On the heels of her Sacred Bones debut 'Hard Hearted Woman,' Ora Cogan reflects on the Fairy Creek blockades, somatic practice, the whitewashing of folk music, and what it means to write a trans rights song that doesn't scream.
This week: Patricia Wolf, Ora Cogan, Billy Polo, Bob Wagner, Mark Barrott, and Joseph Branciforte. Plus, Booker Stardrum and Evan Shornstein tell us the recipe behind the rhythmically absorbed chaos of their album 'OOPS!'
Inside the VP Records vault, restoration engineer Billy Polo is in a race against the physical lifespan of tape — and the even shorter lifespan of the people who know what to do with it.
This week: Zosha Warpeha's reverberations, Bob Bert's bang-bang, Phil Geraldi's alien country, Stephen Emmer's beautiful pathos, and Billy Polo's dub transmissions. Also, your humble editor's favorite 2026 albums (so far).
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.
This week: Thurston Moore + Kramer, Christopher Tignor, George Grella, Wolfgang Seidel, and zzzahara. Plus, Mike Baggetta of mssv namechecks the Wipers and Gustav Mahler in the same sentence.
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.
This week: Charlotte Cornfield, Meredith Bates, Evolfo, Lisa Ann Schonberg, Ethan Helm, and 'Radio-Activity.' Plus, we go to Jakarta (figuratively) and discuss the art of shoegazing with Strange Fruit.
'The Observer Effect' finds violinist Meredith Bates recasting quantum mechanics, feminist intuition, and acoustic ecology as one long, uninterrupted act of listening.
This week: Phil Manzanera, Hannah Peel & Beibei Wang, Charles Joseph Smith, Arthur Russell, Modern Woman, Meredith Bates, and Nick Fraser. Plus, Phillip Golub takes us for a cruise down the microtonal highway.
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.
This week: Maria Schneider, Tom Skinner, Speedy J, Nick Fraser, Strata Records, and an amplified dose of 'Metal Machine Music'. Plus, drummer and electronic composer Matt Evans misinterprets psychogeography.