Sound Is Magic Podcast

In this episode, you can learn all about the monk, writer, and activist Thomas Merton (1915-68), and the album I made of archival recordings from his hermitage, called Words and Silences (released on Winesap Records in 2022). In the spring of 1967, Merton was given a tape recorder to use in the solitude of his hermitage. He immediately used it as both a creative and a contemplative tool. I also ta...

In this episode, I spend time in the town of Shawnee, located in the hills of Appalachian Ohio. Over the past fifteen years, I’ve returned to Shawnee again and again, to understand the people that live there, as well as my family ties to it. I talk about the past and present residents who became integral to my album called Shawnee, Ohio, which was released on Karl Records in 2019. Get full access...

In this episode of the Sound Is Magic Podcast , I dive into the fascinating sonic world of Sun Ra’s music and provide insights from making the album The Star-Faced One (originally released on Atavistic Records in 2013). I also continue to build a steadily growing tool kit of archival listening and performing techniques. Finally, I explore the issues of authorship and power, archival homophones, an...

Here is the second episode of the Sound Is Magic podcast, based on my new book, Noisy Memory ( on August 26 with the University of North Carolina Press ). If you haven’t listened to the first episode yet, don’t worry—you can still enjoy this one by itself! But if you are curious, the first episode will provide some extra background. This episode is all about silence, and I think about it through t...

To celebrate the publication of my book Noisy Memory: Recording Sound, Performing Archives ( on August 26 with the University of North Carolina Press ), I decided to make a 5-part podcast that explores many of the themes and sounds from the book. I’ll release an episode each week, roughly corresponding to the different archives that I have worked with over the past two decades. You can listen to e...