The Abenaki Voices in Mali Obomsawin’s Jazz
The bassist and composer discusses ‘Automatic,’ the mid-century language recordings at its core, her work with turntablist Andrew Broder, and the malleable harmony of folk music.
Brooklyn
The Sun Ra Arkestra Play to the Open Sky
A photo essay from two open-air Arkestra shows in Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley, where Knoel Scott stood in for Marshall Allen and dancers and fire shared the bill.
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.
The Long Silence Behind Ayman Fanous’s Guitar
The guitarist and bouzouki player discusses 'Brooklyn Stories 1–5', his five-CD set of duos and small groups for Infrequent Seams, the years of wordless playing alongside Bern Nix that shaped his ear, and what harmolodics can mean on a nylon-string classical guitar.
Frances Chang Takes a Moral Inventory
The Brooklyn musician, composer, and performer discusses 'been thinking bout confession,' her third album, which she wrote on a century-old baby grand after hitting walls with the guitar, and touches on Sondheim, the pomp of Catholicism, and whether a sound made on a computer counts.
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe's Inner-Ear Illusions
Recorded with Randall Dunn, 'Manifestations in the Shadow of an Uncertain Land' turns several years of political fatigue into what Lowe calls a "multiphonic landscape of horror," and the conversation runs from Jodorowsky to low-pass gates by way of his nine years in Om.
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.'
The Mending — Tahlia Amanson on the Reinvention of Myra Lee
The Brooklyn trio's 'Capture the Flag' features six songs recorded live in two days—and it's the closest Tahlia Amanson has come to telling her parents the truth.
Folk Memory, Living Sound — Zosha Warpeha's Resonant Rooms
Drawing on Nordic folk lineage and the acoustic personality of grand marble rooms, Zosha Warpeha's 'I grow accustomed to the dark' is less an album about darkness than a slow revelation of what lives inside it.
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.
The Last American Elegance — Christopher Hoffman's 'REX'
The acclaimed cellist discusses his move from Manhattan to Rex Brasher's Wassaic farm, where he recorded his first solo album, 'REX,' finding the space between pristine composition and unpredictable improvisation.
The Warm Fuzz and Cold Honesty of Wormy's 'Shark River'
As Wormy, Noah Rauchwerk, the touring drummer for Samia, turns his van life into ten songs about anxiety, imposter syndrome, and "this sense of impending doom" that often shadows the good moments.