Ecstatic noise w/ Marshall Trammell and Tashi Dorji
Joy with ferocity. Rattling drums and dirty electric guitar feels like punk opera unwound and bent. Recorded live in Portland, Duo Damage, Vol I is loud and distorted in...
experimental
Banjo Music for Carole Finer
Allison Cameron brought this release by Stephen Chase’s mon se taire truc editions to our attention. A tribute to Scratch Orchestra original Carole Finer and a fundraiser for Resonance...
Bands of Rubber from Allison Cameron
Here’s a composed piece for the Rubber Band Quartet from Toronto improviser and composer Allison Cameron. It’s strange and particular music, radical but gentle, emerging from mundane materials, amplification,...
Dictaphone delights w/ Joe Posset
Joe Posset of Newcastle does wonderful things with a mini-casette recorder. He’s turned it into a musical instrument to improvise with, as well as a compositional material or a...
Mary Halvorson’s Code Girl w/ Robert Wyatt
It’s nice to hear Robert Wyatt’s voice again, particularly with some heavy guitar licks. I missed this 2020 release when it came out. Halvorson here working also with Amirtha...
Susana Santos Silva Impermanence’s “The Ocean Inside a Stone”
A five-member ensemble, led by trumpet player/composer Susana Santos Silva. Unexpected fusions, often signalled by Hugo Raro’s synthesizer work, take to the listener to places of memory—now Radiohead, now...
“Crushingly horrible, hilarious, and stupid” w/ Raven Chacon and John Dieterich (Endlings)
A special session with Endlings (Ravon Chacon + John Dieterich [of Deerhoof]). Endlings have performed a work specially for Unusual Music Exchange in partnership with CJTR, Dunlop Art Gallery,...
Punkish w/ Martin Arnold and Jaye Kovach
In this episode Josh and Martin listen to Lemon Kittens, Shaggs, Junko, and the Kyoto Imperial Court Orchestra. After the break Josh and Jaye listen to Homo Monstrous, Forced...
We love trippy: Listening with Renée Lear
This episode is with video artist Renée Lear, who has taken an unusual interest in unusual music. We listen to and discuss unusual music from Ween and Clown Core...
Psychedelic & wonderful listening with Martin Arnold
Listen to the music of Martin Arnold, Rudolf Komorous, Archie Shepp, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and Nightjars. Martin is a brilliant thinker on the wonderful and the psychedelic, and he...
Uchihashi Kazuhisa and Ryoko Ono: “001”
Ryoko Ono on saxophone, and Uchihashi Kazuhisa on daxophone, an instrument developed in the 1980s. On this track, wildly assertive playing, competing rhythms, competing repetitions, noisy intrusions that linger...
Allison Cameron Band: “Guitars”
How guitars and banjo can be so themselves and so strange at the same time. Experimental composition with the energy of rock. The Allison Cameron Band by The Allison...
Golden Melody Awards
A strange correspondence of quasi-monody with timbral and spectral improbability. Banjo and analogue synth. Also notice how the resonant frequencies of the banjo change. Golden Melody Awards by Golden...
Bass piano sounds like wind chimes of dreams
Andrew Wedman has invented a new instrument: the bass piano. It’s a regular piano but it’s tuned down. The detuning though, changes the character of the instrument radically, and...
Guayaveras are sweet…and Rat-drifting relaunches on Bandcamp!
Serious as philosophy, loose as sleep, sweet as raspberries blown in a bubble bath. It’s Eric Chenaux on guitalele and toe-synth (a homemade synthesiser played with the toes) and...
Strange sound colours: April Aliermo
Artemis of Colour by April Aliermo puts recordings of breath and the voice into dialogue with gorgeously rich oscillators. Some wild binaural stuff at times. Hear Aliermo as part...
Karen Ng’s “Day 3 i”
It’s difficult to know what analogy works to describe Karen Ng’s stunning solo saxophone recordings: a thought process, a dialogue with the self, a creator reacting to her moment-by-moment...
Punk Kong’s “Pull Ninja”
Unusual soundscapish jazz takes noisy turns, distorted climbs, and opens to beautiful spaces. Pull Ninja by Punk Kong
Geir Sundstøl’s “Warszawa-Alabama”
Very unexpected coupling of Coltrane and Bowie. Brødløs by Geir Sundstøl
Luke Stewart / Patrick Shiroishi, “Staying Human”
Long tones, voluminous room sound (parking garage!), spare and grand, maybe scary, maybe consoling. Luke Stewart / Patrick Shiroishi by Luke Stewart / Patrick Shiroishi