Songs for the End of the Century: last broadcast before the bombs, Belgrade, March 1999
March 14th, 1999. A Sunday night in Belgrade. My last ever radio show, though I didn’t know it yet.
All through the ’90s, I was a music kid. Two different shows, three-hour marathons each. No playlists, no algorithm holding your hand. Just me, a microphone, and stacks of casettes and jewel cases I’d haul across the city every week. The shows were modeled, loosely, on John Peel, but they were unmistakably mine. I played what moved me, what challenged me, what I hoped might rattle the bones of someone tuning in by accident.
The Sunday show was called Yet Another Cult Show. Most nights I had guests in the studio — musicians, artists, friends — but not this one. That night, I was alone. Fear was already thick in the air; the bombing hadn’t started yet, but everyone knew it was coming. Belgrade in March was a city waiting for something, and not in the good way. You could feel the city tightening. The usual chatter was gone. I queued up my records and let the music do the talking. A mix for staying awake, not falling asleep. Music that didn’t resolve.
And buried in the middle of the chaos: a track called Zubi by Con Sol, an unreleased, ungoogleable noise trio I was part of at the time. Think Captain Beefheart getting Keiji Haino drunk in a Belgrade basement. That was us. I played guitar, retuning before every rehearsal and every show — not to be clever, but to keep myself from falling into familiar patterns. At 6’4”, I was somehow the shortest member — a fact that remains funny even now.
Belgrade, March 1999
This broadcast was the end of something, though it took me a while to understand what. A few days later, NATO started bombing Belgrade. My radio station switched to music-only, then went dark altogether. By the end of that year, I packed up what I could and left the country. America became the next chapter. I didn’t pick up a microphone again. But I did pick up a camera. The irony is: I always thought of myself as a music guy. Visuals were never the plan. But something changed once I left. Photography became the new language — just as obsessive, just as improvisational, just as deeply tied to emotion and rhythm and noise.
So this playlist — this final Sunday broadcast — isn’t just a mixtape, it’s an epitaph for a part of my life. The energy here isn’t as jagged as it usually was. Looking back, the transitions feel softer, the playlist more melancholy than confrontational. It leans indie rock — not my usual cocktail of abrasion and surprise — most of the songs were promo releases I’d just received, miles and miles of indie rock, and just a few old favorites with personal weight. The Swans track, for example, or that nasty little piece by Con Sol, tucked in like a secret. But this wasn’t a fully dialed-in set. Normally the studio would be full of friends, guests, chatter. That night, it was just me. My mind was somewhere else: on the girlfriend I was about to lose, on the family I was scared to leave behind, on the city I was planning to escape. And above all, the silence before the bombs.
꧁─────꧂
I put together a Spotify playlist so you can hear what that night sounded like, or at least, most of it.
Some of the most important tracks didn’t make it in, simply because they’re not on Spotify. Con Sol’s Zubi was never released — there’s no recording online, and maybe that’s for the best. Jim O’Rourke’s Movie on the Way Down is another ghost, though well worth tracking down; it’s on his Eureka. And the one I wish had closed it all out — Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s Nomadic Revery (All Around) — isn’t there either, which kind of guts the final moment. “I just need an evening / With someone nice to hide me.” A quiet acknowledgment that some things were already lost, and more were on their way.
Still, here’s the best approximation I can offer: a crooked, confused mixtape from a Sunday night in Belgrade, 1999. You can listen straight through, or just pick at it like scabs.
This is how I said goodbye to the 20th century. This is how I said goodbye to home.
The Make-Up, Born on the Floor
(I Want Some, K Records)Olivia Tremor Control, California Demise
(Black Foliage, Animation Music Vol. 1, Blue Rose / V2)Mogwai, Waltz for Aidan
(Come On Die Young, Chemikal Underground)Jim O'Rourke, Movie on the Way Down
(Eureka, Domino)Built to Spill, The Plan
(Keep It Like a Secret, City Slang)Sonic Youth, Washing Machine (live)
(1996 bootleg)Hood, Western Housing Concerns
(The Cycle of Days and Seasons, Domino)Cha Cha Cohen, He's Jet
(Cha Cha Cohen, Chemikal Underground)Sebadoh, Love Is Stronger
(The Sebadoh, City Slang)Aphex Twin, ΔMi−1 = −∂Σn=1NDi[n][Σj∈C{i}Fji[n − 1] + Fexti[[n−1]]
(Windowlicker EP, Warp)The Leopards, Cutting a Short Dog
(Bentism compilation, Creeping Bent)Prince Charming, Daydream, Do You Wanna Hit of Ketamine?
(Fantastic Voyage, Wordsound)The Nectarine no. 9, Rocket no. 9
(Bentism compilation, Creeping Bent)You Fantastic!, Mono
(Homesickness, Skin Graft)You Fantastic!, Subtraction
(Homesickness, Skin Graft)The Make-Up, Free Arthur Lee
(I Want Some, K Records)Pram, Space Siren
(Space Siren EP, Domino)Mogwai, Chocky
(Come On Die Young, Chemikal Underground)Olivia Tremor Control, A Familiar Noise Called 'Train Detector'
(Black Foliage, V2)Olivia Tremor Control, Hideaway
(Black Foliage, V2)Hood, September Brings the Autumn Dawn
(The Cycle of Days and Seasons, Domino)EnemyMine, The We're All Friends Club
(Enemy Mine, K Records)Prince Charming, Midnight Massacre / Whoreship in the Temple
(Fantastic Voyage, Wordsound)Swans, Power for Power
(Filth, Young God)The Asteroid #4, Kate and the King
(Introducing..., Lounge)The Make-Up, Blue Is Beautiful
(I Want Some, K Records)The Land of Nod, The Land of Nod (Earthrise)
(Translucent, Ochre)Cha Cha Cohen, Serpentine Slip
(Cha Cha Cohen, Chemikal Underground)Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Hung Over as the Queen in Maida Vale
(Peel Session recording, BBC)Con Sol, Zubi
(Soledad y libertad, unreleased)Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Nomadic Revery (All Around)
(I See a Darkness, Domino)Built to Spill, Bad Light
(Keep It Like a Secret, City Slang)