Daydreaming It’s Friday and the weekend is around the corner. So what could be better than taking a weekend trip to a vintage flavored past-time London with its vibrant and bustling city scenes? Join Ultra Swank as we take in the sights of 1960s London – grabbing coffee at one of the Moka Bars, checking in at a prestigious Hotel, trying our luck at the casino and to finish it all off – zipping a couple of cocktails at a hip basement club in Soho. The European Sound Stage Orchestra set the musical mood. What do you daydream about today? ( continue reading... )

The Cocktail Nation

The Cocktail Nation - Queens Of Vintage

Episode 266    May 12th 2013

This week we talk to the publisher of an online magazine called Queens Of Vintage, her name is Lena Weber and recently she interviewed me in her kings of vintage portion of the website so I thought we should have her on to talk vintage culture and the English scene. Plus the best exotica and lounge music from across the globe.

Music When it comes to record collecting there is nothing better than a great find in a charity store. Getting that record home, checking out the cover and then putting the needle on the record and hearing that sweet sound for the first time. Sometimes that sound will be a little scratchy and a little hissy which can be a little disappointing. Most of us these days have some software to fix audio from records, and for the most past it does a great job. However, I thoroughly recommend a magical product from an Australian inventor called Record Revirginizer.Cary Stoddard is ( continue reading... )


Music At some unspecified moment of the 1950′s the burgeoning technology of high-fidelity sound and sex became synonymous. Instead of grand-dad’s ukelele or uncle Frank’s player piano, vacuum tubes and transformers took over the machinations of audio seduction. Clearly it was the breakthrough technology of throbbing bass and ecstatic treble that opened the path to perdition. The breathless merging of woofer and tweeter. But there were ( read more... )

Weekend Seduction

Feb 17th 2012 by Christopher

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Daydreaming The weekend is around the corner and what could be a better start to it than some evening seduction? Paul Dupont and his Orchestra takes us on a steamy and sensual journey through what looks like clips from a kitschy 1960s Franco-Italian movie. For more lounge videos check out Soft Tempo Lounge on Youtube. What do you daydream about today? ( read more... )

Music Tired of spinning the same old Esquivel and Les Baxter on the hi-fi? First, make sure you’ve given a listen to the fabulous Ultra Swank compilations curated by our own Chris. Then feast your ears on Luxuriamusic.com. And what a feast it is! Luxuria is an audible smorgasbord of tiki, exotica, and lounge music of our favourite era. Since its humble beginnings in 2000, Luxuria ( read more... )

Music Exotica music began to take its roots as early as the 1930′s, but after WWII this romanticized version of Polynesia, far-away places, and tropical islands was clearly permeating its way into the American culture, transporting the listener with distinctive sounds like jungle drums, idiophones, Indonesian and Burmese gongs, Tahitian logs and the exotic sounds of bird calls, primal screeching, and other abstract jungle sounds. Martin ( read more... )