Karen Ng on saxes and cities
Karen Ng on saxophone and more…a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and curator based in Toronto. She talks with host Josh Thorpe about round-robin collaborative composing, how cities and spaces shape musics,...
free jazz
Feathers and energy with Matana Roberts
In this interview Matana Roberts and host Josh Thorpe, we discuss and listen to some excerpts of Roberts’ new release on Constellation Records… it’s Coin Coin Chapter 5 (as...
Strange sounds from Counterflows Glasgow
This episode Josh Thorpe listens to a few recordings from musicians and artists discovered at Glasgow’s Counterflows festival. Artists include an English-Ugandan collaboration w/ Rian Treanor and Ocen James;...
Brodie West Quintet’s Fortress
The interplay here, particularly between West’s saxophone and Tania Gill’s piano, has me seeing a malleable object, a bright children’s toy or heavy paper, folded inside out and back...
Loving strange tones from Karen Ng and Scott Thomson
These sounds are so themselves and so otherworldy. Idiomatic and yet surprising at the same time. Lovely. And lovely in that it is dedicated to the late Ron Gaskin....
Alister Spence/Joe Williamson/Christopher Cantillo – “Opening”
Bells and bell-like sounds and cymbals, and other metal sounds, a searching piano and everything slowed down to a pace of uncertainty; in the middle the double bass like...
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...
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...
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
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
Alcorn, Bordreuil, and Laubrock: “Indigo Blue (Wayfarin Stranger)”
Susan Alcorn, Leila Bordreuil, and Ingrid Laubrock – pedal steel, cello, and saxophone – create an otherworldly sense of summer. Bird Meets Wire by Susan Alcorn, Leila Bordreuil, Ingrid Laubrock
An hour of Unusual on Clyde Built Radio
An eclectic radio show on Glasgow’s Clyde Built Radio. We listen to a song of mine, Sonic Youth, composer Allison Cameron, strange roots pop by The silt, Amps for...
Hotel Dilettante
Lol Coxhill & the George Burt & Raymond MacDonald Quintet with some lovely strange noises and dirty improvisation here. Also some tunes that sound like instrumental folk with very...
Jeanne Lee and Ran Blake
“Season in the Sun” on The Newest Sound Around. Stark and warm, austere and tuneful, the new sound in 1962 and today.