Patricia Wolf — The Sound of All Creatures Great and Small
The ambient composer on her cassette release 'Yarrow,' frog taxis, the power of dormant seeds, and the dread of leaving one's recorder out overnight in the rain.
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Beauty Out of Misery — Stephen Emmer's 'Asymmetrical Dot'
On 'Asymmetrical Dot,' Stephen Emmer turns grief and new birth into a multigenerational meditation, drawing on the Indonesian folk traditions his mother carried from Ambon to Amsterdam and the hushed compositional vocabulary that hearing loss made necessary.
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Never Leave Time Unfulfilled — George Grella on 'Minimalist Music'
In 'Minimalist Music,' author and critic George Grella reframes minimalism's defining quality not as style or technique but as a specific, audible practice of composing with time — then turns to ask what becomes of that practice when those who invented it are gone.
An Orchestra in One Body — Christopher Tignor's 'Bleeding Past the Edges'
On 'Bleeding Past the Edges,' Christopher Tignor upends the interactive electronics playbook, composing for a one-body orchestra through precise, reproducible systems aimed at a single purpose — to break the listener's heart.
Wolfgang Seidel, Eyewitness to the Kosmische
As a founding member of Kluster and the author of 'Krautrock Eruption,' Seidel reframes 'Zuckerzeit,' 'Sowiesoso,' and the broader krautrock movement through the lens of postwar German social history — and finds the English-language mythology wanting.
Deep Listening, Deep Soil — Lisa Ann Schonberg's Myrmecological Music
The Brooklyn-based composer and percussionist discusses her field expeditions with myrmecologists in Brazil, the feedback loops she builds between insect recordings and organic substrates, and what it means to make music from sounds too small for human perception.
Bleeps, Boops, and Nuclear Dread — Kraftwerk's 'Radio-Activity'
Kraftwerk's 'Radio-Activity' turns fifty this year, and half a century on, the group's first all-electronic album reads as an unintentional field report from a nuclear age that was already, quietly, beginning to fall apart around it.
Molecules Lining Up — Meredith Bates's 'The Observer Effect'
'The Observer Effect' finds violinist Meredith Bates recasting quantum mechanics, feminist intuition, and acoustic ecology as one long, uninterrupted act of listening.
Ethan Helm's Geography of Loops
Inspired by the geological scale of Japan and the productive accidents of a standard looping pedal, Ethan Helm's 'Dreamscapes' extends a jazz improviser's instincts into the territory of self-reliance.
Evolfo Draws a Line in the Sand
Evolfo's Rafferty Swink and Matt Gibbs on 'Of Love,' the collective improvisational process behind it, and why a seven-piece Brooklyn band decided Spotify wasn't worth the compromise.
Charlotte Cornfield's Hard-Won Reckoning
Charlotte Cornfield's album 'Hurts Like Hell' maps a songwriter's life from drink-ticket gigs in Montreal to the steadier ground of family, community, and creative confidence in Toronto.
Skin, Bone, and Electronics — Beibei Wang and Hannah Peel on 'The Endless Dance'
Wang's grounding in Beijing opera, Peel's synthesizer instincts, and their shared Taoist faith in following the flow converge in a series of improvised sessions tracing the full arc of the Chinese solar calendar.
The Radically Earnest Legacy of Arthur Russell
Poet Reuben Gelley Newman and scholar Matt Marble join Carolyn Zaldivar Snow for a roundtable on Arthur Russell's radical gentleness, his uncategorizable output, and the serendipitous webs his music keeps spinning.
Starting at Square Twenty-Seven — Nick Fraser's 'Areas'
On 'Areas,' his trio's third album, Nick Fraser brings Messiaen-inflected harmony, electroacoustic interludes shaped by John Kameel Farah, and a compositional vocabulary deepened by eleven years of playing with saxophonist Tony Malaby and pianist Kris Davis.
Latin Roots in the Art Rock Canopy — Phil Manzanera's 'Revolución to Roxy'
The Roxy Music guitarist discusses his memoir 'Revolución to Roxy,' his lifelong immersion in Latin music and culture, the family secrets unearthed along the way, and a career built in close collaboration with everyone from Brian Eno to Enrique Bunbury.
Modern Woman Between the Whisper and the Shriek
Post-punk abrasion, unconventional violin, and lyrics sharpened by a literature degree converge on Modern Woman's debut 'Johnny's Dreamworld,' an album built around the friction of being told you're simultaneously too feminine and not feminine enough.
A Monument in Plain Sight — Charles Joseph Smith's Chicago
Dr. Charles Joseph Smith has been one of Chicago's most recognized faces and least-known composers—a paradox that Sooper Records' reissue 'Collected Works and the War of the Martian Ghosts' is now, belatedly, beginning to resolve.
Speedy J's Mixtape Manifesto
With 'Walkman,' his first solo album in over twenty years, Speedy J makes the case for focused, uninterrupted listening in an era engineered to prevent it.
The Sound of Not Listening — Maria Schneider's 'American Crow'
Schneider discusses 'American Crow,' the Rolf Schock Prize, her collaboration with David Bowie, and her conviction that the jazz ensemble's practice of listening without a fixed agenda remains democracy's most accurate blueprint.
'Power to Consume' and Lou Reed's Metal Machine Afterlife
From Suicide's Martin Rev to Merzbow, Shaun Cohen's 'Power to Consume' series traces the long, crooked line between Lou Reed's 'Metal Machine Music' and the noise artists it inspired.
DJ Amir and the Second Life of Strata Records
DJ Amir discusses his acquisition and revival of Strata Records, the defunct Detroit jazz label founded by pianist Kenny Cox, whose six original albums and trove of unreleased recordings have become some of the most sought-after music in jazz.
Tom Skinner's Silhouette Music
The drummer behind Sons of Kemet and The Smile brought his acoustic ensemble to Big Ears, where he discussed 'Kaleidoscopic Visions,' the intentional instrumentation that gives it depth, and the community that makes his music possible.
Memory, Melody, and the Post-Rock Vision of Unwed Sailor
Johnathon Ford discusses his band's latest release, 'High Remembrance,' the one-album-a-year discipline that has defined Unwed Sailor's second act, and why the bass guitar is the closest thing he has to a singing voice.
Ghost Notes from Wyoming — Caroline Davis's 'Fallows'
In conversation about 'Fallows,' an album made alone in a Wyoming cabin, Caroline Davis reflects on the ancestral figures who accompanied her during the residency, the saxophone techniques she invented in solitude, and an advocacy practice devoted to carceral justice and gender equity in jazz.
The Act of Reverent Listening
Drawing on Adorno, Satie, and a German headphone company's unusual take on ear-cup geometry, Kallie Marie argues that the rituals we build around listening are a form of cultural self-determination.
Acid Before House — System 7's 'Flower of Life'
Veterans of Gong's Canterbury-meets-French-freaks psychedelia, Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy discuss how forty years of dance music obsession culminates in 'Flower of Life,' System 7's most fully integrated album to date.
From the Line to the Frame — Beth Ann Hooper's Moving Poetry
Inspired by Werner Herzog's argument that film must evoke the emotion of poetry, Beth Ann Hooper built 'Poetry in Motion Picture' from three poems in her collection 'Haunting the Dead,' pairing each with original symphonic music as the project heads for the festival circuit.
DoYeon Kim and the Lives of the Gayageum
Korean gayageum player DoYeon Kim discusses how her apprenticeship in traditional music led her to improvisation, her instrument-damaging technique, and why she occasionally screams at her audience.
B-Movies, Bad Men, and The Notwist's Stubborn Optimism
Markus Acher discusses 'News From Planet Zombie', The Notwist's return to live-band recording at a Munich community space, and why thirty-plus years together still haven't settled the tension between political dread and stubborn hope.
The Life of the Podium — Miho Hazama's 'Frames'
While composing 'Frames,' her third album with the Danish Radio Big Band, Miho Hazama lost her mentor Jim McNeely — and his absence, folded into the absorbed idioms of six other former conductors, became part of the music.
Frank Fairfield — Around the World at 78 RPM
Born Frank Martinez and raised as a Mennonite in Guatemala, the self-taught musician scoured junk shops and swap meets around the country and abroad for 78 RPM records, reinventing himself as a pre-war folk and blues character during a brief recording career.
Hans-Joachim Roedelius — Cluster, Harmonia, and the Endless After
With Cluster and Harmonia now recognized as foundations of experimental music, Hans-Joachim Roedelius considers a career built alongside Conny Plank and Brian Eno and insists, at ninety-one, that the only direction worth moving is further into the unknown.
Servants of Music — The Folk Theater of YAGÓDY
Ukrainian folk ensemble YAGÓDY discuss songs handed down across generations, lyrics using invented phonetic samples, and the theatrical instincts behind their performance at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville.
The Mud and the Melody — Billy Fuller's 'Fragments'
The founding member of Beak> and longtime collaborator to Portishead, Massive Attack, and Robert Plant discusses the bass-first compositions and private creative philosophy behind 'Fragments,' a debut solo album assembled from nearly a decade of home recordings.