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.
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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.
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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.
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.
'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.
'Piano Decompositions' and the Politics of Instruments in Decay
Heidi Hart and Beate Schirrmacher's 'Piano Decompositions' follows Annea Lockwood's Piano Transplants into an argument about ecological crisis, political control, and why a burning instrument unsettles us in ways a burning forest does not.
Tomeka Reid's Low End Theory
The cellist reflects on twelve years with her quartet, the making of their fourth album, 'dance! skip! hop!', a family archive of Black life in Wyoming, and the two figures named CeCe who bookend her path in jazz.
From Antwerp, With Reservations — Youniss's 'Good Effort!'
On 'Good Effort!', Youniss turns the city into subject matter, drawing on Burial's London, a shuttered Antwerp venue, and a revolving cast of collaborators to make the most outward-looking record of his career.
Golden Samphire Band's Imagined Albion by the Sea
England's south coast gives Golden Samphire Band's debut 'Dream Is the Driver' its emotional coloring, but behind it are four decades of shared record-digging by brothers Rich and Mik Hanscomb and the transformative arrival of vocalist Hannah Lewis.
The Strange Afterlife of Agustín Barrios-Mangoré
Elsa Monteith relates how Agustín Barrios-Mangoré's story runs through Paraguay's post-war reckoning, the politics of the classical guitar canon, a persona borrowed from a Guaraní chief, and a death under suspicious circumstances.
Fury Built to Last — Dälek's Politics of Noise
Newark noise-rap duo Dälek discuss the stripped-down political fury of their tenth album 'Brilliance of a Falling Moon,' their full-circle collaboration with This Heat's Charles Hayward, and thirty years of creative freedom maintained on their own terms.
Rupert Pupkin, Content Creator
'The King of Comedy' imagined Rupert Pupkin as a cautionary figure, but over four decades later, his blend of dogged persistence and indifferent craft has become the standard operating procedure of the content era.
Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, and Macie Stewart — Three Points of a Creative Shape
Longtime friends and Chicago scene veterans, Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, and Macie Stewart have turned 'BODY SOUND' into a record of real-time improvisation, physical tape manipulation, and an unexpected kinship with Yoko Ono's 'Grapefruit'.
Heaven in a Semicircle — Ben Wendel and the New Mallet Generation
Placing himself in the middle of four distinct mallet improvisers, Wendel discusses how 'BaRcoDe' turned the trance-inducing logic of bars, effects pedals, and extended technique into music he describes as living "in its own little universe."
Catching the World on a String — Min Xiao-Fen's 'Boundless'
Min Xiao-Fen last set foot in Ukraine in 1988 as part of a cultural exchange with the Nanjing Chinese Traditional Orchestra, and 'Boundless,' her new duo album with bandura master Julian Kytasty, closes a loop nearly four decades in the making.
Into Entropy, Together — Dunkelman and Koketsu's 'Veins of Rain'
'Veins of Rain' was recorded the day percussionist Nava Dunkelman and alto saxophonist Masayo Koketsu first met, and their conversation about the album's friction, negative space, and a surprise session with Tim Berne reveals a shared indifference to scenes, lineage, and the past.
The Minimalist Gospel of Ben Seretan and John Thayer
On 'Sunbeam Of No Illusion', Ben Seretan and John Thayer find melody where ambient music usually forgets to look, treating amplified mistakes, grass-bundle drumsticks, and borrowed sustain as the raw material of a minimalist document of place.
The Patient Return of worriedaboutsatan
worriedaboutsatan's Gavin Miller discusses 'No Knock, No Doorbell,' his 20th release, the post-rock and electronic push and pull at its core, and what a nine-to-five job taught him about taking his time.
Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore — "Come Join Us Here in the Future"
Barwick and Lattimore discuss 'Tragic Magic', a debut collaboration recorded on vintage instruments from the Musée de la Musique, the guilt and gratitude of leaving a burning city for Paris, and a shared dream of one day playing in James Turrell's Roden Crater.
The Intimate Machinery of David August's 'Hymns'
The German-Italian producer David August returns to the piano he has known since childhood on 'Hymns,' nine devotional improvisations treated with prepared strings and recorded to preserve every creak and breath of a century-old instrument.