Yuka Honda's Impossible Dreams — On Celebrating Yoko Ono
For Honda, an artistic format is a language rather than an identity — a conviction she shares with Ono, and one that made curating a tribute feel less like a departure than a translation.
Los Angeles
Speculative Babies — The Inner Children of Guest Bartender Deborah Toyota
Recorded fast and almost entirely improvised, 'Music for Babies' sets Julia Shapiro's melodic instincts against Samur Khouja's appetite for dissonance, and the conversation takes in sad clowns, nose flutes, hearing music as a child, and why they never went to meet Maria Nissan.
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.
The Whole Greater Than Its Parts — Bondo on 'Bondo'
Years of playing in the same converted room have left Bondo convinced the band is a thing separate from the four people in it.
Wild Up Conjures the Holy Presence of Julius Eastman
On the occasion of 'Julius Eastman Vol. 5: Gay Guerrilla', Wild Up conductor Chris Rountree discusses the hybrid written-and-oral tradition of Eastman's scores, the ensemble's rehearsal practice of triangulating meaning, and the Black, gay minimalist's enduring claim on the present.
Tape Hiss and Tenderness — zzzahara's 'Distant Lands'
zzzahara's fourth album trades the romantic preoccupations of earlier releases for something harder-won — a tender, analog meditation on grief, mixed identity, and the strange clarity of sobriety.
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.
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.
Gregory Uhlmann's Call-and-Response with the Dark Sky
Guitarist Gregory Uhlmann discusses 'Extra Stars,' a five-year collection of pieces inspired by stargazing in the California desert, and the Los Angeles musical community threaded through it.
Plush Life — The Soft Resistance of Green-House
Olive Ardizoni and Michael Flanagan of the LA-based electronic duo Green-House talk imaginary video games, Sanibel Island shells, a stuffed sloth named Flanby, and the gentle stubbornness behind their new album on Ghostly International.
More Will Be Revealed — Lala Lala's Long Way to Stillness
On 'Heaven 2,' Lala Lala traces the slow, unsentimental work of releasing control and learning to trust what gets left behind.
Whose Sound Is Whose? The Collective Method of SML
The LA quintet's second album, 'How You Been', unfolds through the distillation of live improvisations into moments where individual voices dissolve into collective sound.