Last Things

Dylan Reznick is a cloud-rap pioneer, known for his projects FRIENDZONE and Chlorine Mist, as well as his beats and production for A$AP Rocky, Main Attrakionz, Yung Lean, and Mykki Blanco. I've known Dylan since his early days in the amazing weirdo noise crew Religious Girls.  We talk about early '10s micro-genres, the collapse of the music press, AI, chopping up vocals, and Dylan's fantastic bran...

M Lamar, the incomparable composer, artist, operatic countertenor, coiner of the term "negrogothic", good friend, and long-time collaborator of mine, graces the live stream to discuss Diamanda Galas' 1990 live record, 'Plague Mass'. Lamar's work spans opera, metal, performance, video, sculpture and installation to craft sprawling narratives of radical becomings. We talk about mourning, the Devil,...

Karl D'Silva is a fascinating figure in the UK underground music scene. His dark electronic pop songs are both subtly slippery and crushingly direct, and he's blessed with the kind of powerhouse singing voice that you just have to hear to believe. He's also prolific as a saxophonist and collaborator in far more overtly experimental contexts, working with Helm, VANISHING, Rian Treanor, Ex-Easter Is...

Tyondai Braxton is a world-renowned composer of orchestral and electronic music, whose body of work has cut across minimalism, dance music, prog rock, film scores, and improvisation. From his accolades as a member of the band Battles in the 00s, to his recent appointment as a professor at Princeton, Ty has remained a brilliant maverick, as well as a truly stand-up person. We talk about the concept...

Se'nam Palmer describes himself as a 29-year-old black person, musician and faux-losopher. His main band is Crispin Wah. He came by to talk about Kendrick Lamar's 2015 chart-topper, 'To Pimp a Butterfly', which takes us through issues of inner conflict, hoteps, and the joys of being a session musician.

Steff (@poetrygrifter) is a semi-anonymous poet and poaster in an MFA creative writing program. We went deep about her adopting of various historical personae in her recent work, today's bleeding edge literary scene, identity politics and representation, the reactionary twitter-sphere, and more.

Will Samson is a music aficionado and co-host of Resident Life Enjoyers 151 podcast. He returns to Last Things to discuss the Magnetic Fields' classic 1999 three-volume opus, '69 Love Songs'. We get into artifice, chord progressions, my complex relationship to twee-ness, and what it means for music to be 'charming'.

Björn Schmelzer is a Belgian conductor, musicologist, and anthropologist, though he frequently crosses disciplines and incorporates many academic and creative influences in his work. He founded the vocal ensemble Graindelavoix in 1999, a group devoted to radical, heterogeneous reimaginings of vocal music from the Medieval, Renaissance, and contemporary periods. We go deep here, exploring Björn's u...

Nandor Nevai is a true American iconoclast and cult figure. A rigorous modernist composer, renegade philosopher, and comedian of the margins, he has waged a decades-long assault on all things digestible and sane. Nevai's own work has intersected with "Brutal Classical", noise, war metal, and improvisation, and his myriad collaborations have included To Live and Shave in L.A., Aborted Christ Childe...

'Crescent' (1964) is my favorite John Coltrane record, and Jeremiah is my favorite guy to chop it up with. This is kind of Trane's goth record, deeply underrated. It sparks off a conversation about humility, lyricism, ecstasy, and the idea of late work.

Since the 90s, Weasel Walter has been a prolific and influential force in the worlds of no wave, free jazz, metal, and modern composition. An iconoclastic drummer, guitarist, composer, and improviser, Weasel has led the Flying Luttenbachers, and Cellular Chaos, as well as countless other, more collaborative projects. We talk about Iannis Xenakis, Natasha Leggero, ignorant death metal, and being a...

International hardcore superstar Danny Diablo aka Lord Ezec (Crown of Thornz, Skarhead) and black metal riff-lord Paul Delaney (Black Anvil) join me to talk about not being pigeon-holed, standing up for your friends even when they're wrong, helping your fans cut the perfect line of coke, and the Jewish roots of the Ary*n Br*therh**d. 

Hannah A. Barnes is a composer of powerful, alien chamber and orchestral music, as well as a conductor, and lecturer at DePaul University. We talk about the importance of aesthetic difficulty, accusations of musical fascism, her relationship to the canon, and how her music subverts linear time.

Eugene Robinson is one of the most original underground cultural figures of the past 40 years. As the lead singer of numerous projects including Oxbow and Whipping Boy, a renowned martial arts fighter, journalist, and author, Eugene has defied categories and expectations at every turn. We talk about 80s hardcore vs No Wave, Rene Girard, sacrifice, evil, and leaving New York.

Toby Driver is best known as the mastermind of long-running goth-prog legends Kayo Dot, as well as a member of Bloodmist and Secret Chiefs 3. We talk about Jane's Addiction's 1990 record, Ritual de lo Habitual, as well as white dreadlocks, what constitutes New Age music, and Toby's horrific Jane's A concert experience.

Will Samson, host of the fantastic No Future podcast, joins me to talk about our favorite Captain Beefheart record, 'Lick My Decals Off, Baby' (1970). Will is quite knowledgable about Beefheart, and is a truly serious, thoughtful appreciator of unusual music in general.

Writer and noise musician Xylon Genesis Otterburn returns to the live stream to talk with me about 'Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge', the 2004 classic by My Chemical Romance. We discuss the many phases of emo, the im/possibility of arena rock, Bandcamp skepticism, and more...

Nicholas Dolinger is the author of Sunbathing, I Want To , a collection of theological poems, as well as other works published by Expat Press and Terror House. He is also the host of The Beautiful Toilet podcast, and a business reporter for Epoch Times. We talk about the classic Dr. Dooom (Kool Keith) album  First Come, First Served , as well as Yukio Mishima, having diarrhea while on LSD, and the...

Jeremiah and I discuss Morton Feldman, a towering colossus of 20th Century music, who has had an profound impact on both of our creative lives. We focus on three compositions: Durations, Rothko Chapel,  and  Patterns in a Chromatic Field.

Luke Calzonetti and I gab about a death metal classic, Suffocation's Pierced from Within (1995). Luke is a visual artist and electronic musician based in Brussels, whose projects include Sugarstick & Xerox, Run Dust, the EC Band, and, previously, Child Abuse. We go back many years to Luke's days in NY in the '00s.

Bradley Coy is a fantastic young producer, guitarist, and vocalist, who makes music under the moniker Silk Defect. He also has lots to say about culture and philosophy. We talk about his debut album, Luxury of Dirt, as well as Catholicism, Mark Fisher, and the sublimity of feeling small.

Jeremiah Cymerman returns to talk about Mr. Bungle's 1990 self-titled debut album. We get into consumption, violence, bad taste, pastiche, and nu metal.

I'm thrilled to be joined by the truly legendary composer JG Thirlwell, mastermind behind Foetus, Manorexia, Xordox, The Venture Bros., the list goes on. We talk about what it has meant for Jim to inhabit different characters, score TV, and confront his mortality, over the course of a career stretching back to the early '80s.

Alex Mincek is an acclaimed, prolific composer, professor of composition and music technology at Northwestern University, and co-director of the Wet Ink Ensemble. His works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and electronics have been performed across the world. We go deep about compositional flow, stasis, repetition, margins of difference, listener perception, Deleuze, Henri Bergson, Modernism, Upt...

John Lamberton is a guitarist/composer based in Los Angeles who focuses on intensely complicated rhythm and generative processes. He's also the host of BRIDGE podcast, a coffee wizard, and a card-carrying Bayesian transhumanist. We talk about using algorithms to compose death metal, footwork music, suffering-focused ethics, SlateStarCodex, in-group signaling, NoFap, and quite a bit more.