Midnight Radio

Night Flight to Vienna

James A. Reeves Episode 39

Read the full post with notes on the lectio divina.

I'm writing this on a Vienna-bound airplane. A full moon shines over the Atlantic, which is roiling away down there in the dark, and I suppose I'm inside a piece of deadly hardware.

I've been keeping a simple journal where I try to write a sentence about my life each day even though I sometimes forget. But I'm hoping to remember in Vienna, where C. and I will visit the Venus of Willendorf, Bruegel's Tower of Babel, and Giuseppe Arcimboldo's 16th-century fever dreams.

I love flying at night, cocooned in a netherworld beyond space and time, and tonight we'll listen to the music that has been soundtracking this sensation. This hour-long installment kicks off with a synthesizer chorus from Richie Hawtin's 1993 debut as F.U.S.E. Then comes a soulful slab of dub techno that my friend Earl casually sent me the other day, which bleeds into a wonderfully fuzzy track from A New Line (Related)—the territory between cozy and spectral is tough to locate, but these two songs live in its downtown. Then we'll take a cold plunge into some deep winter chug with slow-motion glaciers from Monolake, cv313, and the Field (god, those drums at the 41:40 mark).

  1. F.U.S.E. - Night Drive
    Dimension Intrusion | Plus 8, 1993 | Bandcamp
  2. My Friend Earl - Snowblow
    2026 | Bandcamp
  3. A New Line (Related) - Crewe Away
    Crewe Away | Sound in Silence, 2025 | Bandcamp
  4. Monolake - Cyan (44% slower)
    Hong Kong | Chain Reaction, 1997 | Bandcamp
  5. Tropic of Cancer - Dive (Wheel of the Law)
    The Sorrow Of Two Blooms | Blackest Ever Black, 2014 | Boomkat 
  6. The Field - Leave It (31% slower)
    Yesterday and Today | Kompakt, 2009 | Bandcamp
  7. cv313 - Beyond the Clouds Reprise II (19% slower)
    Beyond the Clouds (Reprised) | Echospace [Detroit], 2011 | Bandcamp

We return to land with a brief pitched-down snippet of Duran Duran's "Ordinary World" because I really enjoyed The Bone Temple.

A quick shout-out to M for introducing me to Critchley, the lectio divina, and many other new flows of intensity. And a tremendous thank you to everybody who has been testing Spite and taking time to send such helpful feedback. I'm genuinely shocked and delighted by the interest in this grouchy mp3 player—there are 3

The request lines are open.

Enjoy life and get the full Midnight Radio experience delivered directly to your inbox ’round midnight on the 1st and 15th of each month.

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.

Failure Is Freedom Artwork

Failure Is Freedom

https://www.martinessig.com
The Desire of Horror Artwork

The Desire of Horror

Charla Ferguson and Martin Essig