Written by the fabulous Jules Maxwell  - http://julesmaxwell.com

A stripped back take on the perfect antidote to "all those godforsaken Christmas songs"

Warning: swearing in second verse - NSFW

Christmas Has Done Nothing Wrong

Lyric Video on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stAljDFOptM

Lyrics:

Hey now, birds outside our window
Hear them, singing our love song
Oh, how it soothes me
And isn’t it something?!

Breathe now, rooted like a flower
Blossoming, its fragrance sweet and strong
Oh, how it lingers
And isn’t it something?!

I’m your so-ong-bird  
We’re meant to fly
Sound of our love
Filling the sky 

I’m your so-ong-bird  
We’re meant to fly
Sound of our love
Filling the sky 

Singing, dancing
Singing, dancing
(Na-na-na…)

And isn’t it something?!
And isn’t it something?!

Hey now, nothing’s like your heartbeat
The rhythm pulls me into your embrace
I dig when we’re dancing 
And isn’t it something?!

I’m your so-ong-bird  
We’re meant to fly
Sound of our love 
Filling the sky 

I’m your so-ong-bird  
We’re meant to fly
Sound of our love
Filling the sky 

Singing, dancing
Singing, dancing
(Na-na-na…)

And isn’t it something?!

When you’re far away, I know you'll fly 
Here, we fly side by side
Let’s keep our love, alive
Share it with, the world

(oh-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah)


I’m your so-ong-bird  
We’re meant to fly
Sound of our love
Filling the sky 

I’m your so-ong-bird  
We’re meant to fly
Sound  of our love
Filling the sky 

Singing, dancing
Singing, dancing

And isn’t it something?!
And isn’t it something?!

And isn’t it something?!

Isn't It Something?!

Isn't It Something?! (ft. Kathi Fran) (written by Kathi Fran Copans, Jay-Kay and Heloise Kirby)

MPA Radio 081 

I was revisiting some favourites this week and making new discoveries too. I’ve put them together here for this weeks episode. There are some really talented people in this world!  As I send this live I will be listening on my journey crossing countries travelling towards the city I call home. These songs are the perfect companion to have by my side. Hit play, let’s listen together. 

https://soundcloud.com/themusicproductionacademy

MPA RADIO - 081

MPA Radio - 085 - Umm Kulthum “Alf Leila wa Leila” (“A Thousand and One Nights”).

In this episode we have the full 58-minute live cut of one of the 1969 Egyptian Radio’s Cairo concert tapes from Umm Kulthum’s Qasr al-Nil Cinema cycle, where “Alf Leila wa Leila” debuted on 6 Feb 1969.

Umm Kulthum—“the voice of the Arab world”—was an Egyptian singer whose monthly, live-broadcast Cairo concerts became a shared ritual across the region, turning songs into marathons of feeling. With elastic phrasing, mastery of maqam and a gift for tarab (ecstatic lift), she made epics like “Enta Omri” and “Alf Leila wa Leila” feel both intimate and monumental.

From the late 1930s until the early 1970s (40 years plus)! On the first Thursday of each month, Umm Kulthum gave marathon Cairo concerts—first at the Khedivial Opera House, later at venues like Qasr al-Nil—broadcast live by Egyptian Radio across the Arab world. The format was simple and epic: two or three long songs expanding through improvisation and audience call-and-response to summon tarab. Those nights became a shared ritual—streets quiet, families gathered around radios—cementing her as the region’s defining voice. These broadcasts made her a pan-Arab event every month; many outlets note that Egypt still marks the tradition by playing her at set times on first Thursdays, a nod to how deeply the ritual landed.

To record these long sessions with early recording technology tape speeds would have to run slowly on 10.5″ open reels at 7.5 IPS and sometimes 15 IPS. With 2,500–3,600 feet of tape that could record roughly 67–96 minutes per reel. If a reel did run short, engineers could use two decks in tandem with a brief overlap (often triggered by inaudible cue tones) to make seamless changeovers, this could typically take place when the audience clapped between songs or quiet moments when Uum and the band were not playing. Egyptian Radio’s famous first-Thursday broadcasts were aired live and recorded for rebroadcast and archive purposes. Now that’s a serious commitment! not to mention clever.

We salute you Umm Kulthum, thank you and your band for capturing and sharing these performances.

https://soundcloud.com/themusicproductionacademy


MPA RADIO - 085 Uum Kulthoum - Alf Leila Wa Leila

A chill beat for relaxation, reflection, or focus.

mala mina -BERC (My Inside Weather Remix)

MPA COLLECTIVE - Control

The first song in the MPA Collective Project (A Side).

We wrote, recorded, produced this track over the last 10 weeks on Sunday nights from all corners of the earth, various European Cities and Countries, Germany, Belgium, Holland, France, Italy, Romania, Lativa, Estonia, Sweden, Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, Portugal, Japan, North America, USA, Canada, New Zealand, UK.

The MPA Collective is made up of the following, who without their talent and support this project would not have been possible. 

Adrian Stannard, Andrea Paton, Carol Duchess of Wales, Darren Vader, Kiki Carter, Greg Webb, Lars Kastberg, Magnus Lundberg, Marcus Oetjen, Matt Vincent Brown, Peter Oertl, Sophie Bikerdike, Antony Torres, Volker Patent, Dan Karlström, Heloise Kirkby, Nicolai Herrmann
Sonny Southon, Paule Van Wijngaarden, Sie Medway-Smith, Chris Anthony Gonzales
Ann-Sofie Wensbo, Tim Jones, Dixie Taylor, Sabine Konrath, Liz Lenten, Janice Pearson
Christina Grzasko, Jessika Satori, Leq Stillbe , Steve McDonald, Chris Evans, Becky Boyland
Jérōme Savoie, Sepher Amini, Simon Ashworth, David Toderan, Christophe Geens
Tania Saedi, Ante Gulin, Esther Kehinde Ajayi, Nick Glasshopper Eagland,
Dave Vine, Dimfie Kellerman, Peter Kilgallon, Dan Gorrera, Gail Atkinson, Patrick Staniforth
Rick Molly, Xavier Guérillon, Will Bourne, Roi Atkin, Lousia Grantz, Phil Nobles, Hannah Smithies 
Sammy Medway-Smith, Bodie Medway-Smith, Lucas Medway-Smith, Dorothy Medway-Smith, Tim Medway-Smith, Alfredo Paz, Laurence Younger, Poé (Rotterdam), Pritpal Gill, Sam Dixon, Seb Manns, Simon Lyon, Steve Jones, Arjan Vriens, Allert Aalders, Alberto di Angeli, Andert Tysma, Ben Smith Tara Tea Mallen, Ryan Gerrish, Alison Wheeler, Bip Mistry, Evadeny, Jon Hester, Gernot Schmitt, Indigo, Kaie Sauga, Jona Lux, Liisa Kiis, Marcus Thomas, Mona Christina, Pankaj Dave, Pete Webber, Phil Swim, Rue, Simon Dunne, Tommy Boy, Harm Poelen, Manuel Keller, Alexander Higgins, Gina Martinsen, Carlos Gabriel Garcia, Sarah Wreath.

MPA COLLECTIVE - CONTROL - MAIN MIX/ MASTER 001

MPA Radio - 089 - OFF ADE

In this weeks episode of MPA Radio we feature a selection of music from three record labels pushing the boundaries of contemporary music. Influences and artists from all over the globe.
Labels featured in this weeks section are Stroom , South of North and Knekelhuis. DIY, Digi Post Punk and Casio Dub are just some of the treats in store.

South of North is a small record label based in Amsterdam releasing left-field, eclectic albums that sit between electronic, jazz, DIY pop and experimental. Their catalog is developing quiet a cult following.

Knekelhuis is another Amsterdam-based independent label, known for a wide, moody palette that bridges wave, post-punk, synth-pop, industrial, ambient and left-field electronics. The label frames “conflict and surprise” as its aesthetic—reissues next alongside new music, older outliers alongside 21st-century experiments—and has grown from Dutch/European roots to a global roster.

Stroom is a small, cult-beloved Belgian label. Growing out of a 24/7 online radio project around 2014–16 and took shape with help from Ghent record shop Music Mania; the shop co-launched the label. Stroom’s thing is idiosyncratic, story-led releases—new music and carefully curated reissues/archives—spanning Belgian ambient/new wave, private-press obscurities, oddball pop, and global left-field finds.

If you’re looking for something new to listen to today then you have come to the right place. Sit back, explore, surrender.

MPA RADIO - 089 OFF ADE - Label Feature

MPA Radio - 090 - DETROIT SLOW-MO

This week we explore the sound of Detroit as I know it. 808/ 909, Juno 106, DX7. Once famous for its car industry and the earthshattering sound of Motown, Detroit took a left turn in the early 80’s when a group of young sonic innovators took things into their own hands. Using debunked and forgotten instruments and devices, out of know where and without knowing it reshaped and redefined the sound of dance music. This week we focused on a few of the names and artists that emerged from this scene. Juan Atkins, Octave One, Drexciya and Terrance Dixon.  
Juan Atkins (Model 500) The blueprint . As Model 500, Juan reduces Detroit to pulse and rhythm: sine bass, crisp 808/909 patterns, synths like lights in the mist. “No Ufos,” “Night Drive,” “The Chase,” “Starlight”—clean lines, no excess, motor function baked into the groove. Belleville roots, Metroplex mentality: the funk of the Midwest plus radio science (The Electrifying Mojo) routed through Junos and DX7’s until it becomes calm, aerodynamic futurism. Technology + soul, effortless propulsion.

Octave One The Burden brothers take the rig to church. Octave One is stacked chords, urgent arps and that Detroit lift—machine pressure with a human soul. From I Believe to “Blackwater,” they make big-room emotion out of lean ingredients: tight drum programming, gospel-tinged harmony, and live hands on the faders. On stage it’s cables, boxes and intent; in the studio it’s discipline and release. Uplift without schmaltz, muscle without bluster.

Drexciya Aquatic myth turned into electro physics. Drexciya is bass, hi-hats, melodies that feel plotted on a secret chart. Neptune’s Lair, Harnessed the Storm, “Andreaen Sand Dunes”—world-building and groove science. Gerald Donald and James Stinson made functional dance music that also reads as sci-fi folklore: coded titles, submerged cities, Atlantic futures. The sound is punchy, spacious and purposeful; every element earns its keep.

Terrence Dixon Reduction as a worldview. Terrence Dixon pares techno back to breath and geometry—short loops, shifting accents, basslines that move the ground around you. Under his own name or Population One, the vibe is inward, resilient, hypnotic: From the Far Future, “Minimalism,” endless variations that reward close listening. Where others add, he subtracts; where others decorate, he iterates. It’s Detroit’s psyche stripped to signal—spare, elegant, deeply human.

This is a snapshot of what you can uncover. Join me for an hour and let the sound of t innovation wash over you. 

https://soundcloud.com/themusicproductionacademy


MPA RADIO - 090 DETROIT SLOWMO

MPA Radio - 092 - Frippertronics

In this weeks episode we lose ourselves in the world of Frippertronics for an hour.

Frippertronics is Robert Fripp’s name for a long-delay, tape-loop performance system he popularised in the 1970s, first explored with Brian Eno and rooted in Terry Riley’s earlier “time-lag accumulator” setup. Riley’s twin-deck method (two reel-to-reels passing a single loop of tape between them) laid the groundwork; Fripp and Eno adapted it on No Pussyfooting (1973) and Evening Star (1975). By the late ’70s Fripp had coined the term “Frippertronics” for his solo concerts and records (Exposure, Let the Power Fall), turning the rig into both a compositional tool and a live act.

How it’s done: two tape machines, one set to record, the other to play back. The tape physically travels from the record deck to the playback deck; the distance between them (and the tape speed) sets the delay time—anything from a few seconds to close to a minute if you run the tape around mic stands. You then feed some of the playback signal back into the record input. That feedback amount is the musical heart of it: set low, older material fades gracefully; set higher, the loop saturates and becomes dense. You perform into this memory—guitar lines, harmonics, swells—and the system keeps handing your past back to you in the present.

Control lives in a few simple moves: input level (how much of the new phrase prints), feedback (how long the past persists), EQ (to stop low-end fog or tame brightness), and occasionally tape speed for pitch/time shifts. The art is in pacing—leaving space so the loop breathes, nudging the texture rather than flooding it. Classic Frippertronics is clean electric guitar plus volume pedal into the decks; the room becomes part of the instrument, especially in large spaces.

Modern equivalents recreate the same logic with pedals or DAWs: one long buffer for the “tape,” a regeneration/feedback control for memory, sometimes reverse and speed for extra colour. Artists from Fripp and Eno to Riley’s descendants, David Torn, Michael Brook, Fennesz and others have each taken the idea somewhere personal. But the core remains beautifully direct: a system that remembers, a player in conversation with that memory, and music that evolves rather than repeats. Enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/themusicproductionacademy


MPA RADIO - 092  FRIPPERTRONICS

MPA Radio - 093 

Jon Hassell (1937–2021) was the composer–trumpeter who coined “Fourth World”—his name for music that feels both ancient and futuristic at once. 

After early work with Karlheinz Stockhausen and deep study of North Indian raga with Pandit Pran Nath (via La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela), he began shaping a trumpet sound that was intimate, breathy and unplaceable—neither jazz, nor classical, nor folk, but a new hybrid. Landmark records like Vernal Equinox (1977), Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics with Brian Eno (1980), Dream Theory in Malaya (1981), Power Spot (ECM, 1986) and later works (City: Works of Fiction, Fascinoma, Last Night the Moon…, Pentimento volumes) sketch a whole world: hand percussion and drones, electronics and field-imagined environments, trumpet as a weather system.

Under the hood, the sound is part technique, part philosophy. Hassell treated the trumpet with long delays, pitch-shifts and harmonisers, often riding feedback like a fader so phrases evolve rather than repeat—a cousin to tape-loop thinking. Raga study gave him microtonal bends and sustained, vocal phrasing; electronics smeared the edges so timbre, not chops, became the message. He talked about pentimento (a painting term): new layers with the ghosts of earlier layers showing through. In practice, that meant building pieces from overlapping fragments—rhythms, breath, room tone—then letting memory and acoustics do as much composing as the musicians.

Culturally, he framed Fourth World as “an imagined tradition”—not ethnography, not pastiche, but a respectful fiction where technologies and lineages meet. That lens made him a quiet north star for generations of producers and players, from ambient and dub to experimental pop. You can hear his fingerprints in collaborations (Eno, Peter Gabriel, David Sylvian, Daniel Lanois) and in the wider scene’s shift toward place-as-music: sound that maps a landscape more than a genre. The invitation, as ever with Hassell, is to listen for space, memory and touch—the notes are only the beginning.

https://soundcloud.com/themusicproductionacademy



MPA RADIO - 093  JON HASSELL SPECIAL

MPA Radio - 094 Terry Riley Special

Terry Riley (born 1935, California) is one of the originators of musical minimalism—equal parts composer, improviser, and systems tinkerer. In the early ’60s he began experimenting with tape loops and delay in San Francisco and Paris (hear Music for The Gift with Chet Baker), then lit the fuse with In C (1964): a modular piece whose repeating cells and open form changed the course of new music. He followed with the radiant keyboard odyssey A Rainbow in Curved Air (1969), a studio-built swirl of organ, harpsichord, and tape that fed straight into rock, ambient, and electronic music.

On stage, Riley refined his time-lag accumulator—two tape machines feeding back into each other so a single performer could build evolving layers in real time. That approach powers works like Poppy Nogood, Persian Surgery Dervishes, and Descending Moonshine Dervishes: long-form, trance improvisations where pattern, colour, and pulse slowly transform. In the ’70s he studied raga with Pandit Pran Nath, deepening his modal focus and sense of intonation; later albums like Shri Camel and The Harp of New Albion explore just intonation, yielding bell-like overtones and a different kind of harmonic glow.

Riley’s ideas travelled everywhere. He collaborated with Kronos Quartet (from Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector to Cadenza on the Night Plain), made the gritty art-rock detour Church of Anthrax with John Cale, and quietly influenced generations—from ambient pioneers to electronic producers and post-rock bands. Whether on tape, organ, or piano, his music treats memory as an instrument: loops, modes, and tuning systems that invite you to sit inside the sound and listen time stretch and breathe.

Riley’s world is also in quiet conversation with John Coltrane—not in pastiche, but in method and spirit. Coltrane’s late-’50s/’60s shift toward modal centres, long arcs of extended improvisation, pedal points and drones, and the search for an ecstatic, cumulative intensity all echo through Riley’s systems. You can hear saxophone phrasing translated to organ and tape—short cells cycling, gradually thickening, timbre opening up, the harmony arriving from time rather than chord changes. Add Riley’s raga practice and just-intonation colour, and you get a lineage that runs Coltrane’s spiritual focus through a minimalist engine.

https://soundcloud.com/themusicproductionacademy


MPA RADIO - 094  TERRY RILEY SPECIAL

I'm a poet turned songwriting. I write from life, from the heart.

Isn't It Something?! (ft. Kathi Fran) (written by Kathi Fran Copans, Jay-Kay and Heloise Kirby)

Feathers Write Songs