Freshly back from Guantánamo Bay and barely settled in San Diego, late 2011 — funds were thin, so the radio and my laptop were about the only entertainment I had when I wasn’t out working the city for whatever it would give me free. I spent a lot of nights on the floor of my front room, blanket wrapped tight, and that’s where I fell for 94.9’s late-night, down-tempo Big Sonic Chill. It felt like everything I was hoping San Diego could be this time around. “Carnal, kinky, suggestive… Big Sonic Chill, on 94.9.”
And then one day it was gone. No fanfare, no announcement. Even now there’s no official reason — just rumors of management changes, DJs leaving and taking the culture with them, some financial restructuring to keep the lights on.
I wasn’t satisfied with that. So I walked into the gap. If 94.9 couldn’t make the show anymore, I would. I found a home at community station 89.1 KNSJ and built a weekly two-hour program modeled on what I’d lost. I called it Sonic Sundowner. Of all my favorite kinds of music, these are some of the sounds I love most — lo-fi, groovy, with a hint that if you’re lucky, something more might happen later. I made about fifty of those shows before life and circumstance caught up with me.
I think I’d like to try again.
So here’s the relaunch, as this month’s Mixtape Madness. It starts as a mixtape, and I plan to just keep adding to it. The sequence runs a full dusk arc — sundown and the plunge on Side A, the long dark and the climb out on Side B — and it opens, fittingly, on “Trigger Hippie,” the Morcheeba track I’ve flown as my handle for years. Play it at night when you need the mood to slow down. Play it on a Sunday morning when your hungover head can’t take much more. Whatever you do, just play it.
🎧 Apple Music | Qobuz
Side A 42:38 · Side B 45:02 · 87:40 total
Side A — the sun goes down
Track Artist Album Time
Trigger Hippie - Morcheeba - Who Can You Trust? - 5:31
Playboys - Mono - Formica Blues - 6:43
Pedestal - Portishead - Dummy - 3:39
Desert Song - Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros - Up from Below - 4:30
Passion - Nightmares on Wax - In a Space Outta Sound - 7:00
Marvin and Miles - Gare du Nord - Sex N Jazz - 3:46
I Might Be Wrong - Radiohead - Amnesiac - 4:54
The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven - The Black Angels - Passover - 4:16
Flowers on the Wall - The Statler Brothers - Flowers on the Wall - 2:19
Side B — the long dark and the climb out
Track - Artist - Album - Time
Hello - Poe - Hello - 4:32
Angel Eyes - Worldwide Groove Corporation - Chillodesiac Lounge: Tangerine - 6:49
Mirror Lover - Jam & Spoon - Tripomatic Fairytales 3003 - 6:20
Hell Is Round the Corner - Tricky - Maxinquaye - 3:47
Motherless Child - Tom Jones w/ Portishead - Reload - 5:09
Volcano - Damien Rice - O - 4:38
Lo-Fi Groovy - All India Radio — 3:12
Flower’s Grave - Tom Waits - Alice - 3:28
Smoke Dreams - k.d. lang - Drag - 3:49
In the Wee Small Hours - Madeleine Peyroux - Still Breathing - 3:18
Nice to see k.d. lang on there!