Tag: Nortec Collective

Getting into Darra Adam Khel had not been easy. Getting into Pakistan was relatively straightforward, with the right-colored passports and decoy suitcases full of Western tourist necessities. The ride towards the Khyber Pass had been less so, and the necessary disguises and bribes to get past the checkpoints that turned away foreigners were more of an ordeal than ordinary. The dusty vehicle, neither truck nor passenger car nor jeep but somehow all three, had been recalcitrant for most of the trip, providing constant frequent minor breakdowns, keeping the mechanic perpetually busy. Now they were on a shooting range on the roof of a well-stocked arms shop, surrounded by dozens of identical shops and shooting ranges. As the linguist lifted the replica Berthier carbine to their shoulder, they darkly thought it would be just their luck, after all of this, to be caught in some rooftop crossfire from other purchasers testing their new toys.

This is MACHINE SHOP, a special one-hour mixtape from yours truly featuring songs about all the weird devices we humans have imagined and constructed out of musical parts. I’m closing it out with the Smugglers’ “She’s A Machine,” which inspired me to put this together when a search for it revealed all sorts of inexplicable gadgetry lurking in my library.

This is my first time seeing the sun rise from the studio. There's been plenty of sunsets, and plenty of times when I was on the air at the time but in a windowless studio.

Since I was guest host The Orbit Lounge and this was not The Lacking Organization, there was more selection and sequencing going on than usual, with the end result being a good hill climb from warm sleepiness to aerobic panic. Thanks to Lisa from Florida and Geoffrey from France for checkin

Chopping and channeling norteño music and dance beats, the Nortec Collective blows up like a cheap piñata. Have some candy.