M Van Vleet – signalstation

The Signal: EP203

The Signal: EP203 – Exactly 45 minutes of sounds pleasing to the ear, acceptable to the liver, restorative of eyes and hair. This time out we’ve got electronic sounds, Chinese-American pop, UK office punk, hip hop, grime, garage rock and more! Wow!

Download by clicking on the link (or image) above. The file is available only for a limited time. If you’re interested in the tracklist, it’s in the mp3 itself in the id3 tags. If you’d like to receive an email every time a new mix is posted, uh… ask me, I guess.

Let’s Get Loud vol. 5 – The Wolves

Let’s Get Loud vol. 5 – Bass bangers that have one thing in common: they need to be played loud! A 33 min. mix of tunes for pack hunters, moon howlers and folks with fangs! Tracklist is in the id3 tags. Available for download for a limited time only.

Hey, Free Chains!

The boys was digging up a trench and found a coffin that was chained up and we’re thinking: nice! Free chains.

Everyone got their share of links and we’ve finally got chains on stuff that hasn’t had chains ever.

Unrelated: some nocturnal creature’s been picking us off one by one and, like, the first thing this thing did was smash up that coffin we found and, like… rude.

Turns out the coffin was empty, which is weird for how heavy it was when we got those chains off it.

The Signal: EP202

The Signal: EP202 – Exactly 45 minutes of songs from around the globe, perfectly suited for hip-shaking and stone cold grooving. This time around we’ve got beat girls from Spain, jazz girls from France, Japanese pop, Russian post-punk, low-rider soul, Turkish funk, jams from Morocco and Brazil, colorful cover versions and more!

i just want my home office space back

Been sending my kid off to so many summer camps and somehow never pick one where a murderer comes out of the lake or woods or whatever

The kids going to catch on eventually that I’m the one putting notes in his luggage saying “try premarital sex and also drugs, what’s the worst that could happen parents suck!”

The Signal: EP201

The Signal: EP201 – Back at it again. 45 minutes of tunes, tunes, tunes. Been doing it for 20 years, still don’t have a good way to describe it besides “it’s a bunch of music, all in a row.” We’ve got electronic stuff, dance pop, rock ‘n roll in Spanish, hip hop in French… something in Hindi, I think. Maybe you’ll like it.

The Signal: EP200

The Signal: EP200 – Exactly 45 minutes of “greatest hits” to get your toes tapping. We’re releasing EP200 on the 20th anniversary date of our first music mix and to celebrate, I asked The Signal’s #1 fan for input: my wife. She went through all 199 previous mixes and picked out a pool of favorite tunes so give it a listen and see how many of your favorites make a return!

Albums That Came Out in 2024

Any art appreciation is entirely subjective, so I don’t believe in rankings or claiming anything is the “best” for a given time period. These are albums that came out in 2024 that I would recommend.

Everything Everything – Mountainhead
So many bangers on this album. Would not be surprised if this was my most listened-to album of the year. From the almost Nosferatu-monologue quality lyrics of the first track “Wild Guess” (“The hideous old savagery comes and it knows what I want […] I count the vermin as friends”) to the covid-era alienation and heart break of “Cold Reactor” (“I haven’t left the house in nearly thirty thousand days / I sent you the image of a little yellow face / To tell you that I’m sad about the emptiness that’s all around me”), this album delivered the propulsive pop-rock I needed.

El Michels Affair – Boy Kills World (Songs From The Original Motion Picture)
Haven’t seen the movie, don’t care about the movie, but just about everything El Michels Affair puts out is funky and worth listening to. Horns from 70s exploitation cinema, vocals that sound straight from Thai and Indian discos, drums you could breakdance to… it’s all there.

Joey Valence & Brae – No Hands
Dumb party music. The sound harkens back to the 90s era of hip hop, especially Beastie Boys, and there’s something truly infectious about two young dudes shouting “Let’s go! Let’s go! Hands up! Hands up! Okay! Let’s go!” before declaring they’re “the baddest bitch in this club”, y’know?

Teen Mortgage – Teen Mortgage and Twisted Teens – Twisted Teens
Great year for self-titled punk rock from teen-named bands.

Let’s Get Loud vol. 4 – SPACE PATROL

Let’s Get Loud vol. 4 – SPACE PATROL!

A 24 min. mix of electronic sounds custom-designed for space pilots, rockhoppers, robo-haulers and other moon scum. Available for a limited time. Tracklist is in the id3 tags.

The Signal: EP199

The Signal: EP199 – Exactly 45 minutes of tunes for the long dark nights at the end of the year. This time out we’ve got punk rock from Argentina and Washington D.C., some throwback electro-rock, bass heavy bangers, a bit of pet advice, Spanish choral, African improv, reggae and more!