Absent Sounds Archive

This week, we have finally reached the end! The final Treefort episode aired with bands: Bonnie Trash (Emmalia + Sarafina) and Heaven for Real (Mark Grundy + J. Scott Grundy). Despite sitting on different sonic registers, both find themselves reckoning with what music holds — between trust, grief, fatherhood, and making art in between. Bonnie Trash's record Mourning You felt like the answer to wha...

Back in March we asked 10 artists at Treefort Music Fest 2026 some version of the same question: what question their music was trying to answer right now. This is the 3rd of four episodes. Three artists, without knowing the others had done the same thing, were circling this one: What does it cost to let yourself be seen? What gets made in the space between hiding and arriving, and while even when...

Taupe is a shimmering four-piece from Montreal whose debut record New Window arrived this spring. We caught up with Andrew Miller, Heather Ogilvie, Jess Barry, and Evan Magoni before their show at the Cameron House, during one of the first warm Toronto afternoons to talk about the multitude of pieces tucked into this record. It feels like a free association conversation of thought, from Cosmic Cri...

Sometimes you go into a project trying to make sense of something and come out with a better sense of what you're trying to make sense of. This is the second of four episodes Absent Sounds made at Treefort Music Fest in March 2026 — a docuseries built from ten artist interviews done over five days in Idaho. Each episode weaves between voices, asking some version of the same question: what is your...

There is a banner plane making loops over downtown Boise, as we showed up to record this episode. It says USA LOVES TRUMP. Below it, Treefort music festival is happening. This is the first of four episodes Absent Sounds made at the fest in March 2026 — a docuseries built from ten artist interviews done over five days in Idaho. Each episode weaves between voices, asking some version of the same que...

In today's episode of Absent Sounds, we sit with Alice Gerlach: also known as alice does computer music. Her latest record, Bliss , is four ten-minute electroacoustic compositions assembled from cello improvisations, field recordings, and mementos of a life being lived. The record places you in a lush disorienting world full of frog ponds and wind chimes, chopped vocals, leftover audio from tour s...

On this episode of Absent Sounds, Will Wiesenfeld (Baths) sat across from us at a coffee shop in Toronto, hours before his show at Lee's Palace. We talked about Cerulean R, his expanded reissue of the 2010 debut that launched his career, in full. What makes Cerulean R different from most reissues is its integrity to that era: every piece of it, from the unreleased tracks, the remixes, the demos, r...

In today's episode of Absent Sounds, we sit with Alex and the world he built as Tōth. His latest record, And the Voice Said has been a compass for me these past few months- it imposes no answers on listeners, but pulls you into the space needed to hear truth behind the noise. Almost like a mirror. Also! Tucked in the episode: a live rendition of a surprise song from the record, performed by Alex a...

TThis week, Sara Mae joins Absent Sounds for a track-by-track dive into the deluxe edition of their debut album: The Secret Ingredient Is Even More Meat. Under The Noisy, Sara Mae Henke (they/them) makes music for closing chapters that also loudly opens a door. We talk about the pipeline between poetry and songwriting, from the volta, to queer wordplay and the love-soaked specificity of "Ballerino...

Twen are Jane Fitzsimmons and Ian Jones rock duo who have spent the better part of a decade booking their own tours out of a converted van. You can feel their fiercely independent method permeating each riff: they write, engineer, and mix everything themselves. Fate Euphoric, their 2025 album, is the one we kept returning to on our daily drives without getting tired. Sprawling across garage rock,...

Brendan Wright has been making music as Tiberius for the better part of a decade, quietly, in bedrooms and basements in Allston-Brighton, and then slowly, with a merry band of friends-turned-family. Troubadour is a record about love, loss, and limerence in between. About the specific shame that gets baked into you before you have the language for it, and the ways we measure ourselves against false...

Hannah Frances is a composer, vocalist and guitarist, whose second album was one that has literally been spinning on repeat in our car. Spanning progressive rock, avant-folk, and jazz, the record navigates the ongoing, non-linear work of healing, with arrangements featuring contributions from Daniel Rossen of Grizzly Bear. Weajue spoke with Hannah at the tail end of her six-show tour, in Toronto a...

Graham Johnson has been making music as quickly, quickly since before most people had the language for what he was doing. When we first encountered his music, I couldn’t describe to to anyone either. This conversation catches him in reflection of figuring out what comes next. I Heard That Noise is his most distilled record yet, with beats infused acoustic songs carrying production jump scares, bui...

This week on Absent Sounds , we share a conversation with Mike Almquist: longtime manager, creative partner, and quiet architect behind the world of mewithoutYou. If you've ever let us play you music, you know we have mewithoutYou on almost every playlist. Saying "goodbye" (in the fullness of whatever the word really means) is nearly impossible. In this episode, we talk about how the band became a...

It's been four years since our first conversation with John, and this time we catch him in person during his stop in Madison Heights, MI for his Midwest tour supporting his new record. A lot has changed in four years, but the comfort his music brings his listeners has not. Unlike his other records, Joyful Noise is his most explicitly worship-focused project—yet it was the one that almost killed hi...

It's officially December, which means its officially snowing season. So what better way to welcome in the cold than an interview with cult classic band, Snowing. We sat down with Willow Brazuk and JR back when the sun was still around at New Friends Fest in Toronto—their first time ever playing in Canada. Also joined by our friends Paul and Zac from Farron Keep, we talked about the wonder that was...

Char and Meredith of Soft Blue Shimmer, along with producer Corey Coffman, join Weajue for a conversation about "They Will Leave Us With Nothing." It’s a record about capitalism, bodily grief, and what we pass between us when the system leaves us with nothing. This three-sided emotional triangle made it one of the hardest albums Corey has ever produced, and make it all the more resonant for us tod...

Alexei Shishkin makes music the same way he watches soccer: with an appreciation for improvisation. It's not often we're able to pay attention to the small moment that open into something larger but his record is all about the art of not overcomplicating it. On this episode of Absent Sounds, we have a good time playing through his debut Good Times and talk about how the album came together across...

Allegra Krieger joins Weajue for a conversation about her album Art of the Unseen Infinity Machine —a record that grapples with impermanence, and the liminal spaces of existence. We talk about the Infinity Machine as a mechanism moving through us, signs, talismans and dream. She explains the strange trinity of pain and joy and compromise, the act of absolving yourself and your body, the binary of...

On this episode of Absent Sounds , Weajue caught John Roseboro to talk through his album Fools — each track feels like a meditation on love, faith, and the strange arithmetic of becoming. Together, this quiet, searching conversation with John helps frame the album as a doorway into memory. We drift throug what does it mean to be known? To surrender? To make art that is an offering. To see more epi...

These days my brain feels like it’s tied up in a billion threads, but music has a way of loosening the knots. Bloom Effect’s oscilón has been part of that unwinding: a record that carries you out of the tangled noise and into something expansive, cosmic, and bright. The embodiment of love even. I caught up with the band (Jula Lafit, Craig Weighman, and Tom Rappa) at Sneaky Dee;s before they took t...

In this episode of Absent Sounds, we head to Kensington Market (Toronto) to rediscover the 2018 record The Love Songs of Oedipus Rex by The Holy Gasp along with the re-release of the documentary that captured its creation. The Holy Gasp is the songwriting and performance project of Benjamin Hackman, who wrote the thirteen track beauty of theatrical, and devastating yet and often darkly funny story...

Howdy friends! Today’s episode is the second installment of our New Friends Fest 2025 coverage, featuring an interview with Newfoundland-based band Swimming. From late-night basement hours to three-day marathons of writing and recording, Swimming’s music is built on both discipline and openness. Earlier this year, Weajue sat down with Jacob Cherwick to talk about the process of shaping Old (their...

From August 1–3, New Friends Fest took over Toronto's west end. The annual DIY punk, emo, and hardcore gathering brings bands from across the world together for three days of loud, unfiltered communion. Today's episode is the first of our 2025 NFF festival coverage. The "coolest internet emo band" logged off and touched grass (literally, on the lawn of the Lithuanian House), where we caught up wit...

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.