the night air

As inveterate collagists, we at The Night Air are big fans of a podcast called Some Assembly Required. If you have a taste for cut’n'pastry we commend to you the weekly selection cooked up by master media chef Jon Nelson. Here’s what he says about it.

Hosted by Jon Nelson, since January of 1999, Some Assembly Required features work by a variety of artists and groups who work with bits and pieces of their media environments, giving something back to the cultural landscape from which they so enthusiastically appropriate.

The genre is young, despite examples dating as far back as 1961, when James Tenney constructed a tape collage borrowing heavily from cut-up fragments of a recording by Elvis Presley. Both provocative and surreal, this style continues to evolve and to challenge.

Since its inception in 1999, Nelson has produced over two dozen artist features, interviewing everyone from John Oswald and The Evolution Control Committee, to Christian Marclay and DJ Spooky - providing a variety of unique perspectives on the nature of this daring and creative style of expression. For a complete list of artists interviewed on Some Assembly Required (many of which are now available to download), click HERE.

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Listen to Jon’s works

Too modern, too ugly, too tall?

In the skyscraper just how high can you go? This Night Air we climb high-rises, modern and medieval. Come with us as we go up a vertiginous stack of heady ideas and lofty soundscapes until we reach the very top.

Hold your spinning head as you gaze out at the wide world from towers of power - is that jet headed our way….?

Featuring the powerful music of visionary Greek modern classical composer Jani Christou. Who drew on such diverse influences as Jungian psychology, ancient Egyptian mythology and the brutal Junta repression of 1970’s Greece to compose some of the most toweringly intense and cerebral sound works of the 20th C. His life was tragically cut short by a car accident, and he left only a relatively small cultural footprint for one of his stature. We feature some tracks from the excellent 1992 Edition RZ compilation LP. More info on this giant at janichristou.org

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This episode we’re entertaining a bit of Space Doubt. Exploring doubt as well as space as we travel from the lunar voyage of 1969 to the European Space Agency’s current search of deep space. There’s the reverential space of monastic silence and something for those who need to see it all to believe.
We check out illusions, apparitions and discoveries in space — the inner and the outer, the believer and the doubter.
We feature the music of Sun Ra and also Dave Noyze Burraston, you can download lots of his great music here; www.noyzelab.com

download this audio adventure here