Slava Ranko has been played on NTS in shows including Perfect Sound Forever, featured first on 16 December 2015. Songs played include Post Trauma, Golden Peaches and Nachalo.

In 1957 Slava Ranko (aka Don Philippi) studied shamisen and chikuzen biwa (traditional Japanese stringed instruments). In Japan he became expert at them. He studied under the famed biwa performer Kyokurei Tanaka.

In the late seventies, after moving to San Francisco, Don combined biwa and synthesizer music and began performing in the local music scene under the name of Slava Ranko. In 1981 he issued a record album titled Arctic Hysteria. On the liner notes, he describes his music as "something straight out of the archaic….. simple, chaotic, anarchic and menacing…. This is what people of today have lost and need most-- the ability to experience permanent bodily and mental ecstasy, to be a receiving station for messages howling by on the ether from other worlds and nonhuman entities, those peculiar short-wave messages which come in static-free in the secret pleasure center in the brain."

As Slava Ranko, Don's album and music influenced the emerging punk rock and new wave scene in San Francisco. As the notes also state, "Since 1977, Slava has been a behind-the-scenes visionary in San Francisco's avant garde music underground, assisting such bands as Tuxedomoon, Noh Mercy, Factrix, Seizure and Voice Farm."