Late night television holds a special place in my heart, or at least the side of it dedicated to some adoration of fuzzy teenage nostalgia. It was a boundary for me, in more ways than one. The eerie, dated production values of phone sex hotlines that only got more ubiquitous with each passing half-hour, coupled with dwindling programming that stretched the night into mirrored infinity. It’s hard to say what was so attractive about alternating between channels 55 and 58, chasing sexed up infomercials occasionally interspersed with Pure Moods commercials. Between the two, you could have a pretty interesting, if not slightly skewed sense of fantasy.
It was some weird side of life that I hadn’t experienced in my day-to-day teenage years, dream-like sounds you couldn’t figure to hear on the radio ever (maybe an Enya track every now and then), coupled with corny titillation sold to first time callers. Maybe as I listen to Zhurnal Mod and Sokpb Avabodha, I recall that adolescence haze a bit more hazier and with more fondness than it deserves. Their nocturnally-inclined broken transmissions slosh through that corridor for me, ping-ponging ambient flirtations with prone dial tones. The sexed-up commercialism is subdued, distilled into some vague 16 kbps midnight frustration. I never made the call on any of those teenage nights but the dream line Zhurnal and Sokpb have set up might just make me dial in. Or at the very least, play the shit out of this tape.
[Visit full site to view media]8-800-On the Line Dreaming by Zhurnal Mod meets Sokpb Avabodha