#breakfast muff

I always say that the amount of music I find and listen to during downtime is immense. All these weeks in quarantine gave me many opportunities to keep up with all the saved posts and daily bookmarks. Sometimes it feels overwhelming because it’s so much but in the end it’s the only way how Omega WUSB and personal mixtapes are made. And you, of all people, ask: how so? We never asked for questions but thanks anyway. Read on:

You’ll notice that many of our Omega WUSB playlists posted here drastically change every broadcast. We’re never the ones to stand still and do one thing. We do a great many. So many that we had to divide our shows into two types. One type is our deluxe broadcasts / volumes on our normal Saturday night slot. That slot is where we showcase all new, current, and relevant sounds from any given genre. It’s the A-game slot when we spin the wheel on indie, post-punk / d.i.y., shoegaze, veteran hip-hop, hardcore, metalcore, electronic, urban, and even darkness. The other type is our bonus broadcasts. Independent radio allows us to go off-the-board and play whatever we like, and other genres we enjoy playing that don’t exactly fit the deluxe bill get showcased when they can. That’s noise, other types of punk and hardcore, jungle, breakbeats, classic industrial, jazz / fusion, and hip-hop (golden-era, white-label, and old-school). This is everything I truly enjoy that’s brought back to the station. It’s because my threshold for getting into something is extremely low. It’s also great to have an open-mind. I highly suggest having one.

You can imagine how daunting it is keeping up with what’s released every day. The only way is the simplest way and that’s following every music news outlet in sight. It’s a lot for the type of show we want to broadcast and for an endless insurmountable influx of music we discover. We get other ideas from various labels, groups, YouTube channels, Bandcamp, and even artist pages. From the minute I wake up through mid-day breaks, everything is saved before I forget and it’s gone forever. Now how much gets auditioned? It could be anywhere from 10-100 songs a day. If we find something we like about it, we’ll fully listen and chances are we keep it in consideration. Veterans with new projects (say, Human Impact), noise artists we love (Pharmakon) whose sisters have collaborations with other artists (Safe Word, Appetite), and artists we followed for years (JK Flesh, Alchemist) go right in. And there’s the opposite. Any qualities that irk us gets tossed immediately. Your hardcore growling and pissing contest goes in the red and gets distorted so I can’t hear what you’re screaming about. You’re an indie outfit who thinks it’s still 2002 and uses xylophones. Your bedroom Nazi power-noise project truly makes you sound like a quarter-mensch. Target-core like Saint Pepsi or Fun. You are Garden Centre, Anklepants, or a Soundcloud rapper who thinks “$$$you won’t be disappointed!$$$GO HIT THAT LIKE BUTTON$$$” (please, don’t). You’ll quickly be forgotten about.

Tons of auditions endlessly pile up so there’s no shortage of finds for us to get our hands on. That’s not all. We have lots of reserves in the form personal music libraries, stacks of cassette dubs, and CDr’s we can reach back for as well. Everything is considered and all that’s good is utilized in some way. Some stuff we ultimately don’t end up playing on-air could give us some other ideas. Bonus riot-grrl showcases? Late-Seventies / early-Eighties Bay Area punk? African bazaar tapes? Sure. It could all happen one day. Sometimes we find so much of one genre that there’s no one way of leveling it out to zero. We currently have 20 hours of jazz / fusion waiting to be played for all the samplists and crate-diggers and there’s no end of it in sight. The same with underground white-label hip-hop. There’s ten hours of speed-core and breakbeat that we could call it a night once and for all but do we feel like playing it? Everything gets sorted out on our iPad Pro where we decide what goes in Omega WUSB and what gets reserved for future use. At times when these finds get so numerous that some end up on the iPhone so the auditioning process gets taken on daily walks to the veteran’s park or train rides to New York City.

The same can also be said for personal seasonal mixtapes. Before the turn of the millennium I had to rely on physical purchases (discs and cassettes) and dubs off the radio to make them. I tried putting everything I could onto a 120-minute Maxell. By the end of the Oughts I stopped making cassettes because the process was too cumbersome. For a while I did mix CDs for the same purpose up until the early Tens. Everything is now kept track in iTunes. Even auditions on those walks and train rides that make the difference end up on these personal mixtapes. It’s too simple now. Though, imagine having cassette decks and other things wired into it for me to be creative in making 2020 post-punk, witch house, indie, and urban sounds on Nineties’ technology. 120 minutes of splices of Zola Jesus, Antwon, Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, Ho99o9, and Breakfast Muff on a cassette? Negative Gemini, The Holydrug Couple, and Ta-Ra, too? That’s fucking wild.

Sauna Youth “Unreal City”

Beat, The “Two Swords”

Vanilla Poppers “A Better Ride Than You”

Gnarcissists “We All Just Wanna’ (Ensalada)”

Sediment Club, The “13″

Neo Boys “Image Of Guilt”

Current Affairs “Cheap Cuts”

People Like You “Thumbnail”

Street Eaters “Definition”

River City Tanlines “Nothing Means Nothing Anymore”

Naps “Valentine”

Ruby Falls “Thirst”

M.A.G.S. “Demon”

These Are Powers “You Come With Nothing”

Holy Wave “Dejame En Paz”

Fletcher C. Johnson “Wilder Than Me”

Rapid Tan “Time Capsule”, “Spicy Govan”

Guerilla Toss “Green Apple”

Neighborhood Brats “Lust To Love”

Chris Norwood “The Norwood’s Prayer”

Ava Luna “Sears Roebuck M&M’s”

Wall “Fit The Part”

Parlor Walls “Play Opposites”

Transmission “Smash Out All The Mirrors”

Palberta “She Don’t Got It”

Future Punx “Plus Side”

Dear Nora “To Fall Is Not To Fail”

Swim Mountain “Yesterday”

Decisions “Gatekeeper”, “Trapped”

Badlands “Heavy Sighs”

Deaf Wish “FFS”

Fox Face “Clever Girl”

Coughs “15 Hole (Quinze Trous)”

Toyzanne “Maps”

Grim Streaker “Guts”

Arctic Flowers “Impasse”

Somerset Thrower “Wake Up Motherfucker! It’s Casual Friday”

Mean Girls “Summer Bodies”

We are nearing the end of what is to be a legendary broadcasting year with unforgettable music and some of our most popular bonus shows ever. There’s still some time to enjoy deluxe broadcasts before the year and Autumn is over. Here’s two hours of thorough art rock, lo-fi, noise punk, post-punk, cassettes, 45′s, and new artists; with some of our favorites returning again.

Rapid Tan courtesy of Breakfast Muff.

Our bonus Halloween special airs October 29, 2018 (midnight) when we take over for Purple Starlight. Next deluxe Omega airs November 3, 2018 (10 PM).

Omega Radio for June 17, 2017; #140.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard “Mr. Beat”

Sauna Youth “PSI Girls”

Thee Oh Sees “Toe Cutter / Thumb Buster”

Hookworms “Teen Dreams”

Shantih Shantih “Winter In September”

Murlocs, The “Compensation”

Black Beach “Poor Posture”

Spinning Coin “Sides”

Cold Pumas “The French Note”

Teardrop Factory “3 A.M. Coke Dream”

Blank Square “Youth Trash”

Omi Palone “Shallow Divide”

Sex Hands “Pivot”

Alexandria Hall “Hubble”

Thee Oh Sees “Strawberries One & Two”

Sealings “White Devil”

Mink Mussel Creek “Makeout Party Girls”

Tense Men “RNRFON”

Tunic “Eye Contact”

Cold Pumas “Severed Estates”

Rapid Tan “Welcome To The Drain Centre”

Suspirians “Nocturne”

Hundredth “Hole (Visual)”

Breakfast Muff “R U A Feminist”

Hysterics “Hanging Out At The 512”

Thee Oh Sees “Tunnel Time”

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard “Evil Death Roll”

Suspirians “Moonwave”

Omega Radio for September 8, 2018; #174.

Boyfriend Material “Good Graces”

Amanda X “Dear Marie”

Camp Cope “How To Socialize And Make Friends”

Dott “Glue”

Amen Dunes “Believe”

Beths, The “River Run: Lvl 1″

Value Void “Babeland”

Cloud Nothings “The Echo of The World”

Alexandra Savior “Shades”

Haerts “The Way”

Roseblood “Black Veil”

Seapony “Nothing Left”

Beastmilk / Grave Pleasures “New Hip Moon”

Breakfast Muff “Clam”

FACS “Primary” (demo), “Silencing” (demo)

Snail Mail “Let’s Find an Out”

Chastity Belt “Cool Slut”, “Lydia”

Reptaliens “If You Want”

Screaming Females “Glass House”

Parquet Courts “Mardi Gras Beads”

Daughters “Satan In The Wait”

Idles “Great”

The Muckers “This Town Will Drag Us Down”

Dilly Dally “I Feel Free”

Death Bells “Roman Candles”

Swearin’ “Untitled (LA)”

Versing “Silver Dollar”

Iceage “Under The Sun”

Slowdive “Star Roving”

Fazerdaze “Lucky Girl”

Hundredth “Hole (Visual)”

Bike Thiefs “Destination Wedding”

Gingerlys “Turtledoves”

Ariel Pink “Feels Like Heaven”

Girlpool “1…2…3…”

Deerhoof “Singalong Junk”

Lee Ranaldo “Circular (Right As Rain)”

Diet Cig “Tummy Ache”

Courtneys, The “Silver Velvet”

Daddy Issues “I’m Not”

Priests “No Big Bang”

Current Affairs “Eyes”

Dame “Lines”

Breakfast Muff “R U A Feminist”

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard “Mr. Beat”

Cende “Don’t Want To”

Idles “Mother”

Naomi Punk “Cardboard”

Protomartyr “A Private Understanding”

Pissed Jeans “Bar Is Low, The”

Institute “Powerstation”

Japandroids “No Known Drink Or Drug”

Sorority Noise “No Halo”

Tasty “La-Dee-Dah”

Taiwan Housing Project “Veblen Death Mask”

Metz “Mr. Plague”

RMBLR “Name Game”

Suspirians “Nocturne”

Downtown Boys “Somos Chulas (No Somos Pendejas)”

Wolf Alice “Yuk Foo”

War Brides “Thyme”

Unstoppable Death Machines “City Lights”

Tunic “Eye Contact”

Unsane “Aberration”

Omega Radio says good-bye to 2017 with the first of two best-of broadcasts featuring the greatest, most notable, and talked-about new releases of this year. This week: shoegaze, indie, garage, punk, and metal. From bands with long hiatuses, cassette releases, to artists who’ve released five records this year, our Best of 2017 broadcasts are sure to not disappoint.

Next Omega airs December 30th, 2017 (10PM) where we air the second of two best-of broadcasts featuring the rest of new releases we played on our deluxe shows this year.