The host of Slate's 'Hit Parade' joins The Tonearm Podcast to discuss the two pools of data that keep the Billboard Hot 100 honest, the bundling schemes that turned the album chart into a promotional shell game, and the cultural rules that decide who country radio will play.
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Raised in the Shenandoah Valley and jazz-trained at Berklee, Wellington discusses old-time repertoire, the constant calibration between dancing and playing, and the making of the solo album 'Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still.'
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The Vermont musician behind 'Forager' talks foraged field recordings, a boyhood spent in Indiana megachurches, and why he wants no part of the wellness playlist.
Nearly three decades after 'Deconstructing Beck', Matthew S sheds the pseudonyms to release the 'Tongues' EP as Myth Math, discussing his return to sampling, a collaboration with a former student, and the ethical quandaries AI poses to a career built on borrowed sound.
Luiza Monteiro sings in Portuguese to find her way back to Brazil, slipping between the characters a theatre stage taught her to inhabit.
Beijing-based artist Mixol discusses manifestation and tarot, the self-doubt that once made her quit songwriting, and the eight-bit narrative game she built to play alongside her debut EP, 'The Fool.'
The Hudson Valley musician and Goddess Party founder on self-marriage, Bulgarian choral music, and running a benevolent hierarchy, ahead of 'The Wedding,' a two-night rite of borrowed gowns and mirror-held vows.
After the release of 'Noise Trip Explosion,' the Toronto composer and Black Galaxie noise artist talks doctoral research, acoustic startle experiments, and why it's worth keeping his wildest studio accidents.
Guitar in hand and Arthur Russell forever at his shoulder, Steven Hall turns half a century of desire into harmony he mostly sings to himself.
The Japanese writer and photographer has visited roughly four hundred jazz kissa over fifty years; his book 'Jazz Kissa' is a record of what remains, assembled from dim rooms, Altec A7 speakers, and the silences between tracks.
The New York trumpeter, composer, and bandleader behind Sexmob and the Millennial Territory Orchestra returns with a pair of linked albums, 'ResoNation Trio' and 'Ultra Resonance,' and talks trumpet trios, dub reinvention, Levon Helm's Rambles, and the downtown scene that formed him.
Don Cento of the Austin trio Cento Threeo discusses the band's debut album 'Halfway to Mellowtown' and its jazz and Americana roots, the Ahmad Jamal influence, and a creative process built on long friendships rather than deliberate genre strategy.
Founder of Albert's Favourites and Wah Wah 45s veteran Adam Scrimshire talks through 'Bring Our Light to Every Corner,' his new album built on four years of looking for personal peace, the grimness of the UK political moment, and the music community he named for his granddad's cassettes.
Hen Ogledd's four members trace how a shared songwriting chaos, competing disciplines, and vocals in Welsh and Scots came together on their latest album, 'Discombobulated.'
Courtney Carmichael and Nikki St. Pierre discuss signing to Paper Bag Records, moving from rural Manitoba to Winnipeg, and turning pandemic isolation into sundayclub's self-titled debut album.
Saxophonist and composer Alden Hellmuth discusses growing up in Hartford's Jackie McLean tradition, her mentorship under Herbie Hancock, and the double-bass lineup behind her new album, 'Tether.'
On their fourth album, 'Escrito en agua,' the Mexico City band Diles que no me maten build songs from Mahmoud Darwish's poetry, funerary music from Oaxaca, and their own festival organizing, all filtered through loose, unresolved improvisation.
Filmmaker Matt Hinton speaks about the technical resurrection of 'Awake, My Soul', the expanding world of Sacred Harp singing, and the difference between hearing this music on a recording, hearing it in a room, and standing in the middle of the square.
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.
Bill Nace and David Watson discuss improvising 'On Bats' on taishōgoto and Highland bagpipes, their shared fascination with Lou Reed's 'Metal Machine Music,' and why neither of them enjoys naming a finished piece.
On 'Transcend,' his second record with the GIFTS quintet, Dave Douglas reflects on Ellington's Sacred Concerts, the slab paintings of Jack Whitten, and the moment Booker Little broke the dam for a generation of trumpeter-composers.
The Seattle-based duo of Anne Tong and Bryce Barsten speak about their new album 'Dim Sum & Then Some,' the band that began as a Mandarin lesson, their DIY aesthetic, and the unexpected resonance their music carries for Chinese American audiences.
The synthesizer pioneer behind TONTO, Stevie Wonder's classic run, and DEVO's 'Freedom of Choice' reflects on a life spent as the man behind the curtain in his new memoir, 'Shaping Sounds.'
The French artist and Shelter Press founder discusses her live score for Les yeux sans visage, the trial of Gisèle Pelicot, improvisation as a form of survival, and the politics of touring the US in 2025.
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.
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.
Long before YouTube built its pipeline and Spotify buried its royalties, two films were already asking whether you were a victim of the machine or complicit in it. Warning: contains spoilers!
Rooted in a fundamentalist household on the South Side of Nova Scotia and sharpened by crust punk and free jazz, Chik White arrives at 'face across the door' after years of tightening the distance between art and noise.
Around the release of 'E at Home,' Eliana Glass reflects on the limits of technique, setting aside her jazz training, and Nina Simone's case for making someone else's song completely your own.
Recorded in an off-grid Spanish farmhouse during a brutal La Niña winter, 'The Exit Diaries' is the sound of a musician who scrapped an entire album's worth of dark orchestral music, listened obsessively to Alice Coltrane, and arrived somewhere he hadn't expected.
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.
With 'ITERAE,' a collaboration with Belgian pianist Jozef Dumoulin, electroacoustic composer Joseph Branciforte turns his live-editing system into an instrument for slowing time.
With a cast of Nashville heavyweights and a philosophy borrowed from improv comedy, Burlington-based guitarist and songwriter Bob Wagner makes his long-overdue case for the front of the stage.
The ambient composer on her cassette release 'Yarrow,' frog taxis, the power of dormant seeds, and the dread of leaving one's recorder out overnight in the rain.