Last Things

Angel Deradoorian is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, member of Decisive Pink, and former member of Dirty Projectors, who explores the worlds of ambient, experimental, drone, and pop structures. We talk about non-attachment, traditional Armenian wind instruments, astrology, the gym above Stockhausen's studio, and genocides. Intro + outro music by Nothing Human   👉 Many thanks to my patrons! Con...

Benjamin Teitelbaum is an author and professor of musicology and international affairs at CU Boulder. His interests include music, the radical right and geopolitics, reactionary ideology and aesthetics, political theology, and Scandinavian folklore. He is author of War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right (Penguin, 2020) and Lions of the North: Sounds of th...

Pablo Andoni Olabarría is a Spanish composer and conductor who runs @memieval.music, an Instagram page dedicated exclusively to memes about early music. We talk about Pablo's own drone-based music, the role of the conductor, notation, memory, music before and after the Western Canon, and Ren Faires.   👉 Many thanks to my patrons! Consider becoming one here: patreon.com/lastthingspodcast 👉 If you...

Brandon Lopez is an illustrious contrabassist whose music is known for its "bruising physicality", as well as its hyper-precise execution, exploring the harsh outer limits of his instrument's possibilities. We talk about Fred Moten, avant-garde strains in Latin percussion, the horror of virtuosity, and the evil vortex-apartment we shared a few years back.   👉 Many thanks to my patrons! Consider b...

Calder Hannan is the person behind the YouTube channel Metal Music Theory and the band Florid Ekstasis, and also plays guitar in Aphelion Entity. Calder recently completed his PhD in Music Theory with his dissertation "Tactus Transformations in Metal." He currently teaches music at Columbia and Fordham in New York City. Our conversation touches on the STEM to metal pipeline, how rhythm is viewed i...

Michael Olivo is an American cartoonist, designer, and host of the Blind Shovel podcast. He's been published by Cold Cube Press, Fantagraphics, and Never Press, to name a few. He's also a co-founder of Eternal Wealth, an art fabrication company centered around custom objects and furniture, and the Art Director of the Williams Center, a multi-venue art center located in Rutherford, NJ. We talk abou...

Musician, fashion designer, and visual artist, PICTUREPLANE (aka Travis Egedy) has made a major name for himself over the past decade in the outer limits of global pop culture. His music engages industrial dance, gothic hip-hop, and emotive New Age, while his clothing line, Alien Body, serves up a stylized study of symbology, the occult, and societal decay. We talk about ontological anarchy, DIY s...

Conner Habib is a writer and the host of the podcast, Against Everyone with Conner Habib. He's an activist and former porn actor, and he gives lectures around the world on topics as wide-ranging as occultism, James Joyce, sex work, and art. We talk about the cultural/political/economic triad, Freedom, alchemy, Carl Jung's charlatanism, and Conner's new PEN/Faulkner Longlisted debut novel, Hawk Mou...

Jeremiah Cymerman, the great musician, and my long-time conversation partner, joins me to talk about Louis CK's crushing 2016 TV series, Horace and Pete. We get into fathers and sons, barflies, MeToo, and the N-word.   👉 Many thanks to my patrons! Consider becoming one here: patreon.com/lastthingspodcast 👉 If you'd like to join my Discord server, you can request an invitation here: https://www.c...

Uboa is the musical vehicle of Xandra Metcalfe, who has spent the better part of a decade dipping into every corner of heavy music. From harsh noise to dark ambient, to glitch, to doom metal, Uboa's eclectic approach to dark music has led her to become a cult figure, particularly online. I talk with Xandra about her extreme compositional and mixing techniques, autism, parasites, Freud, dehumanizat...

Necro is a true legend of underground rap, pioneer of the death rap sub-genre, renown producer, and inspiring entrepreneur. We talk about his new metal track, being white in rap, Metallica's note choices, jails in Europe, fake Hasidic crackheads, and his complex relationship with his Uncle Howie. 👉 Many thanks to my patrons! Consider becoming one here: patreon.com/lastthingspodcast  👉 If you'd l...

Sean Ragon has been active in industrial, and experimental music communities for over fifteen years, and in DIY punk in general going back to the 90s. He's primarily known as the frontman of neofolk collective Cult of Youth, which triumphantly returned from a long hiatus last year. Sean also makes electronic music as Venerence. He's deep in the culture, and his contributions over the years have be...

Kavus Torabi is a British guitarist, vocalist, and composer, with a long and prolific career in the world of avant-garde rock music. He is known for his collaborative work in the 90s with Monsoon Bassoon, and the 00s with cult math-rock heroes Cardiacs, as well as his solo work as Knifeworld, and under his own name. He's also a member of the current line-up of legendary psych rock band Gong . Kavu...

Justin Pearson has been a vital and prolific force in underground music since the 90s. His many bands, including the Locust, Dead Cross, Head Wound City, and Retox, have made an indelible mark on the canon of heavy music, and his long-running label, Three One G, has been an important platform for numerous like-minded experimentalists. We talk about "Annoying" as a genre, healthy inter-band competi...

Musician, visual artist, and actress, Sophie Leetmaa joins me to talk about Parenthetical Girls' art-damaged baroque pop cult classic, 'Safe as Houses' (2006). We get into bloodletting, the Tumblr era, listening to Tori in the bath, music from Popeye, and lore from the unsung 00s micro-scene that spawned P Grrrls.   👉 Many thanks to my patrons! Consider becoming one here: https://www.patreon.com/...

Wyattxhim's YouTube channel is a rich, one-of-a-kind resource for commentary on black metal, death metal, and all related genres of heavy music. From his album reviews, to iceberg charts, to nuanced video essays, Wyatt's depth of knowledge, humor, and elite taste have been attracting a rapidly-growing following of extreme music cognoscenti. Wyatt and I talk about crying to Peter Sotos, left-wing b...

Nick Podgurski is a musician, artist, educator, and contemplative mentor interested in transformation and the nature of creativity. Since the 00s, he has been growing a truly unique body of work and thought, with his own projects Feast of the Epiphany and New Firmament, and as a collaborator with GRID, Lydia Lunch, Extra Life, and Yukon. Nick and I go way back, to the original line-up of Extra Lif...

Heinali is the moniker of Oleh Shpudeiko, a composer from Kyiv, Ukraine, whose work reimagines Medieval music with a modular synthesizer, borrowing techniques from contemporary analog synthesis, generative music, and improvisation. His recent activities have been a highly acclaimed live performance from inside a bomb shelter, and a new Heinali record, Kyiv Eternal . His past projects have included...

Sam Mickens is a singer, guitarist, composer, and performance artist based in Los Angeles, whose powerful, idiosyncratic work brings together sweet soul, glam rock, classical music, comic books, and professional wrestling. His many projects include The Sam Mickens Ecstatic Showband & Revue, his '00s art-rock band, The Dead Science, the theater piece "Kayfabe: Game of Death", and his many recent so...

Patrick Higgins is a composer of experimental music, including works for chamber orchestra, string quartet, percussion ensemble, and his own virtuosic and unique language on guitar and electronic processing. He's been a member of the classic New York avant-garde band ZS since 2012, and his music has been performed around the world.  Our conversation gets into Pat's amazing string quartets, the mea...

Visual artist turned music video director, Zev Deans, has been responsible for some of the most iconic visuals in heavy music since 2010, including work with Portal and Behemoth, as well as mainstream artists like St. Vincent. He has also done film restoration work with the HR Giger estate, and fabrication work for Matthew Barney. Zev is a deeply respected and beloved fixture in my corner of cultu...

Jesse Moynihan is a cartoonist, storyboard artist, and writer who has worked on Adventure Time, Midnight Gospel and his own critically acclaimed graphic novel series, Forming. Our conversation gets into Jesse's roots in the Philadelphia experimental music scene, the connection of prog rock to animation, the meaning of visual noise, Ai anxiety in art and music, the wackness of '00s New Atheism, and...

Colin Marston is a prolific multi-instrumentalist and record producer, who has been a vital fixture in the worlds of metal and experimental music since the 00s. Between his bands Krallice, Behold...the Arctopus, and Dysrhythmia, his studio, Menegroth the Thousand Caves, his numerous solo projects and collaborations, and his membership of the reunion line-up of tech-death legends Gorguts, his body...

'The Believer' (2001) is Ryan Gosling's first movie, about a neo-Nazi who's secretly Jewish. It sounds like a Chappelle sketch, but it's a truly deep meditation on both anti- and philo-semitism. Billy Zane plays a Yarvin-esque highbrow reactionary hottie. Jeremiah and I have been obsessed with this film for years. Our discussion takes us through a lesser-known midrash on Isaac vs Jesus, the incomp...

Peter Evans is recognized as one of the world's leading voices on the trumpet, a true innovator on the instrument, as well as an important composer. He's worked with experimental luminaries including John Zorn, Brian Ferneyhough, and Kanye West, and his own music has been performed around the globe to great acclaim. We talk about Peter's wild new compositions for MIDI piano, AI anxiety, Bach, Only...