Project Moonbase – The Historic Sound of the Future | Unusual music show | Podcast | Space cult | projectmoonbase.com

Ha ha ha... Ho ho ho... Welcome to Project Moonbase's antidote to seasonal good cheer, with an entire show celebrating the other side of Christmas. Yes, this week we bring you a dozen devilishly festive tunes to delight you in the dark depths of mid-winter.

With less than a week to go until the end of civilisation as we know it, we thought we'd provide a fun and informative guide to help you survive the imminent apocalypse. So you can expect to hear guidance in the form of disco, exotica, avant garde electronics, space jazz and of course twanging guitar.

Since the actual British Flying Saucer Bureau has now sadly closed its doors we decided we ought to pick up the mantle and open the files on some anomalous phenomena which has been taking place here on the Moon - and on your Earth - recently. To this end, every track on the show this week has the flavour of flying saucers and the little green men (and women) who pilot them to our shores.

This week we take the opportunity to sample some new releases and new arrivals in the Moonbase archive. There's another track from Kumisolo's recent EP, a track from a new album of chip-prog covers of Goblin tunes, two tracks from the Light Sounds Dark/After the Void/Psychemagik stable, a somewhat lethargic-yet-groovy cover of Popcorn, some steel drum, a couple of wonderful new pieces of "Ondatropica" from Colombia and a little teaser of an imminent KPM reissue on Tummy Touch records.

Thanks to our listener in Germany, Arkan Ok, for suggesting this week's theme of railways. It's given us an excuse to dig out some steam-powered gems and no less than three train-themed tunes from Indian composers. There's plenty of organ work, some German disco and we also get to hear Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin chuffing away to their hearts' content.

Thanks to a particularly successful, and largely romantic in nature, haul from a Stirling charity shop recently, the acquisition of a small mountain of cast-offs from former Moonbase crate digger Fuz which included a number of romantic LPs and finally a particularly emotional version of a Whitney Houston classic by our beloved Wing on her latest album, we decided to make love and romance the theme of this week's show. However, this is love and romance with an unexpectedly military flavour - as will become clear about half way through the show.

As this is the month of November what better than to join our fellow "Mo Bros" in celebration of all things facially hairy. Every track on the show this week has a moustachioed or beardy connotation. Thanks to Dr Woods for bringing The Beard's latest single "Got Me A Beard" to our attention and to Kev Oyston and Chris Lambert for making Chris' song "The Sound of My Moustache" available to us.

This week's show is a chance for us to catch up with some recent new releases and reissues. We have more from the new Parry Music Library compilation on Public Information, music from Japanese Francophile Kumisolo, another selection from Bollywood Steel Guitar, two tracks from electronic and musique concrete composer (and occasional library musician) Tod Dockstader, a track from the massively expanded Expanding Universe reissue by early computer music composer Laurie Spiegel, a lovely chiptune cover of an AC/DC track by one of our accomplished listeners, some hauntology from NYC and some analogue jazz from the Greg Foat Group. We also have a brand new track from ... Wing!

With this edition of the show being number 101 we thought it would be a good idea to turn the show over to your deepest fear, or at least Winston Smith's deepest fear, namely rats! It was a little tougher than usual to find a show's worth of music about rats - for some reason they don't seem to be a particularly popular subject for songwriters and composers. But we eventually managed to find a pretty good selection, if we say so ourselves.

A very auspicious day, dear listeners as we reach our 100th podcast! And it wouldn't have been possible without you [mops tear away]. To thank you for all your support over the last 100 years, sorry, shows, we've put together a special double-length edition of the show for you, in two parts:This first part, "By Our Friends", is made up entirely of music by our extremely talented listeners. This edition has exclusive contributions from Barry Schleifer, Sarah Angliss, Barbara Moore, Monroeville Music Center, Pye Corner Audio, The Soulless Party, AMS, Ensemble Dinosaur, Giant Claw and Harry Forbes (some of which were recorded especially for this very show!) as well as tracks by The Phase 4, concretism and bignonioides.

Thank you for flipping this special centenary edition of the Project Moonbase podcast over for Part Two, This part, "For Our Friends" is made up entirely of suggestions and requests made by you, our lovely listeners. None of the tracks in this edition have been played before and you can expect to hear everything from scientific samba and steel-drum disco to hillbilly music from outer space. Thanks to everyone who made such great suggestions for this edition and thanks to everyone for listening to and supporting the show over the last 100 years, sorry, shows. See you in the recent future!

With this being show 99, what better theme to adopt than that of ice cream! For those non-UK residents not able to make the connection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Flake So every track on the show this week has a lovely soft whipped theme, covering everything from John Carpenter to a Swedish Elvis Impersonator and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, not forgetting to mention a contribution from friend of the show, Lorraine Bowen.

This week's show has a few quite chewy moments so we thought nougat was the best way to summarise what we have on offer. The chewiness comes mainly in the form of some chippy new releases from The Center of the Universe, Cheap Dinosaurs and Roglok. But we also some terrific organ work from Klaus Wunderlich, a new release from our favourite Hungarian organ-driven acid jazz outfit The Qualitons and twangy astral guitar work from Man ... Or Astroman and The Virtues and a whole new genre to us, Bollywood steel guitar.

This week's show takes its title from a lovely new radiophonic EP from Tim Love Lee, Si Begg, Jack Dangers and Tara Busch which commemorates the 50th anniversary of the BBC's first FM broadcast. So we have a couple of tracks from that, a selection from a huge archive of test card music, some 16-bit chiptune, new tracks from Tangier 57 and Akron and a curious vocal version of show favourite Caravan.

This week on the show we bid farewell to the first man to visit the Moonbase way back in 1969, Commander Neil Armstrong. So the show has an even more lunar and spacey feel than usual. We also feature a couple of tracks by Don Dorsey, former musical director at Disney's Main Street Electrical Parade who also provided the "Laserphonic Fantasy" score used at the EPCOT Center.