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

This week on Project Moonbase we're paying tribute to Swedish pop sensations ABBA, largely inspired by one our extremely talented listeners producing a truly dazzling arrangement of Dancing Queen for musical saw, tuba accordion and ukulele. We also have some cheesy keyboard arrangements, some mariachi, Gregorian chant and even some metal.

Long-term listeners of the show will be aware that the "show tune" at the Moonbase is, allegedly that Juan Tizol/Duke Ellington classic, Caravan. However, we rarely seem to actually play it on the show these days so we thought we could make up for this by dedicating a whole show to this minor masterpiece with a selection of arrangements for guitar, prepared piano, banjo, Moog - oh and even a vocal version.

We're back after a couple of weeks of space admin to bring you a selection of our favourite new releases and reissues, including two new tracks on Ghost Box, a lo-fi grandma, some previously lost classic-era exotica and a couple of tracks from the brilliant release of the soundtrack to the first season of Danger 5, possibly the greatest show to have graced the airwaves in recent years.

For the second of our two trips into the Moonbase archive we head back to May 2010 for a show which celebrated the 60th birthday of "Little" Stevie Wonder. So we have several great arrangements of tunes by Stevie Wonder as well as some Thai pop, chiptune, something by The Herb and much much more.

Unfortunately for the next two weeks your two regular hosts are otherwise engaged - there's a lot of space filing to catch up on, you know. For that reason we thought we'd make available a couple of shows from the dim and distant past when we used to do the show on local radio. For this first bonus edition of the show we're reaching back to April 2008 when I (along with regular correspondent Space Disco Jeff) had just seen the great Argentinian composer Lalo Schifrin in action in London. So at the time we thought we'd do a show with the great man as our featured artist.

Following on from our show all about gold, we thought we should take a look at another precious metal, silver. So we have a very shiny selection of tunes for you this week, dear listener covering early electronica, musique concrete, library music and fake 80s. We also bookend the show with two quite extraordinary versions of a bit of classic British prog-pop.

With the Scottish Referendum only four days away we thought we might offer up a musical antidote in the form of a show which attempts to bestride several topics including Scottishness, unity, independence, positivity, negativity and neutrality. All hopefully without alienating any of our dear listeners. Thanks to everyone who suggested tracks for this week's show. We have wherever possible strived to either use these tracks or at least be inspired by them in presenting you with our selections.

Inspired by the arrival of a very generous gift from listener Neil. Oh and the new Peter Capaldi regeneration. We thought it time to celebrate Doctor Who. So we have some very hard to find obscurities from the Whovian musical universe as well as several different versions of the iconic theme for you to vote upon (using #whotheme). We also play an example of a genre entirely new to us here at the Moonbase, namely "trock". Is there anything we've missed?

Some new releases and reissues for you this week dear listener. We have a track from a compilation celebrating ten years of chip-dub label Jahtari, a track from the fourth volume of skwee from Swedish label Flogsta Danshall, an 80s track re-eightified by one of our talented listeners as well as tracks from two great new reissues on Australian label Dual Planet to name but a few.

Having done shows about the solar system (http://www.projectmoonbase.com/planets) and of course the moon, we thought it about time we dedicate a show to our nearest star. So to that end we bring you a selection of sun-drenched tunes, just in time for the end of Summer.

We often find shortly after we've done a show on a particular theme that other tracks come our way (many identified by you, dear listener) which would have been perfect for that particular show. So this week's show is the first in an occasional series where we seek to amend and augment previously aired shows by plugging some of these gaps.

Having done a show all about our favourite beverage (PMB175: A Nice Cup Of Tea) we thought it only fair that we take a look at the dark side, namely coffee. So we've put together what we hope is a highly stimulating edition of the show, with selections by the likes of Edmundo Ros, Herbie Mann, Jean-Jacques Perrey, R. Stevie Moore and Jez Butler to name but a few.

Time to catch up with some new releases and new arrivals at the Moonbase on this week's show. We have a track from a new compilation which could almost have been put together with PMB in mind as it's made up of Moog, brass and psych from a German library music label(!). We also have a track from the new OOIOO album, something historically futuristic from Nigeria, a track from possibly Poland's answer to Peter Herbolzheimer, an imaginary horror theme and a couple of tracks by PMB theme composer Jez Butler who DJ Bongoboy had the pleasure of meeting up with a couple of weeks ago.

This week on the show we wish a very happy 75th birthday to pop and theme tune composer extraordinaire Tony Hatch. Of course, this does mean that Tony isn't quite eligible for entry into the Moonbase Hall of Fame (which has a minimum age requirement of 80). But we feel sure that in the next five years Tony will produce many more classic tunes and we look forward to formally inducting him in 2019. We've tried to bring you some of Tony Hatch's less well-known compositions as well as some cover versions of classic Hatch which will hopefully result in a quizzical look or two.

We always enjoy being fashionably late to a party so one week after the World Cup came to an end we thought the timing was perfect for a football special. This gives us a chance to play some of our favourite sporting TV themes (many of which were written by KPM genius Keith Mansfield) including one by this year's 75th birthday boy Tony Hatch (much more of whom next week). There's also a particularly moving rendition of Nessun Dorma, popularised by the BBC in their coverage of Italia '90. We should make it clear that neither of us know the first thing about football, though this will probably become fairly obvious as you listen to the show.