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Crucial Listening #190: Able Noise

The CEO in cellophane, what the hands choose to do, turning to bone. The experimental duo discuss their important albums.

Crucial Listening #189: Maurice Louca

"Play more Beefheart", broken Elvis, a background to life. The composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #188: knifedoutofexistence

Freaks are drawn to freaks, hauntological boombox, wobbly drum solos. Dean Lloyd Robinson discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #187: Zosha Warpeha + Mariel Terán

The brittle and the velvet, instrument elevation, motific deconstruction, exhibiting the romantic. Collaborators Zosha Warpeha + Mariel Terán discuss their important albums.

Crucial Listening #186: Lucia H Chung (en creux, Falling Cat Problem)

Scared-fish drones, a reckoning with low frequencies, damp cardboard noise wall, cinematic conjurings. The Taiwanese experimental artist discusses important noise/drone albums with host Jack Chuter.

Crucial Listening #185: Qur'an Shaheed

Bach in the club, big idea music, slow sensual states of being. The LA-based pianist and composer discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #184: Divide and Dissolve

Low every night, channelling relaxation, meeting musical geniuses. Takiaya Reed discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #183: Hüma Utku

Wine and cigarettes, heart and spirit, the cranky and the problematic. The Berlin-based sound artist and musician discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #182: Dustin Wong

Shooting a shotgun at a water tower, textural amalgams on the Silk Road, kindness in music. The LA-based musician discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #181: Jako Maron

The flesh and bone of synthesis, all the power in one drum, great songs with shit mixes. The Réunion island-based electronic maloya producer discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #180: Jeremy Young

One-take to tape, Maserati red-lining, escaping the concert hall. The Tiohtià:ke/Montréal-based maker of concrète electronic tape music discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #179: Rich Loren Balling (Pyramids)

Tascam masterpieces, deadly post-show oil slick, the cult of personality. The member of black metal/shoegaze band Pyramids discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #178: Left Hand Cuts Off The Right

Methodical and playful, the Radigue over your shoulder, one riff played well. Sound artist and musician Robbie Judkins discusses three important albums.

Review: [something's happening] – Buzz

Emissions from the no-zone of the broken schedule.

Crucial Listening #177: T. Gowdy

Sound through helium, medieval flute on a hill, puncturing the tension. The Berlin-based producer and musician discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #176: Nina Garcia

Pieces of life, countryside backpack diffusions, noisy-distorted-no-wave-crazy-guitar. The Paris-based guitarist discusses three important albums.

Review: Joseph White – (The Game is) Hypnosis

Electronic processes deployed in emulation of the natural, forming a record that somehow feels serene in its rapid-fire stutters and darts.

Crucial Listening #175: Liew Niyomkarn

Elegant and effusive, timeless eternities, bulky sounds. The Brussels-based sound artist and composer discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #174: Simon Grab + David Meier

Hunting for errors, the lesson in Queens, massive dub sound systems, peripheral vibes. Simon Grab and David Meier discuss four important albums.

Crucial Listening #173: Jack Chuter pt.2

3am Vegas haze, inappropriate wedding songs, coffee shop intensity vortex. The host of Crucial Listening discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #172: Daniela Huerta

Sound as living entity, eating your greens, divinity and dedication. The Berlin-based, Mexican multimedia artist and DJ discusses three important albums.

Feature: Records of 2024

Here's just a handful of the records that have really affected me in 2024. Zosha Warpeha – silver dawn (Relative Pitch Records) Swooping and repetitious improvisations for the Hardanger d’amore fiddle, captured "in a sun-filled room” over two days. There’s a calligraphic energy here, as if

Crucial Listening #171: Félicia Atkinson

Rothko croissants, records like old trees, cave-age slowcore. The French musician and artist discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #170: AGF

Socialist pop music, the control of the clock, the beautiful digital. The Hailuoto, Finland-based artist and poemproducer discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #169: Pat Thomas

Mad standards, worst planet ever, fire in a pet shop. The improvising pianist discusses three important albums.

Review: Merma Suelo – S/T

An articulation of the liquid era through strands of language, hampered fidelities and expressions of water.

Crucial Listening #168: Miguel Prado (Nzʉmbe)

Clarity and self-indulgence, the end of history, awakening the ear. The philosopher and artist discusses three important albums.

Review: Dave Welder – Ghostwriting!

Chrono-scrambled soundscapes from the UK south coast.

Crucial Listening #167: Eugene S. Robinson (Buñuel, Oxbow)

Nothing but blancmange, beautiful death-adjacency, laughing through the discomfort. The vocalist of Buñuel and the late Oxbow discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #166: Miki Yui

Small music, the lazy way of listening, the motor of collaboration. The Tokyo-born, Düsseldorf-based musician discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #165: Gábor Lázár

No kick drum, three sounds and humour, the power of multidirectional expression. The Hungarian electronic producer discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #164: Wendy Eisenberg

Perfect trumpet voice, music as prayer, Ben Monder's right hand. The improviser and songwriter discusses three important albums.

Review: Gerald Cleaver – The Process

Techno unravelled through the M.O. of percussive improvisation, celebrating Detroit and the Black American Male.

Crucial Listening #163: Annie Aries

Noisy artefact discovery, spilling soft toys at the parade, heartbroken AI minds. The Swiss-Philippine composer and musician discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #162: Carlos Giffoni

IBM 7090 hypnosis, black jeans on the beach, music for crying and driving. The Venezuelan experimental musician and writer discusses three important albums.

Review: Nídia & Valentina – Estradas

A rotary commotion of percussion and hidden intricacies, tucked within minimal rhythms and repetitive melodic licks.

Crucial Listening #161: Mattin

Isolation and electroacoustics, listening and openness, putting rock into the coffin. The artist, musician and theorist discusses three important albums.

Review: Zheng Hao – Harmonium II

Volatile (im)balances for feedback systems.

Crucial Listening #160: Brian Cook (Sumac, Russian Circles, Botch)

Proto-disco black hole disintegration, leaving in the flubs, "Shake Your Hips" at number 3. The American bassist discusses three important albums.

Review: Jeph Jerman + Tim Olive – Pancakes

Unsettled materials and overblown capture, with each piece recorded by one participant and mixed by the other.

Crucial Listening #159: Tashi Wada

Life partner collaborations, Alice Coltrane signature bends, nomadic explorations in tuning. The Los Angeles-based musician discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #158: Jennifer Walshe

Making work out of bones, Bach in intergalactic excess, pre-admin ABC karaoke. The composer and improviser discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #157: Nicole Rampersaud

Fountains of ideas, mind blown in Rap City, candy wrapper responses. The New Brunswick-based trumpet player, improviser and composer discusses three important albums.

Review: Petra Dubach + Mario van Horrik – WAVES Trinity

Three strings are suspended from the walls, yet nothing happens unless they're brought into connection with eachother.

Crucial Listening #156: Michelle Moeller

Dizzy rhythms, slippery transitions, sincerity and playfulness. The Oakland-based composer and performer discusses three important albums.

Review: sawako – sounds

18 tracks, 33 minutes. In memoriam Sawako Kato (1978-2024).

Review: Zosha Warpeha – silver dawn

Improvised vignettes for Hardanger d’amore, informed by Nordic folk traditions and a spacious, mindful repetition.

Crucial Listening #155: Adam Wiltzie

Obstetric ambient, sullen atmospheres, episodic engulfment. The classical ambient composer discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #154: Kenneth Kirschner

Train breakdown Feldman epiphanies, radical flatness in the primeval forest, the Gary Numan barracks theft. The New York-based composer discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #153: Madeleine Cocolas

Aggressive pianos, bursting arpeggios, music for the cool kids. The Australian composer and producer discusses three important albums.

Zachary James Watkins – Affirmative Action

A tri-directional outpouring of multiple selves, faltering electricity and overlain tuning systems.

Crucial Listening #152: Black Brunswicker

Black metal for midwest drives, post-apocalyptic collage, ragas for John. The Manchester, UK-based ambient folk artist discusses three important albums.

Review: Li Jianhong – Soul Solitary

Two live performances by the Chinese experimental guitarist, carving open a channel from his core to the world outside.

Crucial Listening #151: Sara Bigdeli Shamloo (9T Antiope)

Cathartic tragedies, dog-eating opera, guitar improviser spirit animals. The vocalist, lyricist and composer from 9T Antiope discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #150: Dis Fig

Voice drips like milk, rays of soprano sunlight, filthy metal bass face. Producer, vocalist and DJ Felicia Chen discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #149: Mark Sanders

Driving in fury, letting the endings be real, slow and lonely. The free improvisation percussionist discusses three important albums.

Review: Rachel Musson – Ashes and Dust, Earth and Sky, LLudw a Llwch, Daear a Nef

Portals between the city and West Wales for saxophone, flutes, field recordings and other materials.

Crucial Listening #148: Rosa Anschütz

Caught by howling, three people at the 2pm concert, vivid colour changes. The Berlin-based singer and artist discusses three important albums.

Review: A-Sun Amissa – Ruins Era

We are, unequivocally, within a world too burned and broken to indulge any residual hopes of repair.

Crucial Listening #147: francisco lópez

Post-apocalyptic industrial environments, pseudo-music, twisted proto-typicalities. The sound artist and experimental musician discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #146: Dhangsha

The dirt aesthetic, non-relinquishable frequencies, opening up that filter. The London-based sound artist and "mutant dancehall" practitioner discusses three important albums.

Review: Asha Sheshadri – Whiplash

Transit, industrial music, ceaseless updates to understanding.

Review: Ensemble 1 – Delay Works

Spiralling 6/8 hypnosis for guitar, drums, bass. Always back to the start, never losing power.

Review: Conducive – Vanterwood Industries, Inc.

Slow-dawning dark ambient horror. The strange factory on the edge of town.

Feature: Review of 2023

An utterly non-definitive run-through of my favourite records released in 2023.

Crucial Listening #145: hyacinth.

Slowing everything down, emotionally devastating lines, the snare on Faucet. The Portland-based producer discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #144: Fortresses

Mellow ingenuity, drowned in reverb, London at its most gloomy and miserable. London-based multidisciplinary artist Sam Ashton discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #143: Jessica Pavone

Weird symphony, no crazy vibrato, Terry Riley on the discman. The violist and composer discusses three important albums.

Review: IEOGM – dolphins in cornwall

An uncanny collaboration between Marie Vermont and the concept horse, melding the domestic and the sub-aquatic.

Review: Vumbi Dekula – Congo Guitar

Joyous solo debut from the veteran Congolese guitarist, after four decades working in collaborative contexts.

Crucial Listening #142: Dorian Wood

High-altitude Bryars, trash on the walls, desperate shamans. The Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #141: aircode

Emotional rollercoasters, impossible Neo Tokyo, perfect snares. The London-based Swedish producer/sound designer discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #140: Lucie Vítková

Architectural sound, understandings of freedom, and how do we end? The composer, improviser and performer discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #139: Ava Rasti

Light in the ocean depths, doors to other worlds, respiratory cycling. The Tehran-based composer discusses three important albums.

Review: Laurel Halo – Atlas

Intermingled inner worlds for strings, saxophones, keys and sudden voice.

Crucial Listening #138: Hyunhye Seo

(Almost) falling into the water, post-dumb-house-party-bike-rides, wildness and mastery. The musician and member of Xiu Xiu discusses three important albums.

Review: Hearsay – Glossolalia

Chicago improvisatory trio for drums, cello/guitar and turntable engage in hall-of-mirrors time-meddling.

Review: José Orozco Mora – Sucesiones

A set of reduced electronic studies for the 53-EDO microtonal tuning system.

Crucial Listening #137: Babe, Terror

The science of baffling unpredictability, nuclear plants leaking beauty, the moments before the apocalypse. The São Paulo-based artist discovers three important albums.

Crucial Listening #136: Arnold Dreyblatt

Digging in near the bridge, one old woman, acting like the Rolling Stones. The American media artist and composer discusses three important albums.

Review: MONTY – Abol Tabol | আ​ব​ো​ল ত​া​ব​ো​ল

Cataclysmic suggestion and fragmentary beats, in the debut EP from the Dhaka, Bangladesh-based experimental act.

Crucial Listening #135: Taylor Deupree

Music for sleep, radical electronics, biospheric amorphous spaces. The sound artist and 12k label founder discusses three important albums.

Review: Sult – Always I Gnaw

Three ferocious exercises in improvisatory vigilance for guitar, bass drum and contrabass.

Review: Aaron Rosenblum – State Fair! Vol. 1: The Midway

Three attraction operators in full theatrical flow, captured at the Kentucky State Fair back in 2013.

Crucial Listening #134: Joni Void

The joy of UK pirate radio, intoxicating production, Streets Of Rage DJ set. Montréal-based French-British producer Jean Néant discusses three important albums.

Review: Nandele & A-Tweed – Xigubo

Colonial resistance derived from Zulu and Mozambican cultures is whirled into dizzying sound design and techno vigour.

Review: Lucie Vítková – Cave Acoustics

Sound cradled in the grand echoes of churches and caves. Reflections on family, grief, legacy, transformation.

Crucial Listening #133: Bana Haffar

Phytoplankton microsound, sketched-out dead ends, perfect warbles. The North Carolina-based electronic music producer discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #132: Sabiwa

Sunday puppet show routine, childhood anime memories, Brazilian cutlery jams. The electronic producer and performer from Taiwan discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #131: Eluvium

Scared of the wolf, emotionally-resonant Eno, the 90s Louisville scene. Modern composer Matthew Cooper discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #130: Rachel Lyn

Oxfam treasures, panic-stricken falling, wordless stories. The multidisciplinary artist discusses three important albums.

Review: Secret Flight – S/T

Brittle fantasies for voice and electronics. Rising, falling, rising again.

Crucial Listening #129: Mira Martin-Gray

Very inviting thumbs, vanilla apologists, Monk's comeback. The Toronto-based experimental musician discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #128: Liturgy

In love with a vampire, psychedelic songform subversion, composer visitations. Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #127: Ibukun Sunday

Sleepless Lagos, echoes of heaven, beastly synths. The sound artist and violist discusses three important albums.

Review: Oishi – once upon a time there was a mountain

Uncanny kinships between tape and laptop, in the debut release from Zheng Hao and Ren Shang.

Crucial Listening #126: Fire-Toolz

Beauty in djent-adjacency, solo-Jeep-screamo-touring, "bad guy" music. The multi-genre multi-instrumentalist discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #125: Babak Ahteshamipour

Fishing the sound, math rock imposter syndrome, maximalist gratitude. The Athens-based sound and visual artist discusses three important albums.

Crucial Listening #124: Kalia Vandever

Nostalgia rushes, unhurried solo guitar, Pharoah jumps in. The American trombonist and composer discusses three important albums.

Review: ni zheng – body of immanence

Grim and claustrophobic electroacoustics.