Sound Propositions

The podcast is still on hiatus, but here is a plunderphonic radio play originally presented as part of Disinformation Cultures (https://disinformationcultures.net/) On January 6, 2021, Americans learned what Italians have known since the  2001 G8 summit in Genoa: power is not a site to which one can lay  siege. It is past time to retire this Medieval fantasy of the sovereign  confin...

DeForrest Brown, Jr.  is a media-theorist, curator, and self-described rhythmanalyst. He releases digital audio as Speaker Music and under his own name. While he’s been based in NYC for the better part of the last decade, he was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, which also happens to be where Sun Ra first landed on Earth. Brown’s upcoming book, Assembling a Black Counter Culture , trace...

Max Alper is best known for La Meme Young, his popular Instagram account turning niche experimental music jokes into dank memes. But a deep interest in music pedagogy is at the heart of everything Alper does, including his non-profit Sonic Arts For All!, an organization that puts music technology directly into the hands of K-12 and special needs students. We talk about the importance of creativity...

This episode features a wide-ranging conversation with Montreal’s Roger Tellier-Craig , known for his work with Fly Pan Am, Godspeed, Le Révélateur and others. In 2019, Fly Pan Am released C'est ça , their first record in 15 years, but their 2020 tour plans were derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Tellier-Craig discusses his fascination with music as a studio art, the unexpected creative opportunit...

It’s been a tough year for New York. This episode we check in with Geng, the man behind one of our favorite labels, Purple Tape Pedigree, and see how these fine “purveyors of weaponized media and information” are handling the pandemic and the uprisings. With live performance no longer an option, the model of mutual support demonstrated by a crew like PTP is all the more important. Geng tells us ab...

Esther Bourdages is an art critic, radio journalist, independent curator, and musician based in Montréal. She is an improviser of extraordinary sensitivity, bringing a playfulness to her tactile manipulation of vinyl records, sometimes outright mishandling them. This freedom to destroy is indicative of a resistance to structure and formalism, but Esther’s work can’t be easily dismissed as some sor...

Dedicated to George Floyd .... I. every precinct an autozone II. a new world from the ashes of the old  III. fuck12  IV. minnesota nice V. this aint a riot  VI. 8'46"  ---- I lived in South Minneapolis for 4 years, most of that time in an apartment building on Chicago Avenue and 39th St, just a block from the intersection where police murdered George Floyd.  Music for Insu...

Kassel Jaeger , once little more than a mysterious German moniker producing captivating music for our favorite boutique labels, has since been revealed to be François J. Bonnet , composer, philosopher, and now director Ina-GRM, France’s legendary center for electroacoustic research. No longer shrouded in mystery, his prolific output has lost none of its power. In the last year he’s released some o...

We sit down with director S erdar Kökçeoğlu in Istanbul to discuss the 2013 Gezi Park protests, how the sounds of the city have inspired his work as a film maker, and how composer İlhan Mimaroglu was inspired by the activism of his wife, Güngör . Kökçeoğlu has recently completed his first full-length feature film, Mimaroğlu . Going beyond a biography of Turkey’s most famous composer, the film expl...

After a longer delay than intended, the Sound Propositions podcast is back. I’m very pleased to finally share this conversation with Bruno Stucchi, graphic designer and co-founder of the Die Schachtel label. Stucchi reflects upon the evolution of the label, the suppressed history of Italian experimental music, and the continued importance of big ideas. Die Schachtel is a partnership between Bruno...

And now for the big finale. Alvin Curran has been at the forefront of challenging musical convention for over half a century. His work has pushed back against the institutional stranglehold on culture, encouraging anybody to make music, anywhere and with anybody. A dominant tendency in his oeuvre has been finding new ways to activate spaces and cultivate active listening and music making. His rece...

The Liminaria festival ran for five editions between 2014 and 2018, culminating with a collateral event in Palermo as part of Manifesta 12.  Based in the rural micro-region of Fortore, the frontier between Campania, Molise, and Puglia, Liminaria offered residencies and public presentations in which visiting artists worked with local residents to apply sound art methodologies to the unique geo...

Many of our readers responded enthusiastically to the Anthology of Electroacoustic Lebanese music compiled by the Unexplained Sounds Group in 2018. Earlier this year, I reached out to label founder Raffaele Pezzella (Sonolygyst) to discuss his label, his radio show, his solo work, and why he keeps digging for unheard artists. We had a great chat, discussing his interest in dark ambient, conspiracy...

Andrew Khedoori of the Preservation label talks about his latest series, Longform Editions , featuring compositions designed to encourage deep listening. Very much organized against the prevailing streaming ecosystem which encourages short tracks and distracted listening, Longform Editions has released 32 works and counting. The interview is set entirely against selection from the series, often pl...

Greyfade is a New York based label founded by Joseph Branciforte , dedicated to releasing high-quality physical and digital album length works of art. Greyfade's inaugural release is the aptly titled LP1, a collaboration between Branciforte and the acclaimed vocalist Theo Bleckmann . In this episode, Branciforte discusses why Greyfade is emphasizing HQ downloads via their own web store and eschewi...

This episode features a deep conversation with Toni Cutrone (best known as Mai Mai Mai ) delving into all the various facets of his career. On the occasion of the release of his latest LP, Nel Sud , we met to discuss his southern Italian and Mediterranean roots, the rediscovery of Italian music from the 70s, and the difficulties (and joys) of running clubs and a cultural association in Italy's cap...

Sound Propositions features conversations with artists exploring their creative practices and individual aesthetics, conceived of as a counter-narrative to a dominant trend in music journalism which fetishizes equipment and new technologies. This series tries to take the emphasis away from the ‘what’ and shine light on the ‘how’ and ‘why.’ Each episode combines interviews with music, field-recordi...

Sound Propositions the podcast has the same mission statement as the written Sound Propositions features: to share in depth discussions with artists whose work we love, to delve into the details of their creative practice. This episode features Joe McKay, profiling his label Dinzu Artefacts. We talk about his previous label, Spring Break Tapes!, his own artistic practice (as Monte Burrows), the im...

Sound Propositions the podcast has the same mission  statement as the  written Sound Propositions features: to share in depth  discussions with  artists whose work we love, to delve into the details  of their  creative practice. This episode features John Daniel, a Chicago-based musician best known for his ambient solo project, Forest Management .  I caught up wi...

Sound Propositions the podcast has the same mission  statement as the written Sound Propositions features: to share in depth  discussions with artists whose work we love, to delve into the details  of their creative practice. This episode features Efraín Rozas,  Peruvian-born, Brooklyn-based performer/composer and robotics/software  developer interested in new paradigms of...

Sound Propositions the podcast has the same mission  statement as the written Sound Propositions features: to share in depth  discussions with artists whose work we love, to delve into the details  of their creative practice. This episode features saxophonist and  composer Phillip Johnston, known for his work with genre-bending jazz  ensemble The Microscopic Septet, the Be...

Sound Propositions the podcast has the same mission statement as the written Sound Propositions features: to share in depth discussions with artists whose work we love, to delve into the details of their creative practice. The inaugural episode of our new podcast, Sound Propositions , features interviews (with Resina and Lea Bertucci ) and field-recordings recorded during the 2018 UNSOUND festival...

The introduction to Sound Propositions, which changes slightly with each episode.