Indexical Podcast

This episode features musician and photographer Billy Gomberg. Commitments to improvisation; exploration of internal and external spaces; and interpersonal relationships as pathways of cultural and emotional exchange guide their work. In this conversation with Indexical Executive Director Michael Flora, Gomberg discusses the influence of 90s industrial music, their beginnings in software synthesis...

Indexical is pleased to present a conversation with artist / educators Jonathan Snyder, Dani Derks and leshy. In this conversation we talk about the lines community, electronic music composition, and Habitus, a series of workshops focused on new music and creative coding within the context of the norns sound computer. Throughout the conversation you'll hear excerpts from solo music performances fr...

Indexical is pleased to present a conversation with composer Dominic Coles. His work investigates the interactions of place, personhood, and power as they are articulated in sound and speech. In this conversation Coles' talks about their background in music, early beginnings in jazz guitar, studies in music composition, interest in speech as a compositional tool, and the pedagogical and political...

Indexical is pleased to present a conversation with computer musician and music software developer Wayne Jackson (aka Later Days). Jackson’s fascination with computer music and emergent systems spans four decades and has been critical to both his artistic life and professional career. With a strong homebrew DIY aesthetic Wayne has created a wide palette of audio and visual softsynths which exploit...

This episode features interdisciplinary artist Ann Alstatt. Altstatt's work explores temporality, the intersections of scientific inquiry and mysticism, and the hidden stories of the material world. Ann graduated from the Digital Arts and New Media MFA at University of California, Santa Cruz in 2018. As a founding collective member at The Fábrica textile workshop since 2010, their arts practice re...

Today’s episode features an interview with Madison Heying and composer, educator, and organizer Casey Anderson. Anderson discusses his approach to composition, his record label A Wave Press, and his activities as an educator and concert organizer. Throughout the episode you’ll hear excepts of Anderson’s ghostses performed by Bent Duo.

This episode features an interview that Madison Heying recorded live with vocalist, composer, and band leader Amirtha Kidambi on one of Indexical’s recent Twitch Livestreams. They talked about the importance of collaboration in Kidambi’s work, her reticence to perform on livestreams, her politics, and her hybrid approach to incorporating practices from different cultures in her music. Throughout t...

This episode features a conversation with Madison Heying and the multi-media band, The Powers ( Emily Pelstring, Katherine Kline, and Jessica Mensch). They talked about The Powers’ working method, which centers around the creation of a feminist cosmology, inspired by such disparate sources as Greek Mythology, campy 1980s horror films, and the scholarly work of Donna Haraway. Throughout the episode...

This episode features an interview that Madison Heying recorded with sound artist Anna Friz on April 23, 2020. In the conversation, she shared her ideas about the relational and material nature of radio - how radio can build communities across difference and distance - as well as her thoughts on issues surrounding mediation, transmission, and transduction. Throughout the episode you’ll hear except...

This podcast features an interview Madison Heying and Andrew C. Smith recorded in January 2018 with Ben Bennett and Arrington de Dionyso at the Radius Gallery in Santa Cruz. They discuss approaches to improvisation, a concert for families with children De Dionyso produced in Oakland, and Bennett’s hit youtube show “Sitting and Smiling.” Throughout the episode you’ll hear excerpts from their concer...

This podcast features an interview that Madison Heying and Jon Myers recorded in October 2017 with Paul Metzger and John Saint Pelvyn at Wind River. They discuss their approaches to experimentation, the need to create novel instruments and performance practices in the search for new sounds, and different ideas about musical communities. Throughout the episode you'll hear excepts from Metzger and P...

Laura Steenberge is a composer and performer based in LA who has performed on a number of Indexical concerts, on instruments ranging from viola da gamba, to miscellaneous objects hanging from the rafters, to harmonica, to the clear plastic tubing pictured above. Her work often seems to engage with the physical limits of the material, and likewise takes conceptual inclinations to their (often absur...

In this episode of the Indexical Podcast, Andrew Smith talks with David Kant of the Happy Valley Band and Jon Leidecker (AKA) Wobbly. They discuss Wobbly’s use of networked mobile devices for making live electronic music and how surveillance and labor is implicated in the use of these devices. They also talk about The Happy Valley Band, how it has influenced David’s understanding of machine hearin...

In this episode of the Indexical podcast, Madison Heying, Jon Myers, and Andrew C. Smith talk to Michelle Lou and Scott Worthington of the duo bass2bass. They talk about how bass2bass formed, and how they came up with their name, as well as their similar backgrounds studying jazz and classical bass technique. The conversation gets pretty nerdy as Michelle and Scott debate the ideal bass supergroup...

In this episode, Jon Myers and Madison Heying talk to composer/flautist Anne La Berge. They discuss the program for her March 10th concert with Indexical and the various characters she assumes in each piece. In their conversation, Anne considers her flexible roles as composer, performer, and improviser. Lastly, they discuss Anne’s evolving relationship with technology: over the last 30 years, Anne...

In this episode of the Indexical podcast, Jon Myers, Andrew C. Smith, and Madison Heying talk to composer Jack Callahan who operates under the moniker die Reihe. They discuss his piece Housed, which consists of various arrangements of sampled chords from house music. Jack talks about a composition by Michael Pisaro that he released though his imprint Báhn Mì Verlag. And lastly Jack talks about stu...

Madison Heying and Jon Myers take us through a few excerpts of performances from January 2017. Zachary James Watkins and RAGE THORMBONES perform their first-ever trio set, with all three artists on electronic and acoustic setups. Ma'ayan Tsadka's Underwater Museum of Extinct Sounds and Imaginary Water Creatures explores a post-human Earth through hydrophones, narrated by George Lucas.