“SOS Radio”
by Atlantic Rising
2007 song
Long, psychedelic, and spellbinding, "SOS Radio" is the title track of the 2007 album SOS Radio by a musical project that Sky Saxon called Atlantic Rising. While details about the sessions in Greece that produced the album are hard to locate, what’s sure is that "SOS Radio" is an other-worldly trip through a dark and electronic cosmos.
As the cover art of the album suggests, on this song Sky becomes fascinated by the phrases "SOS Radio" and “SSS Radio”. It’s just that he’s found a way of neatly combining two of his favorite subjects, dire warnings about the fate of the planet (“SOS!”) and his own legend (Sky Sunlight Saxon, or “SSS”).
The raunchy guitar riffs on one or two chords and here and there some extremely lysergic audio fractals start banging around, gliding from one side to another and then behind the listener. It’s all very weird and transportative, even when some pounding drums start rearing their angry heads. Sky keeps up his circuitous tirade, going off on lyrical tangents and then returning to his “radio” and his alphabetic safe place. Favorite recurring theme: “Ruth, give me some truth!”
