CD Esoterik
CD Esoterik
TEAM ESOTERIK
CD ESOTERIK was a record store from the early 2000's in Montréal, Quebec, Canada. After a short 15 year or so pause to rethink, we decided to finally re-open the store as a podcast. Formely on Ste. Catherine Street in a basement beside a comic book shop, now fully of the ether.
EPISODE 21: Silent Retreat
Live from Poland, Mark / Justin  / Jacob
Jun 30
35 min
EPISODE 20: I guess that’ll be springtime
So there's, like, this, uh, this radio station that I've never listened to.It was like high UVI'm listening to music really loudly, and it's why I'm shouting."快點" I mean, throwing a Cuica that far in the mix.So there's something going on. There's somethingthere. Drifting throughthe wind. All right. I'm into it. So everything's going to work. Yeah, everything'slining up.So here we go:​We need some energy,Energy of the wildness of the summer.Like an amphitheater kind of thingThis is, like,you gotta put the sunscreen… I even have the sunscreenin my pocket, actually. Look,I got it right here.It's great.According to the cloud,there we go. Maybeit wasn't the most summer, but it's kind of summer. It's like summer lullaby summer. I don't know. You can feel the heat. You can feelthe heat.​Yeah.Is it summertime in Poland?How is the other side?It's, uh, very similar to…the other side. Take-backson experiencesyou've had, or something like that. It's like dub effect like a different, uh,time zone, time lapse, timeeverything.​I realize that I have a coin in my pocketAnd I just use it to understand the universe​It was pre-Shazam. There was no way to know what it was.I don't want TikTok’s. I want photographicevidence.​You got?you got a card to throw on this table?Oh, man. I don't know. I don't — my cardis stumped, I have to say.Oh, man, I wanted… I was trying to, like,throw you a softball herebasement bargain bin, like, "I've gone crazy,I sold this store" kinda… price range.​So I guess that'll be springtime.Yeah, it's springtime, which is reasonable.Spring, you know, grew.It sounds like all these cultures put togetherIt's giving you a heart.Maybe you can justgo to bed Munchkin, you are just stuff… happening. Warm summer,end of the day.It's like tropical, um…Munchkin…Ewokstuff.​Influence of the liners?In the middle of the time of the service?In the middle of the time of the service,the mobile phone, the telephone. Help!This is related too…Just the sustained chord.The people with the,you know,the “good taste”.And, like, inside the car,I just thought it was like a comment on—Electric vehicles. I mean, we've hearda million versions of this kind of formula.​We'll do it as the barbershop quartet version.It's like it's  "so yeah, but that that and this and maybe, like, yeah, I mean.…"​Okay.You.You.You.You.it's relentless. It's really relentless.I'm like, I can't. I can't even breathe like I'm just小心。快點。救命。All right.There we go. Boy, what a relationship. It's just like a hand on the thermostat, like it's fucking too cold, it's too hot, it's too cold, it's too hotIt's so true. It's so true. It'sfantastic.Thank you.We survived.We survived.That's great.Thank you.Thank you.Thank you.Holy, holy, ho.Thank you.Thank you.Thank you.Thank you.Thank you.Thank you.The chest is full of helium.Yeah, the gas is amazing. I couldn't evenget the joke out. Oh my God, thank you.We listened to:1. Miles Davis – Sivad2. 801 – Third Uncle (live)3. Carl Craig – Mind Of A Machine4. Charles Earland – Leaving This Planet5. Me & E – Whatcha Need6. Mr. De' – Do It To It7. Boredoms – Ant 10 (Lindstrøm Remix)8. Fennesz – Don't talk (put your head on my shoulder)10. Delkash – Be Kenaram BenshinShout outs:MARK & SAMANTHAMR DE, A DETROIT STORY
May 30
1 hr 49 min
EPISODE 19: THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
According to something I read,this is a party. You don’t know what you are missing.I think they have a word for it: the time before the internet.If I can add precision: We missed the chance to induce mass hallucinationIt’s like the selfie camera turned around. It’s not your mirror image. It doesn’t know what it is doing, and it has no intention to know what it is doing. There’s something wrong. Something you introduced me to, a bomb going off.My heart is racing. My heart is so full.It’s almost unhinged, the sheer recklessness. This strange thingabout the illusion of the modern world.Of the permanence of things. Dead links on Wikipedia. The fact it hallucinates constantly is more ontologically correct, But I had forgotten all of those I had forgotten all of thoselittle sounds that were coming out at the end.We are in 2026.The 70’s in Japan were crazy.It’s the exact same thing. You just feel like the stage is going to collapse. Everything is insane. The machines are at their apex.I have a bit of experience,and one small shitty box that anyone can get.It's a kind of relaxed and not relaxed thingat the same time.Sorry, Kathy Clancy on timpani, sorry.  It's frames inside of frames. It never stops unfolding, that depth.Just the minutia. Heat wave? Nah, Heat stroke. I gotta sit down.This is music to fall in love We listened to:1. Terry Riley – You're No Good2. Fix –  Flash3. Man Parrish – Hip Hop Bebop (Don't Stop)4. Reaction Band – No More Bad News5. The Fall – Reprise: Jane - Prof Mick - Ey Bastardo6. Tony Messina – Noiseoid Suite7. Robert Ashley – The Miracle of Cars8. JA Seazar – Lion Cub/Song of Pilgrimage to Tokyo10. Chaba Yamina – YamrirShout outs:RIP AGAIN AND SPECIAL THANKS AGAIN organ of corti/ gary ToddDJ CYAN radio showRTX TRANSMANIACON other best most hated albumALLISON ANDERS on Mi Vida LocaHAPPY BIRTHDAY LEON!
Apr 30
2 hr 20 min
EPISODE 18: Eliane Radigue  01.24.1932 - 02.23.2026
Oh! This is exactly what I’ve be looking for all my life.I don’t known if this is music. I don’t know what it is.  There so many layers of going deep into the material.A way to live: Escape capture.Apply pure spontaneous investigative logic to the material at hand.Restraint.A radical openness to be in dialogue with the thing you observe. A feedback pieceA piece for wolf tones A piece with wordsIt’s so punk sounding. So raw, so organic. I can’t think of anythingFrench that sounds like that. I don’t know whatit is. It’s so much about the material of the real.A store outing:The space whistles. It felt daunting.Then it’s the most natural thing in the world— We can not bridge it, because it is inside. It’s undeniable. A person who makes the one song their entire life. From birth to death they’ve been doing that, the needle that plays the universes song. If they wantto come for us, they can but we’re making this anyways. To have that as radical praxis. There’s obviously something at work there. It’s a resonating machine. A flat affect transmission. It’s got all the ingredients.I should do this every goddamn Sunday. We listened to:1. Eliane Radigue – Opus 17: Number 172. Eliane Radigue for Charles Curtis – Naldjorlak (Paris, 2006)3. Eliane Radigue for Lama Kunga Rinpoche and Robert Ashley – Songs Of Milarepa: Song Of The Path GuidesShout outs: Wall of Sound / Climax Golden Twins: An American Experimental Music BandThe live version of the actual first instrumental piece Eliane and the AIhttps://www.markslutsky.com/archive/something-good-52-what-life-is-less-without/
Mar 30
2 hr 26 min
EPISODE 17:  We buy a car and swallow the key  (aka the non-cynical minimalist episode)
Where this starts, you are going to be so surprised where it ends.I’m just going to pecker my way into this one: CupsChairsFlatwareBucketPop-top.You are over there.There’s just so many directions you can take from the cups. So, Sell everything and just buy three machinesIts just so basic—commit to the bitYou press a button and a sound comes out. You press the button again and the sound goes out.On and off. On and off.I’d like to sometimes live in this world where just I live in an empty roomWith just this bedWith this couch on the floorAnd this table with like two machinesAnd I just like turn on the soundturn off the sound.And turn on the soundturn off the sound.And I have only three sounds to work with.There’s this moiré kind of thing happening There’s a lot of crevices to exploreSo this is kind of this idea.This kind of thing like “Whoah… how far is this going to go?”(Please wait for a couple of hours for someone to call you).We are in a new timeline.It’s a winning proposalIt’s very attractiveIt’s great for when you have people over who don’t like musicThat’s the goddam cups again.We could go for an hour fading in and fading out like thatWe listened to:1. Michael Nyman Band – Nose-List Song2. Ratgrave –  Icarus3. Robert Hood – Self Powered4. Limpe Fuchs, Mark Fell – Dessogia II5. Hiroshi Yoshimura – Kamome No Suiheisen6. Achim Wollscheid – Cups 17. Jane and Barton – You Are Over There (Part One)8. O'Donel Levy – I Believe In Miracles9. Alvin Lucier – So You … (Hermes, Orpheus, Eurydice) (excerpt)Shout outs: Mark Loeser’s voicePied de biche - Medieval Punk https://pied-de-biche.bandcamp.comLyric and Robert Hood: https://www.billboard.com/music/features/robert-hood-lyric-hood-floorplan-father-daughter-touring-1235709568/Black Truffle http://www.blacktrufflerecords.comThe queen is dead. Long live the queen. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/arts/music/eliane-radigue-dead.html
Feb 28
2 hr 13 min
EPISODE 16: Dead C Atmos (a.k.a the couples show) w/ Catherine Debard
We are joined by the magical and sylvan Catherine Debard, artist known as Tenses, Ylang Ylang, 1/2 of Mue, and many other great pieces of the Montréal tape underground.Fruits everywhere. Cushions. Luxury. A lot of drums.Quarantines are broken:Girls play guys music. Guys playing girls.  An awful YouTube doc on ‘unrecorded mysterious sounds’. What is Netflix missing? Definition hiding in unexpected places:Dense air, dead horses, radioactivity. Who’s going next down the waterslide? It all feels like momentum at the end.The eternal music? Sing along with your appliances and the world is a better place. The harmonics change. It speeds up and slows itself down.And where are we now physically? Colorado—trying to wrap ourselves around space. Yet things start bubbling in the back. It’s really jarring. We're starting fresh: A series of beer caps strung together at the end of a broom handle. A raw condensed emotion. There’s a lot of space. It might go off the rails. What ARE people doing today with their charming MIDI sound palette and their post-prog attitude?You’ll get the point in 10 minutes. I don’t know what to say. “of which of which it's of then which is it not that’s."  It's almost a sports feeling. I think it’s the best feeling.  James Schidlowsky invokes the greatest corrugaphone performance of all time. You get glazed over. It's like falling down the stairs but you get hooked on it. Stories are nice but sometimes you need microclimates… situations with stuff going on, just playing it out. It shouldn’t logically be able to end. It’s a glazing.We listened to:1. Adam Bohman – Burgundy Barrage2. The Miracle – Choir Boys From Jupiter (excerpt)3. Anne Tardos – Refrigerator Defrosting with Vocal Improvisation4. Amelia Cuni – Melopea (excerpt)5. Richard Earl – Intensest Weakness6. Jean-Marie Mercimek – Le Camion7. Clark Coolidge – Polaroid (excerpt)8. Richard Youngs –  Zulaqrex IShouts:Julien Champagne: https://julienchampagne.com/Deadhorse bay: https://flybravely.substack.com/p/unearthing-history-at-brooklyns-deadEric Lanzilotta / Anomalous records mailorder: https://ribexibalba.com/mailorder.htmlWil Murray: https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Wil-Murray/C78FBB4F60501FC4/ArtworksOf polaroid: https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/coolidge/polaroid.htmlJames Schidlowsky: https://www.jamesschidlowsky.ca
Jan 30
2 hr 1 min
EPISODE 15: Bye Bye 25. AKA “the Jacques Cousteau episode” ft. Christof Migone, Larry Dolman, Mark Loeser, Alex Moskos and Virtual Borzeix
A year end celebration with the larger circle.The theme: Terrifying in a beautiful instead of a dangerous way.We start the episode under the icecap. We celebrate life in a subaquatic hydrophone terror attack by ghosts who remind us of the life-giving force of death in a connected world.  It sounds joyful. The Book of Revelation, written by stylophone, with no consonants, only vowels.Intentional connections that open onto unintentional ones, via over-modulated saxophones.We spend time unpacking "destitution", then Mark brings the esoterik cannon, full stop. Mahler leads to criminally neglected spiritual visitations from the Chicago dollar bins.Solo unknowability ensues. Jacob drinks a huge milkshake. The other way of making music. The fundamental music: The one person with their instrument once the energy grid collapses.Neon hunks fashioning Flemish dance-folk stringed instruments on homesteads. Moskos suddenly appears. A very slow computer processing in a yurt, creating a virtual Borzeix. You don’t show up? You get represented anyway.The world moves in predictable ellipses: Michigan > Africa > Montreal. The servers run hot making sound design from the future. Roger brings the now sound by looking backwards and forwards at the same time.Octavia Butler-style benevolent aliens oversee the episode and monitor the controlled feedback.Finally, we visit that guy in a basement at GRM for 25 years still trying to make a computer play like Charlie Parker.2025: Strange resonance and bloody fingers. 2026: Things Have Got to Change!We listend to:1. Chester Beachell – Orcas and Belugas (excerpt)2. Eyeless in Gaza – John Of Patmos3. Sarah Clausen – Intro/Cry5. Robert Lippok – Close6. Donny Hathaway – I Love the Lord, He Heard My Cry7. Tal Coal – Cruèla8. A Magic Whistle – My Cuckoo/We Fly/Secret Spring11. Refuse Stealing Band – Ndirande (OJPB's Stealth edit)12. Server Farms – With Fake Beach, Fake Sun13. Archie Shepp – Things Have Got to ChangeShouts:Chris Wrench, alwaysA phone call from below the arctic iceMF. 10-11: Covid empty city recordingsAudre Lorde – CoalRLW box set – TulpasBlastitude best of 2025Refuse stealing band original clipDJ PICA PICA PICA (aka EYEEEEEE)
Dec 30, 2025
2 hr 26 min
Episode 14: Fuck Super Neighbours Playlist ft. Mark Loeser
This is not what I signed up for, this is exactly what I signed up for.Legendary experimental film maker and the perfect person to be on any podcast, Mark Loeser, shows up at all the usual tables, in a t-shirt that says Aztec camera. Enthusiasm beats considered intellectualism every single minute.We learn through lost super 8 cartridges that fascination is the root of all suffering. Yet, anything is possible! Love, sure, is a good example. Another is Alice Coltrane’s visitation by Stravinsky’s ghost to be told about Jacob’s episode pick... not to mention the wire and light John Coltrane.Truly we are living in the best of all possible worlds.We start the show with foot fetish snuff films. This leads through some pzm mic cables to an understanding how the things that attracted you become you. Vancouver in the 90s: Feldman tapes stolen from the Pofi bar while the holes get drilled in spoons.Japanese noise at Edison electricDance club bass leakage into Dixieland inns makes microsound better while the glasses sway and free jazz combatsPlus... toilets on the Fourth of July.Eastern zero's counterpoints:Cinemontas delivered up spiral staircases.  Projections on parketts, projections through mirrors, projections on canadian tires. The drugs hitting too hard too fast / crickets on the Ohio Speako WioNeighbours learn suffering as the first step on the paths of enlightenment.JAPAN shows up to prove that Maher is the greatest punk of all. Fuck ingenious efficient results based chaos we want real ego death!CAIRO shows up to bring the post punk infinite fire. To end, Saint George appears as the collective warmth- a power greater than itself - to close with the sound of the cosmos.Musicians reckoning with life: Where does listening start, what it transforms. The only way to end is the fade out. Perfection = the thoughtfulness of the organizing principle and the looseness with which it is applied.Or as Sam Shalabi asks: “are you guys musicians…actually?” We listend to:1. Uncredited artists – Canceling Stamps At The University Of Ghana Post Office2. Jean Guérin – Triptik 23. Cyril Scott – Lotus Land4. Good Horsey – Delighted5. Dj Carhouse &  Mc Hellshit – Air Rappers6. And the Native Hipsters – You Sleep I Dance7. Bernard Fort – Fractal i8. Destroy 2 – Standing Piss is Legal9. Tori Kudo – 目を瞑って歩く夜道は10. Ahmad Adaweya – Mawwal Ya Betaa El Tofah11. George Lewis – Homage To Charles ParkerShout outs TMU motion picture labEnrico Pacella Viennese Actionist Museum Bill Eggeleston lost his shoes in canton! Indiamore Chassol Esoterik says: Sign up for the blast stack! Shane Ehman, good horsey album artist Tori Kudo’s bandcamp 62 Rachel, again.Geroge lewis homage live at moersAnd because everyone needs it at least once in their life:SPECIAL EXCLUSIVE BONUS FEATUREComplete Fuck Super Neighbours playlist!!!
Nov 30, 2025
2 hr 44 min
Episode 13: By What Signs Will I Come to Understand
Another early Sunday. Leon asks the infernal 8-ball what’s up. Flipped over, it says: go both speeds at once.When we take its advice, the sun is driven poorly by the wild son. The earth scorches. The father smites the son. The cycle continues—through the Iraq War, maybe all the way to 2025.We move to frozen Canada and double down on the vowels.The CD Esoterik exclusive track hits the sweet spot where the snake eats its own tail, and recursive logic extrapolates toward its ultimate goal: ecstatic ghost hum production.Beginner’s mind is the key to keeping the Kaoss Pad unlimited.The universe explodes into so many layers of simulation— and then: Whitney Houston confetti, powered by a nuanced critique of the colonialist anthropological instinct.We close our trip to the Canadas in the ultimate hall of Kierkegaardian expensive cassette mirrors, to look at some paintings somewhere near Niagara Falls. Back to Brooklyn for delicate shredding and something new with guitar.You can do it still!We visit Japan for the hollow sound, where the dishwasher brings the responsible vocal shred. Something short shows us the bubbles we live in.And: New York hates you.Finally, a convincing case that live music is better than recorded music can ever be.Episode warning:Do not listen while driving or operating heavy machinery.We want problems. We don’t want peace.We listend to:1. Ian Crause – Phaethon's Call2. Christof Migone – ooooo (demo)3. Michael Snow – Si Nopo Da (By What Signs Will I Come to Understand)4. Chris Wind ft. Jurgen Rodriguez – Paintings 75. Chuck Roth – Twister6. Hako Yamasaki – Wandering7. Milan Grygar – Akustická kresba A158. DEATHBYSHEEP – DEATHBYSHEEP PRESENTS- BLUNTED POSSE SAMPLER MIX 2022-2023 PART 2 (excerpt)9. Josephine Foster – All I Wanted Was The Moon (live at MeetFactory, Prague, May 16., 2024)Shout Outs:Le Laps one of many Marie-Douce St Jacques' awesome endeavours. Rest in epic strangeness, Brian CatlingHollow — B. CatlingMichael Snow! thank you!Chris Wind's excellent websiteMarie Brassard’s film Le TrainMicroclimat Films — The TrainAnother Mark Loeser shout.Penelope Spheeris — The Decline of Western Civilization (Parts I-III)Part IPart IIPart III
Oct 30, 2025
1 hr 56 min
Episode 12: Amerikraut Trucker Funk w. Larry "Fuzz-O" Dolman
In which we are joined by one of the OG inspirations for Esoterik, esteemed blogger, substacker, brilliant writer and legendary ear-having proprietor of Blastitude, Larry “Fuzz-O” Dolman.We discuss the economics of the 30-600 split, Utopias and Distopias. The openess of open access. Cassandra Miller vs Cassandra Wilson. The 80% (corrected) EPA scale delivers short form long form. We get over the Robert Wyatt hump by mineralizeing Leon. Fishing with a sausage, an apple and a sandwich lands a Ukrainian architect tipping the Zulawski meter into the red. The vibe shift clause is invoked leading us back to the trucker funk, down the deep history of the ugliest edits to the perfect bpm. Jeff Mills shows up, as he does, to complicate the narrative. After that, we hit the tornado coffee shop bringing the go-go back. We close on the hopeful resilient shimmering pickled herring of 1989.As usual we get 1/91st of the way to the 6000 cassettes in the kiosk,It is what it is. There’s no changing it.  Finally, we ask the eternal quesiton: Was RollerDerby 1.95 or 2.95 per issue?We listend to:1. Shutaro Noguchi and the Roadhouse Band – Olympic 3.52. Bill Orcutt – The Four Louies II3. Robert Wyatt – Biko4. Ihor Tsymbrovsky – Bilya Morya (By The Sea)5. Ron Hardy –  Live at the Music Box, 1985 (excerpt)6. Jeff Mills – Memory Reset 97. Reaction Band –  Coffee Shop8. Оселедець – Хто поблагословив незрячі очіShout outs:Gridface's Ron Hardy archivesArthur Magazine's Jay Babcott's substackRoller Derby's Lisa Carver's patreon
Sep 30, 2025
2 hr 30 min
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