Ayo Leilani Interrogates the Beats “Eh Yo! Eh Yo, Leilani!,” she heard as she walked down a bustling New York City street. Turning around to see a friend calling out to greet her in the way that only the hip-hop generation can, Leilani (Hawaiian for “gift from the heavens”) realized she’d just[...] Read more

Sound Bite Francesca D’Amico Issue 125

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

Alex Buck’s Screaming Trees Convergence is often the magical force in the creative process that leads to an ear-catching work. Two or more seemingly disparate elements meet in the imagination of an artist who unites them into something new that resonates with both universal and personal meaning. This is the story[...] Read more

Sound Notes Jennie Punter Issue 136

Victor Gama builds a brave new soundworld Wherever Victor Gama plays, you can be sure clusters of people will be jostling to percuss the upturned metal bowls of his tipaw (so called because the surface of the instrument looks like the pads of a tiger paw), to bow the eight metal strings of the tahra, or simply to wander the length[...] Read more

Featured Article Louise Gray Issue 118

The Ring Road, Iceland FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   It’s not often in a lifetime that you get to circumnavigate an entire country. And it’s not often that you come across an entire country that’s a small island whose most remarkable work of public infrastructure is a two-[...] Read more

Sonic Geography Jonathan Bunce Issue 115

Audiopollination Seeds Creative Evolution “Two musicians, say, coming together to play a piece of music, I think has to be interesting. Even if the results are not in themselves a great piece of music, the way they find to work with each other says something about music. So you can hear one musician figuring out—you can[...] Read more

Sound Bite Joe Strutt Issue 144

New Age Doom Steps Forward The day of my interview with the Vancouver experimental-metal duo New Age Doom began with the heart-sinking news that legendary dub artist Lee “Scratch” Perry had passed away. After making my way through the winding side streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, I arrived[...] Read more

Featured Article Jesse Locke 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

Charlemagne Palestine Pulls Out the Stops Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there. What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more. —Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation”  [...] Read more

Featured Article Julian Cowley Issue 117

wnoondwaamin | we hear them Inspired by the idea that sound travels and has purpose beyond the human ear, wnoondwaamin | we hear them is about the materiality of sound, the social implications of the transmission and reception of sound, and the politics of being or not being heard. Artists Autumn Chacon, Jeneen Frei[...] Read more

Visions of sound Lisa Myers Issue 131

Derek Charke Derek Charke is irresistibly attracted to the North. In 2006 he found himself in the Yukon, dogsledding with the Kronos Quartet. For a composer with a love of the Arctic it doesn’t get better, or more surreal, than this. A few days earlier he had been in a Whitehorse hotel room where[...] Read more

Featured Article WL Altman Issue 113