Artist	Song
Mike Patton	Screams Of The Asteroid [Adult Themes For Voice, 1996] 0:58
The Byrds	Mr. Spaceman [Fifth Dimension, 1966] 2:09
Radiohead	Subterranean Homesick Alien [OK Computer, 1997] 4:27
Van Morrison	(It's Not The) Twilight Zone [The Philosopher's Stone, 1998, song recorded 1974] 8:23
Seu Jorge	Life On Mars? [The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou Original Soundtrack, 2005] 3:24
Faith No More	Woodpecker From Mars [The Real Thing, 1989] 5:40
Ry Cooder	El UFO Cay= [Chßvez Ravine, 2005] 8:24
Ben Newman	Metroid And The Mother Brain [mp3 download] 5:14
Squaresoft	Lavos's Theme [Chrono Trigger soundtrack, 1995] 5:12
Robert Wyatt	Alien [Shleep, 1997] 6:47
They Might Be Giants	See The Constellation [Apollo 18, 1992] 3:27
Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band	Big Eyed Beans From Venus [Merseytrout bootleg, recorded 1980] 4:11
Splender	Space Boy [Halfway Down The Sky, 1999] 3:39
BTla Fleck and the Flecktones	Flight Of The Cosmic Hippo [Flight Of The Cosmic Hippo, 1991] 4:27
Andy M. Stewart	The Man In The Moon [The Man In The Moon, 1994] 4:33
David Bowie	Starman [The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, 1992] 4:13
Ruins + Hatoba	Midnight Hi Way!! And Aliens "Gagao" [Ruins + Hatoba, 1994] 0:41
Incredible String Band	The Iron Stone [Heritage, 2003, recorded 1967] 3:26

Comment:

Some do it naturally, some obscenely... some are convinced that they're robots, others that they're aliens. i constructed this mix yesterday to be a natural sequel to the collaboratory "Robot Rock" mix that was so successful previously (not on this site), with a similar structure: i start both mixes with a short Mike Patton wordless acapella track followed by a slightly longer, heavy-rocking, child's introduction to the subject, and end on a three-minute tangent, with a smattering of instrumentals mixed in with the genuine songs (in this case, tracks 1, 6, 9, 14 and 17 are wordless). Turns out, apparently, that extraterrestrials prefer a quite different type of music to intelligent machines. The central track here is Robert Wyatt's "Alien", which similarly anchors its source album, Shleep: "I sleep on the wing / Above the rainclouds / Blown by the wind (no roots on earth) / No ground below (no ground below) / Just ruins (timeless) / Dandelion clocks (drifting / higher, higher) Am I from Venus?" It's a slow, watery, melancholy song about separation, and has obvious cousins in Radiohead's "Subterranean Homesick Alien" and Ry Cooder's "El UFO Cay=" (The UFO Fell). Even the active songs here -- See The Constellation, Space Boy, Woodpecker From Mars -- seem to be momentary conglomerations of hardness in the midst of the alien sea; the end effect, pleasingly enough, is strangeness more than science fiction. Two tracks here that come from noted Irish musical, mystical experimentalists, "The Iron Stone" and "It's Not The Twilight Zone" feed off this strangeness more than anything else here. The Iron Stone's only extraterrestrial referent is the line "Somebody told me it came from the moon", and yet Robin Williamson's lyrics are beyond paranormal; the Iron Stone is certainly an object not from this earth. As for Van Morrison, who later brilliantly covered Mr. Williamson's poet-paean "For Mr. Thomas", his own "It's Not The Twilight Zone" (listed disappointingly as "Twilight Zone" on the official Philosopher's Stone package) is, if taken seriously, one of the most frightening songs i, at least, have ever heard: it quite seriously sounds like a message from an altered plane of reality, with Van the Astroman being at least as passionate about his nonsensical-if-taken-literally lyrics as Van the Loverman ever is about, well, passion; it's up there with "I Am The Walrus" in the all-too-rare category of psychedelia that's all the scarier because it's *real* -- and coming after two genuine alien abduction songs, one lighthearted, the second serious though tongue-in-cheek, "It's Not The Twilight Zone" sounds like finally the real deal. i can't explain this one. hear it for yourself.

Feedback: