Featured Articles

Matthew Cardinal’s Asterisms Asterisms, Matthew Cardinal’s debut solo album, creates audial desire paths, not necessarily conjuring anything concrete in my mind’s eye but moving like a current—or a river—that I’m compelled to be swept up in. Asterisms is a pleasure to listen to, and I’ve[...] Read more

Sound Bite Mercedes Webb Issue 138

Bus Ride Home—October Slow, manic whine of police sirens, urgent goose-call of fire engines, anxious “wait for me” of trailing first responders. All muffled under soft falling snow and crystallizing puddles and the breathing of almost three dozen passengers pressed close[...] Read more

Sonic Geography Susan Burchill

Braids, Grimes, and Doldrums In 1981 in a small town called Dunedin in New Zealand, a trio of young musicians called The Clean, recorded a handful of fuzzy, sloppy pop songs on a four-track Portastudio. For connoisseurs of what is now known as indie-pop, their infectious energy and heartfelt yearning[...] Read more

Featured Article Jonathan Bunce Issue 110

Plumes Deconstructs Grimes Many Visions: Plumes Deconstructs the Music of Grimes is a genre-spanning music collaboration that seeks to explore and ultimately blur the lines between classical and pop. Thirteen contemporary classical composers have been asked to reimagine and rework the thirteen tracks on Grimes’[...] Read more

In the Works Mary Dickie Issue 126

St. John’s, Newfoundland It’s July 2001 in St. John’s, Newfoundland—the one-hundredth anniversary of Marconi’s successful reception of transatlantic wireless transmissions on Signal Hill. In town on a visit, I decide to pay homage to the event by hiking up the Harbour Trail to Signal Hill.[...] Read more

Sonic Geography Micheline Roi Issue 106

Clint Conley and Hildegard Westerkamp FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY     You haven’t picked up your guitar in weeks, if not months. You stare at the staff paper and the rows of empty lines burn an impression on your retina. Is this just writer’s block, or is it gone for good?[...] Read more

Featured Article Jonathan Bunce Issue 111

Erdem Helvacioglu FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   When you’re caught up in the thick of it, all those cute, clichéd little epithets about turning life’s lemons into lemonade, spinning grave fuck-ups into rapturous inspiration, and the like, hardly seem to hold any[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 115

Musicworks #128: From the Ancient to the Avant-Garde GONG PUNKS AND CULTURE BOMBS Traditional Filipino kulintang, a style of orchestral music played on a set of brass gongs, is a mesmerizing and exhilarating mixture of the ancient and the avant-garde. This authentic indigenous music has been played in the southern Philippines for centuries[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF

MUSICWORKS UNVEILS 2017 CONTEST WINNERS Musicworks is thrilled to announce the winners of its 2017 contests.   Erik Ingalls’ The Gravity of Plim has won first place in Musicworks’ 2017 Electronic Music Composition contest. Ingalls’ winning piece began as an accompaniment to a science-fiction[...] Read more

Sound Notes STAFF

The Warp and Weft of Kelly Ruth In the history of musical instruments, the questions asked are pretty standard: Who played it? What did they play? How did it evolve? Kelly Ruth’s instrument, the weaving loom, carries an entirely different kind of history. It brings to mind mythology, solitary artisans, beautiful[...] Read more

Featured Article Ian Crutchley Issue 130

The Restless Art of Radwan Ghazi Moumneh It’s Friday night in Montreal, and a who’s who of local musicians is packed into the back room of Casa del Popolo to check out the first public appearance of Master of Masters My Master. Nobody knows anything about the music they are about to hear. All they have to go on is an[...] Read more

Featured Article Dimitri Nasrallah Issue 119

Jörg Piringer's Sound Poetry App FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   The iPod touch is hissing loudly as two s’s move about the screen leaving a trail of fading s shapes in their wake. I drag the image of an r onto the screen with my finger, wanting to hear what effect that will have on the[...] Read more

Visions of sound Micheline Roi Issue 110