The Lydian Spin

Photo By: Jason Quigley Award-winning filmmaker and photographer  Alicia J. Rose  has directed over three dozen music videos for artists like First Aid Kit,  Cake , and  Bob Mould , while visually branding bands like The Decemberists . Her unique visual style, grounded humor, and witty storytelling deliver deeply resonant, authentic narratives. Her acclaimed web series  The Benefits of Gusbandry  ...

The veteran punk journalist and resident Austin chronicler  Tim Stegall returns with a new book in tow. Anarchy in the Studio: Punk Music 1970-1979 (Ruffian Books) is a, five-hundred-page love letter to the genre's formative decade, told twelve inches at a time. Tim, who has been documenting punk and the underground since 1985, moves beyond the usual CBGB and Sex Pistols myth making to map the swe...

Karen Fiorito returns to The Lydian Spin. On this episode, Lydia and Tim talk with her about The Urgency of Now: ¡No Pasarán! , a new multi-disciplinary political art exhibition and "Get Out The Vote" activation. Curated by Karen , Dale Youngman , and Isa Gordon , the project is a direct response to the current political climate, with the United States at the center of conflict and upheaval around...

Filmmaker  Todd Stephens is best known for his semi-autobiographical "Ohio Trilogy" — Edge of Seventeen (1998), Gypsy 83 (2001) and Swan Song (2021) — all set in his home town of Sandusky. Gypsy 83, his directorial debut, follows two small-town goth outsiders who leave Ohio for New York, chasing Gypsy's dream of performing at Night of a Thousand Stevies, the long-running celebration of Stevie Nick...

    Photo: Sabrina Santiago Early in his career, photographer and current New York Times photo editor Jeffrey Henson Scales documented the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s. These photographs were compiled in his 2022 monograph  In a Time of Panthers: Early Photographs . During the 1970s, he worked in the music industry as a tour manager, production director, and equipment manager for acts inc...

In 1991, Larry Hardy founded the enduring Los Angeles-based label In the Red Records. Guided by Larry's personal taste for raw, "atonal garage music" and sonic extremes, the small operation has cultivated a catalog of over 300 titles, championing underground acts like Ty Segall , the Black Lips , and Jay Reatard . On August 21st, In the Red Records—in partnership with the newly revived Vengeance R...

It's been a busy summer for Lydia and Tim. Stay tuned for more guests joining in the coming weeks, but for now, we're catching you up on everything in this brand-new "minisode"—recorded all the way from Lydia's bed in Brooklyn and from Tim's tour in Japan.

During their June 2026  tour across New Zealand and Australia , Lydia turns the mic on her touring  partner, Andrew Coates of Melbourne's Black Cab . Together, the duo brought a , live reimagining of Suicide and Alan Vega to stops in Wellington , Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, and Perth. The run commemorated the tenth anniversary of Vega's passing, channeling the energy of the 1970s NYC un...

Reg Bloor is a guitarist, instrument builder, and founder of the Systems Neutralizers record label. For 18-years she collaborated with composer Glenn Branca , serving as a guitarist, concertmaster, and manager on international tours and multiple albums. On June 12, 2026, she will conduct Branca's  Symphony No. 13 at Lincoln Center, and she is currently preparing the release of his Symphony No. 4 ....

Robert "Bobby" Swope belonged to a talented cadre of avant-garde visionaries—among them Arto Lindsay, Connie Burg , Mark Cunningham , and Gordon Stevenson —who first crossed paths as students at Florida's Eckerd College in the mid-1970s. This collective moved to New York City in 1977,  where they formed the nucleus of the No Wave movement alongside other luminaries like Lydia. Bobby first met Lydi...

Lydia and Tim are on a whirlwind tour right now, hitting stages in Brazil, Australia, Japan, and Europe! The heavy travel and intense performance schedule have made pinning them down for an interview tough, but this week we've got the scoop on exactly where you can see them live. If they are coming to your city, you won't want to miss it. Listen now to get all the details.

In this episode returning to  The Lydian Spin  is writer and artist Zoe Hansen . Zoe is a writer, video artist, and longtime friend of the podcast. On this episode she is here to celebrate a big milestone. Her brand new memoir, Going Down in Gotham , is officially out from Far West Press. It is an amazing, firsthand look at three decades of New York City's underground culture, documenting her surv...

Genre Is Death , a limitation-destroying noise band formed by Ty Varesi (guitar, vox) and Tayler Lee (bass, vox), release their debut album, Attractive People out May 1 2026 on  In The Red Records .  Their sound is abrasive yet melodic, using heavy distortion, dissonant riffs, and reverberating vocals to create music that feels both minimal and overwhelming. Their newest record  Attractive People...

Lorin Benedict is a California-based improvising vocalist (scat singer, essentially), who operates in the fields of jazz and jazz-adjacent music. In addition, he works as a theoretical and computational applied physicist where his focus is on understanding the properties of materials in extreme conditions of pressure and temperature.

As the frontman for U.S. Maple , Al Johnson utilized his voice as a textural and percussive instrument rather than a melodic vehicle. His delivery consisted of rasps, sharply drawn breaths, and fragmented phrasing. Al operated with rigid adherence to a self-devised notation system, scripting every pause and vocal eccentricity in advance. This formalized approach to dissonance allowed his vocals to...

Part 2 of Larry Mullin's   sit down with Lydia and Tim. 

Larry Mullins, also known as Toby Dammit , is a musician, record producer, and composer who plays drums, percussion, and keyboards. He performs as a member of the bands Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Swans , and previously played with Iggy Pop and The Stooges . He has also worked on scores for film and television and appeared in a performance role in the series Babylon Berlin . Stay tuned next we...

Ian Svenonius is a musician and author who began his career in the 1980s Washington D.C. punk scene. He has been the lead vocalist for several bands, including  The Nation of Ulysses , The Make-Up , and Chain and The Gang , and later released music under the electronic solo project Escape-ism . In addition to his musical output and hosting a talk show on VBS.tv , Ian has written several books of e...

Norman Westberg is a guitarist known for anchoring the monolithic avant-rock of Swans . Away from the band's trademark volume, however, his solo work—like the Lawrence English -produced After Vacation —abandons traditional riffs for meditative, ambient drone. By manipulating sustained tones through effect pedals, Norman restructures the instrument's sound into atmospheric compositions. His career...

Nuha Ruby Ra is a London-based artist working across music, performance, and visual art. Blending industrial sound, art-pop, and spoken word, her work explores power, instinct, and transformation through raw, physical live performance. Following two critically acclaimed EPs, she is currently creating her debut album, a project unfolding under the creative force known as NOWSYN.

In 1977,  Gary Wilson finished recording You Think You Really Know Me in his parents' basement and released it himself.  Through the 1980s, his work in experimental music that draws across styles including new wave, rock, funk, jazz, lounge, and avant-garde. developed a following. After a 1981 tour, he was largely out of public view.  Gary resurfaced around 1996, and Michael Wolk filmed his 2002 r...

Blake Fleming is a percussionist, author, and educator known for his work with experimental bands and for writing The Book of Rhythm , an encyclopedia of over 5,000 organized rhythms for all instruments. The book has been sold in more than 20 countries and was a top 5 instruction title in the 2020 Modern Drummer Reader's Poll , and Blake was featured in SPIN 's 100 Greatest Drummers of Alternative...

Rhode Islander, Stephen Mattos is a musician and librarian. He's been performing since the late 2000s under the name  Chrome Jackson , and his latest band is ,  THERE . Outside of music, he spends his time cycling, working on photography, and cooking and gardening with his wife, artist Alicia Renadette. Stephen previously co-founded bands including Arab on Radar , Athletic Automaton and Doomsday S...

Sonny Vincent fronted Testors in the mid-1970s New York punk scene, playing CBGB and Max's Kansas City before the band split in 1981. He later formed Sonny Vincent and the Extreme and Model Prisoners , and went on to record and tour with Maureen "Mo" Tucker and Sterling Morrison from the Velvet Underground. He has continued releasing records and wrote the memoir  Snake Pit Therapy .

Scott Bomar is a Memphis lifer who moves easily between the grit of garage-surf ( Impala ) and the deep-pocket groove of classic soul ( the Bo-Keys ), with credits alongside Stax/Hi orbit players and on Al Green's comeback-era sessions. As a producer/engineer and film soundtrack  composer, he continues to drag the Memphis musical DNA into bigger rooms with work on movies such as Hustle & Flow , Bl...