УВБ-76 - Stuck at Mt. Fuji's 5th Station with a Crappy Little Radio

Released: September 28

Something of a follow up and maybe part of a seemingly ongoing series, Stuck at Mt. Fuji’s 5th Station with a Crappy Little Radio is quite the inadvertently liminal album. It’s quite similar to last year’s Stuck atEverest… album in that it encapsulates that feeling of being stuck somewhere unwillingly and with little to do in the way of entertaining oneself. Here, we find our traveler stuck once again with a noisy and static-y radio as they wait for the time they can move forward, or backward, or at all. The sonic aesthetic here is quite genuinely lo-fi in its most honest form. Basses feel rolled off or small and distorted, persistent but variable static is found throughout, and the music itself is an odd assortment of things similar to what you may find on a radio in an unfamiliar place. 

The musical selections here go from light classical to smooth jazz to elevator music and even some more new age ambient type of pieces. Jumping around frequently from track to track, it feels quite like listening to whatever it is you can find at the time. Each track is numbered only in Roman numerals starting at sixteen, quite literally picking up where Stuck at Everest… left off, indicating that they are a continuous story. But there’s a few moments peppered about in this album where the environment of the story overtakes the music. “XXIX” has this barely recognizable 80s or 90s pop track playing in the background as the emergency signal bleeds over from another frequency, making the moment feel disjointed and incongruent. The music portrays a sense of relaxed happiness while the repeating emergency signal tone gives a sense of urgency. 

The album plays with this incongruence a lot but in more subtle ways. An icy wind blows in as smooth jazz plays, an elevator music piece loops on and on as static accumulates, and indiscernible talk radio programs become soundscapes of fuzz and mumbled words. Again, it plays back into that sense of unexpected boredom as you wait for the next thing to happen. It’s a fascinating idea that is executed well and with just a bit of tongue-in-cheek.