Sad13 in Sixty Seconds or So
On ‘1331,’ Sadie Dupuis wrote, performed, and mixed her own theme songs, and she would like the record to show she is not an easy hang.
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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.
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Radiator Hospital’s Four-Track Homecoming
On ‘Distorting Time,’ a family legend from the Wild West and the news from Minnesota share space with Sam Cook-Parrott’s fear of being washed up.
The Mediterranean Light of Sons of Sevilla
Recorded in London with Skinshape, 'It Could Be Today' holds the same summery, major-key sound the brothers were already writing into demos at home in 2020.
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 Siren’s Shore — Jolanda Moletta’s Visual Music
The Italian composer discusses ‘Oceanine’ and its companion short film, and the witches, snake-women, and Pasolini films behind both.
Whitney George’s Telephone Noir
A look at ‘Eavesdropping,’ an ongoing phone-line drama of two characters, a piano score, and hints of a third listener, and at the telephone’s long career as a storyteller, from ‘Sorry, Wrong Number’ to the party line.
The Gentle Game Design of Tiiva’s Pop Universe
The musician, sound designer, and game maker talks through ‘This Could Be a Start,’ an AI character’s search for a soul, and writing about gender through invented characters.
The Accidental Bandmates of deep glens
Brett Bullion on recording ‘carver’ from loops cut out of his own Max/MSP jams, grieving in widening circles, and touring with Autechre.
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.
Ed Motta Between Rio and the American Radio Dial
Cameo, the S.O.S. Band, and Gap Band are the coordinates of 'Toc-Toc', an album of drum machines and bass synthesizers that sends Motta back to what the radio was playing when he was a teenager.
The Animal Songs of Nina Winder-Lind
The New Eves’ cellist straps on an electric guitar for ‘Wild Love,’ a debut solo album of bruises, breath, and a closing salute to her foremothers.
Close to the Edit With Crying Laughing
Christian Best and Jen Kirby of Crying Laughing talk through the making of ‘Talking,’ from Moondog’s melodic percussion to the Baltimore scene that delivered the rest of the band.
Life and Death in Jon Hassell’s Fourth World
A longtime devotee goes back through more than four decades of Hassell’s music and talks with co-producer Jeff Rona about the ‘City’ sessions, the self-sampling, and the posthumous ‘Music Is Invisible.’
The Cursed Poets of Siavash Amini and Eugene Thacker
Thacker's verses handed to synthetic voices and processed past recognition, 'Songs for Sad Poets, Vol. III' buries its words inside Amini's electronics.
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.
Olaf Rupp Slaughters the Sound for the Greater Good
On ‘Fuzzy Logic,’ Olaf Rupp pushes a small amplifier past its limit and captures the wreckage at what he calls “the volume of a kitchen radio.”
The Warm, Cosmic Company of megiapa
On megiapa’s ‘Intentions,’ voice notes from her grandmother, her mother, and her closest friends drift through the synth haze, a family album cut to beats.
Deniz Cuylan Scores a Life With Luca
The Istanbul-born film and television composer discusses 'For Luca' — his earlier songs recast in his friends' voices, the dog it mourns, the freedom of being one crew member among many, and the melancholy he prefers to share.
Grief, Glitch, and the Harp of Lara Somogyi
Harpist Lara Somogyi talks through 'a [time] patterned,' from delay pedals and disrupted loops to Steve Reich and 'A Pattern Language,' the architecture handbook that gave the album many of its titles.
Elanor Moss's English Solitude
Good and evil sit in the same character, the same song, and — Moss suspects — the same person, a Catholic inheritance she hears throughout 'The Knife, The Needle.'
More Spirit Than Concrete — The Residents Revisit 'Eskimo'
The Residents' spokesman Homer Flynn traces the path from a commissioned 20-minute set to the first full staging of the group's Arctic concept album, now expanded with songs drawn from century-old folk tales.
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.
Ginny Winn's Visual Trip to the Music
"I get close. I always want to see the pupils in their eyes," Winn wrote of her method — and 'Grievous Angels, Trout Masks, and American Beauties' is the first gathering of what that closeness yielded, from a coffee shop outside Eureka to the Grateful Dead's ranch.
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.
Black Bananas’ Jennifer Herrema Keeps the Seams Showing
The Royal Trux cofounder discusses 'Bad Bunch,' the first Black Bananas album in twelve years, along with her new email newsletter, heirloom tomatoes, what's so special about a bloody T-shirt, and her thirty-five-year clothing archive bound for a Tokyo installation.
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.
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.
The Owl and the Upright — Sova Lets the Creaks In
Sova means owl, a bird of wisdom in some myths and an omen of evil in others, and on 'Alight!' the pianist wants her instrumental music just as open to interpretation.
Adam Voith Closes the Book on Christian Rock
Twenty-five years of booking bands ended in a burnout Voith is still annoyed about, and 'Recommended If You Like: A Novel' is what he did next — free, self-published, and delivered city to city out of an SUV.
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.
Mother, Father, Daughter, Mother — MuMu's Family Album
Her mother remembers love, her father says there was none, and 'The Brothel: A Musical Memoir' lets both accounts stand before handing the story to the next generation.
Peter Gall's Long Way Around the Drum Kit
The German drummer, a member of Web Web and Subtone, discusses 'Drum Seeds,' an album of drums, vintage synthesizers, and spring reverb made alone after his label asked him for drums and nothing else.
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.