Flavortone

Alec and Nick discuss a concept of the miniature in this one. Touching upon music from the onkyo, wandelweiser and microsound genres, the discussion approaches various methods of compositional and improvisatory reduction. Topics include Gaston Bachelard's "The Poetics of Space," Participatory vs. Presentational music, the Time-Image of Gilles Deleuze as well as Marvel's Ant Man.

Alec and Nick inaugurate a BBQ Roast sub-series of the podcast, where a guest of honor is subjected to jokes and analysis at their expense. The series begins with a roast of British singer, songwriter, and producer James Blake as a relatively "neutral" starting point for these juicy, sizzling take downs. The conversation discusses the cringe-to-cool and UK Bass continuums, hauntology and paradoxes...

Reprising the "flavor-phonic," "gastro-acoustic" discussion charted in Flavortone Episode 4: Tasting Menu 1 (Dégustation), Alec and Nick step into the kitchen once again in this second edition to the Tasting Menu series, as they articulate a concept of the Stinky.  Considering a range of malodorous musical and culinary selections, this episode takes up the olfactory sense as reference for how perc...

Flavortone has produced a mini episode for Edition Erich Schmid on Montez Press Radio. Alec  & Nick articulate "The Fudd-Flynt Complex" which charts a Fuddsian analysis of the work of Henry Flynt as splicing the species war between Math & Language (Rabbit & Duck Season) into the world of Elmer Season—where Flynt's ideas of "Meta-Technology," "Concept Art," "Veramusement," "Brend," and "Acognitive...

Fresh from a visit to the Billie-Jean King National Tennis Center for the U.S. Open Grand Slam tournament, Alec & Nick consider a comparison between the sport of tennis and music. The episode charts out three conceptual spaces shared by sports and arts: the cultural production of iconic figures, an emphasis on the management of time, and political economies of Winning and Losing. Discussion of ama...

Having recently celebrated experimental hodgepodgeist and artist Ying Liu's 10th anniversary as a resident of New York City, Alec & Nick embark on discussing a central question she has asked Flavortone: what is an experiment? The episode features a self-checklist of questions Ying asks herself when inquiring if something "is an experiment." The conversation responds to these questions and broadly...

In this episode, Alec and Nick discuss the daily life poetry of digital workflows. Through a range of topics including the media art works of Yasunao Tone, Walter Benjamin's paradigm of Distraction vs. Concentration, Ableton Live, iOS, and more, the episode conceives of the laptop computer as a kind of "Flat Stanley," which accompanies us in life's mundane adventure and tacitly frames our normal a...

Named after Theo's recent Longform Editions release, the episode features Alec, Nick, and Theo embarking on a slightly turnt post-red-sauce conversation that discusses his work as well as ideas around sincerity, duration, ambient music vs. ambivalent music, the piano, "Blue" Gene Tyranny, Tim Hecker, Phillip Corner, Dark Souls, and more.   Opening Theme Music: Xander Seren Closing Music: "window"...

Alec and Nick discuss Blighttown, a notoriously punishing level in the video game Dark Souls where everything wants to poison you, or give you toxic status. The discussion uses the level as way of talking about "condemned structures" in contemporary music & discourse. Subversions of ascent and reward, the curatorial platform Blank Forms, anarchy, impermanent structures, cartography, reverb and mor...

Alec and Nick discuss some of the quandaries of reopening the live music and performance economy. Ideas around liveness, civic engagement, participation, self-determined infrastructure, commitment, diminishing returns, site, assemblage, and citation are discussed—specifically in experimental, improvised, and popular music, as well as in the work of interdisciplinary artist Ying Liu. Opening and cl...

Alec and Nick discuss the self-invented concept of the Bloomin' Onion Brain, conceived while drunk on a trip to Lake Gaston, NC. The discussion situates the dippable dish as a figure of Dionysian abstraction, wherein frenzies of self-forgetting give way to a primal unity that we experience in music and social life. Outback Steakhouse, intermedia works, the "groove," the "para-textual," composers R...

Alec and Nick discuss the role of narcissism in the history and production of experimental music. The episode gives a close account of the paradigm introduced by art historian Branden Joseph in "Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage" with special attention to how problems of authorship, the archive's role in framing genealogy, critiques of institutionalized culture, and t...

Alec and Nick discuss the guitar. This episode inaugurates the "Musician's Friend" sub-series of the podcast—where an entire episode is dedicated to discuss various techniques, approaches, and cultures of and around specific instruments. Guitarists mentioned include: Pat Methany, Buckethead, Allan Holdsworth, Abraham Leonard, Shane Parish, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Sister Rossetta Tharpe, Jimi Hendrix...

Alec and Nick present a "Theory of the Byoing Sound," exploring the primacy of the dynamic, paradigmatic "byoing," "boing," and "bya-yoing" sound in experimental music. What exactly is it about this sound that makes it so prevalent? This episode accounts for a narrative of sound originating in primordial phonetic language formation, to scientific studies in physics and sound spatialization, to con...

Alec and Nick make a first foray into a gastro-acoustic, audio-culinary, flavor-phonic approach to listening and talking about music. In the spirit of Dégustation ("tasting menu") and experimenting with what music can be, this episode samples and discusses various music in culinary terms, and various foods from the perspective of sound. This menu includes Oysters on Half Shell, Souvlaki, Iannis Xe...

Alec and Nick take up Dino the Dog-Dinosaur and other "wild facts" from the Flintstones, as an analytical frame for discussing music, fabulation, and hybrid species. Topics include: David Tudor, Scat, Dropkick Murphys, "Non-Music," Donna Haraway and Anthony Braxton.    Opening, closing theme music by Xander Seren.

Alec and Nick discuss the concept and history of the archetypal figure of "The Dunce" in experimental music through a procession of characters including Henry Flynt, Daffy Duck, Girl Talk, The Scratch Orchestra, Luc Ferrari, Patrick Star, Guy Fieri, John Cage, Erik Satie, and more.   Artwork by Char Esme @char_is_me . Opening, closing theme music by Xander Seren.

In this inaugural episode, Alec and Nick draw comparisons between popular manga, anime, and trading card game Yu-Gi-Oh! and experimental music.    Closing Theme Music: Xander Seren, "Monastery," 2015