Bug Incision: Calgary’s Cross-Pollination Buzz The world of free improvisation is like a parallel universe, a global underground community of nonidiomatic soundmakers, recording with each other in every imaginable permutation, connected via a proliferation of text- and link-heavy Web 1.0 sites, DIY venues, and CD-R labels, with a[...] Read more

Sound Bite Daniel Glassman Issue 131

Tom Wayman’s “Elemental Musics: Selkirk Mountains” 1. ARIA   Alpine wind in the stunted firs half whispers an austere wistfulness with overtones of regret at being compelled by a harsh landscape to be mercilessly forthright: a breathy flute-note surging and fading[...] Read more

Sonic Geography Tom Wayman Issue 127

Jenny Moore Tears Things Up The first intimation that Jenny Moore has arrived at the music room at The Victoria, a historic pub in East London, is when the crowd slowly starts to part. The six members of her ensemble Mystic Business are doing a slow stomp, each hitting a pair of Boomwhacker tubes against each other to[...] Read more

Featured Article Louise Gray Issue 142

Fuhong Shi Closes the Distance If Canada has any meaning to most Chinese, it is likely through a widely read essay written by the late Chairman Mao in praise of Dr. Norman Bethune, the Montreal doctor who ministered to Mao’s suffering soldiers during the Long March of the late 1930s.   Musically,[...] Read more

Sound Bite William Littler Issue 117

Backxwash—The Healing Music of Productive Rage If you want to win over rapper and producer Backxwash (Ashanti Mutinta), start a conversation with her by talking about the outlier sounds of American rapper–producers Missy Elliot and Timbaland.   I’m speaking with her a couple of days after she fired up[...] Read more

Sound Bite Chaka V. Grier Issue 136

Joëlle Léandre For Joëlle Léandre it all begins and ends with the double bass. After playing the often unwieldy bull fiddle from the age of nine and carefully studying its intricacies, she creates with it sounds so personal that defining them as free music, new music. or anything else, is[...] Read more

Profile Ken Waxman Issue 105

Field Notes From Fort McMurray in the damp morning air: rain pitter-patters on whispering leaves. inherited onomatopoeic vocabulary; true but tried tropes carrying with them vague echoes of that singular safety known to the time when board books taught us to affix words to sounds, predictably, repeatably. a wind sighs,[...] Read more

Sonic Geography Theo Di Castri

Backward Music What function do record labels fulfill in an era of streaming and algorithmic music discovery? What do labels offer artists and listeners when the means of music access and distribution are changing at a rapid clip?   Kyle Cunjak, who is a musician and the owner-operator of[...] Read more

Label Profile Brennan McCracken Issue 141

Yannis Kyriakides “Why don’t you come by my place and I can sell you the CDs you’re seeking,” said the voice on the phone. It was the spring of 2005, I was in Amsterdam and looking for recordings from the Dutch label Unsounds. The voice on the other end of the line was that of Dutch-[...] Read more

Featured Article Jason van Eyk Issue 106

Isaiah Ceccarelli “I know it may sound crazy, but I am interested in making beautiful music—music that sounds good. I’m not saying this just to be different, and it might not be in line with a lot of the reasons that people make music today, but I am actually not very involved with, or[...] Read more

Profile Nick Storring Issue 119

New Age Music—The Second Wave I’m lying on the living-room floor. I’ve been like this for two hours, on my back, in the dark, headphones on. The record on the turntable is literally locked in its groove and producing a low-note drone that at times sounds like a whale’s moan or some sort of detuned,[...] Read more

Featured Article Jay Somerset Issue 107