just sausages at her house. She also had three female friends over. Amanda was the one that caught my eye with her skinny frame, short black neck-length hair and glasses. One my mind and eyes tried to separate from the others.
Couch cushions and pillows were being thrown around miraculously missing any furnishings of value. Popcorn shots were being flickered at each other. Screaming and laughing-out-loud as some of us were play-fighting for shits and giggles. Amanda and I were getting along great along with her other friends. Mike didn’t say a fucking word through any of it. Fun was below him. A few hours later the girls had to leave and said good-bye to us. Just like that our night shifted gears from 4th to 1st.
Brandon and his new girlfriend Manzana were now making out in her living room under a poster-sized jigsaw puzzle of her two year-old self as Less Than Jake played in the background. Lucas and I shook our heads at each other because the scene playing out felt awkward. Was it because of Brandon and Manzana’s blatant disregard of our existence or because some shitty 3rd-wave ska music was playing in the background? Who the fuck knows, really. We were the sad pathetic ones shoved off to the side while the newly-found couple had their shine and sparkle.
With all this ridiculousness going on, this idea came out of nowhere. One specific idea would influence everything I do from that point and in writing, recording, and graphic design: the personal mixtape.
My gramma’ always ordered magazine subscriptions for me. One of them had quarterly issues where Winter issues came out in December. That always stuck a chord with me when the idea came to fruition. I also had seven years of cassette dubs, radio recordings, and a small personal music library. Wouldn’t it be a great idea to make a -tape to easily remember all the people, places, and events in my timeline? How can I connect those certain whiffs, sights, scenes, thoughts, emotions and experiences that all tie together? Right there I had the concept of organizing them on a three-month basis. Now, they're seasonal personal mixtapes.
At the end of that polarizing Spring, I compiled all my favorite artists and songs I heavily listened to during the last three months (March, April, and May) through my dual-tape deck and put them all on one two-hour tape; the longest duration I could find. As the music played, so did the memories. That tumultuous semester at community college. The many bike rides to the bookstore, Centereach’s None Of The Above Records for punk and electronic runs and rummaging through Port Jefferson’s Music Den’s used bins for obscure electronics and experimental sounds. Meeting the would-be literary superstars at the campus newspaper. Tagging along with my male primadonna musician friends all throughout the local music scene. D.I.Y. tape demos. Processed sodium in sealed boxes and Asian snack mixes in plastic containers. And, of course, Friday night at Manzana’s house. See where I’m heading with this?
I’ve recorded many hours of radio on tons of cassettes. I made pause-unpause transfers from one tape to another. I also made many mixtape trades to friends state-to-state and even overseas before the advent of downloading. But nothing up until this point where I habitually made a mixtape for only myself designating a specific time-frame of events. And it didn’t have to be a linear order of those events or if the mixtape started in May, went back to March, and forward to April where it ends; or Sunday-Wednesday backwards. Be ambiguous, just capture them. Any artist or song I discovered during that 90-day time frame - no matter if it was from the radio, my personal collection, given by friends, or overheard at work - the #1 rule was let the chips fall where they may. “As it happens, when it happens” became the motto.
The mixtapes snowballed into a regular thing that I had to do. Eventually, I made one of the summer of my senior year; the first time I met Manzana. It…was an interesting few hours with her to say the least. Not even twenty minutes after meeting each other and her friend Theresa at the Broadway Mall, the both of us started holding hands. We sat next to each other as she, Theresa, and I had lunch at the food court on the top level. Next thing I know Manzana took my hand and placed it on her inner thigh. Wow. I didn’t expect to go that far that quick - and in public, too. I didn’t know what to think. Our Sunday date wasn’t a bust, I thought. I wasn’t equipped to deal with the slight curveballs she pitched at me.
But, here’s another: their friend Shirley met the three of us there; a Dutch girl of my height and dark caramel hair. We all spoke with her for a good five minutes before we all split and went on our way. Then came the good news: my friend told me that Shirley was super interested in me and she’d set us up the next time I came to visit. Well, two weeks later, both Shirley and I met at a friend’s graduation party in Bethpage. In less than ten minutes we walked to the fields and made out. Amazing.
Shortly after seeing Manzana for the last time, I realized she was up to her old magic tricks again. She never invited me to her cakeday parties, claimed to have never received my holiday cards (that was a flat-out bold-faced fucking lie), and never did that favor of setting me up with Amanda. That one’s on me for not having the bravery to ask her for her number the first time around. But somehow I made her cry when she called and asked me about Brandon. He was done with her. She was heartbroken to hear that he moved on and found herself sobbing like a trembling wreck. Truth hurts, doesn’t it? That was a final parting shot to cap off throwing money away at a sunk cost in a losing game.
By coincidence, I met Lucas once again a few years later when I had a new circle of neighborhood friends. He thought it was a good idea to hang out with his drama queen ex- and that was a bonafide disaster. But he had some interesting updates for me: Manzana slept with the store manager and got a promotion - then was fired for Lord knows what. Not a good look for her when everyone who knew her just learned that she lost her V-card with her 21 year-old next-door neighbor - when she was only 14. Christ and Judas Almighty…
Since last seeing her, the concept of personal mixtapes never stopped. I just completed a mammoth undertaking in digitizing my entire personal cassette library. From most of the Nineties all the way to the end of the Oughts I spent hundreds of hours making them. When the Tens began, I purchased a Gateway laptop and my days of playing with tape media were totally over. My seasonal mixtapes now migrated onto burned CD’s. I did that for a while until a little after Omega WUSB and Ω+ started. Now, no need to. The “mixtapes” are simply playlists now and are posted in a timely manner. I’m always saving and consolidating time as more tasks for projects need to be done.
The seasons still have a hand in everything I do. Take this (ΩRMX) for example. There’s an entire link dedicated to them. They’re the basis in which this page you’re reading now survives by, and to this day we still post them. Go down the list and you can literally see my personal evolution of what genres, artists, and songs I’ve discovered and when. From golden-era hip-hop, alternative, industrial, electronics, experimental sounds, noise, indie, hipster, jazz, fusion, vinyl treasures, synthpop, chillwave, synthwave, shoegaze, noise rock, d-beat, punk, African tapes and beyond. We post our Omega WUSB broadcasts and even go as far as creating annual best-of’s and finds of the year. The personal journey which I walk on is one you wouldn’t even believe.
I’ve received some very valuable words from certain readers who say that the best thing about Ω+ is the precise insight and personal introspective of a specific time in my life. A few are amazed as to how I could bring up certain details, motifs, and progenies about a time or soul that no longer exists. I been there and seen it. I would know. Of course, there’s a downside when playing fair (“as it happens, when it happens”) and that is bad events do happen. It’s inherit in everyone’s life and no one’s immune. I, or anyone, could be accused of hanging onto the past and investing or throwing away time thinking about people that aren’t worth it simply by writing about them.
But, we do it to prove a point: to show progression in our lives, to relate and connect with people, etcetera. Either way, good or bad, if I did my job then congratulations to me.
Coum Transmissions: The Sound of Porridge Bubbling
Chain Of Hatred: demo- '24.
Crass: Christ: The Album