Wadada Leo Smith’s Long Study of Light
From Einstein’s particles to Teo Macero’s overdubs, the trumpeter traces the ideas behind ‘Constellations and Hemispheres’ and six decades of Ankhrasmation scores.
Midori Hirano’s Hushed Score for an Icelandic Witch Tale
Writing ‘The Juniper Tree’ for Nietzchka Keene’s 1990 film, the Berlin composer set piano against modular synths, worked birdsong and water into the score, and made room for the Japanese idea of ma.
Charlotte Greve’s Power Ballads, Choirs, and Saxophone Drones
Her tenth album as a leader and the first under her own name, ‘Waterbodies’ was tracked while she was pregnant, with Shahzad Ismaily pulling together its many parts.
Zen, Beats, and Ewoks in David Perlis’s Marin County
The author of ‘Morning in Marin’ discusses the postwar movement he calls the Marinaissance, the letters in Gary Snyder’s archive, the MKUltra safe house and Gumby studio that didn’t make the cut, and the case for riskier American art.
Mark Isham’s Harnessed Noise
On ‘At the Carousel Club,’ Mark Isham turns a wall of vintage synthesizers, Nels Cline, and a string quartet loose, all while keeping the editor in his head at bay.
Bob Ezrin Would Rather Be the Dumbest Guy in the Room
The producer of 'The Wall,' 'Destroyer,' and 'Welcome to My Nightmare' discusses his return to the Jayhawks on 'Sanctuary Park,' how he builds a record out of three or four live takes, what a label and a band each want from a producer, and why he thinks the album still exists.
David Katz Cuts a New Version of Dub's History
Five years in the writing and forty in the gathering, 'Dub Revolution' rebuilds dub's beginnings out of the engineers who were there, the political map they worked inside, and the studios that doubled as shelter.
Fling ii's Kosmische, Out of a Michigan Basement
The two founders of the Ann Arbor band talk through the making of '3,' from a weekend of continuous takes with players scattered across Michigan, New York, and New Orleans, to the months Gowland then spends alone deciding which minutes survive.
Martin Bisi, Recording Engineer Without a Uniform
Forty-five years into BC Studio, Bisi talks through hardcore and hip hop as underclass music, the trouble with the post-genre label, the taboo of anger, and the collaborators who shaped 'Dancing On The Power Lines.'
Azar Lawrence Is the Lineage
Half a century after the Prestige trilogy, the tenor saxophonist marks 'Turn the Music Up' with an account of Horace Tapscott's Los Angeles, McCoy Tyner's touch, Pharoah Sanders's generosity, and a practice routine he hasn't altered since he was a teenager.
Josh Mason, Better Punk Through Circuitry
The Florida sound artist walks through his greyfade debut 'Kicking A Dark Horse,' the punk shows that taught him to build things himself, and the modular practice that, 15 years in, no longer surprises him.
The Whole of Me — Terri Lyne Carrington Beyond the Drum Kit
The NEA Jazz Master and four-time Grammy winner talks through a dance album about deportation and prison abolition, the Buddhist line she lives by, and the years she has gone without proper time to practice drums.