The Quiet Below - Clariloops (32m, no vocals)
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Sun//Rain - Clariloops (35m, no vocals)
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We wish you a great start to your week.

II - Paperclip Minimiser (37m, no vocals)
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Paperclip Minimiser - Paperclip Minimiser (35m, no vocals)
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Have an excellent weekend.

No Better Time Than Now - Shigeto (52m, lyricless vocals on track 11)
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Lineage - Shigeto (29m, no vocals)
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Have a great Thursday.

BODY SOUND - Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, Macie Stewart (40m, light vocals)
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Hav - Whitney Johnson (40m, no vocals)
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Normal Sounds - Lia Kohl (40m, background spoken vocals on track 3)
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What’s your earliest memory of music?

Macie Stewart: I can’t tell if it’s a memory, or just a video I’m attributing to memory, but I used to make up songs on the piano as a very small child – three or four years old. I would write them on the spot and accompany myself – but to be honest it’s hard to formulate an “earliest memory of music” because it has always been around me. I have photos of me in a baby carrier on the piano bench next to my mom as she played in piano bars in Chicago. It’s been beautifully omnipresent in my life in many different ways, from my mom playing piano and singing at work, to me asking her to play me songs at home as I leaned over the piano from the couch, to banging away on my own tiny instruments at home or at my mom’s work.

Whitney Johnson: I don’t remember much from my early childhood in Pennsylvania, but when I came back to visit at age seven, my best friend Lindsay asked if I was still making up songs!

Lia Kohl: My mom went to a concert while she was in labor with me, does that count? My first actual memories are of sitting with her at the piano and singing – we had an incredible book from the Met Museum full of folk songs paired with paintings from their collection. My mom (she and my dad are both musicians) would let me pick a song and we would sing it together.

What were the formative albums/artists for you personally?

MS: My formative albums run a… wide gamut. When I was 11 I used to fall asleep listening to a greatest hits compilation of Simon and Garfunkel. I just loved those songs – but the first artist that I dove deeply into was David Bowie. My dad helped me find his whole discography, and from there I also fell in love with Brian Eno’s music and production. Kate Bush is another formative artist for me, as well as Kraftwerk – and I was also very deeply into the piano playing of Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk, and my favorite composers at the time were Scriabin and Ravel. The most formative thing for me I’m realizing as I type this out is that my parents, my friends, and my mentors, all had a very different music taste but I was deeply interested in all of it, so it helped me be open to so many different ways of making and listening to music.

WJ: One of my favorite albums is World of Echo by Arthur Russell. I’m not sure when I encountered it, but it remains a strong influence on my solo practice.

LK: I grew up listening to a lot of classical music, and I still love Haydn and Beethoven and Arvo Part. I also grew up singing in the Orthodox Church, and was completely steeped in Byzantine Chant and Carpatho-Russian chant and Georgian polyphony. I know those harmonies really affect my composition and improvisation practices. My first introduction to experimental music was The Books, in college, and I fell totally head over heels for their playful way of using tape.

What were your first compositions or recordings? What did you use to make them?

MS: As a child I used to improvise on the piano in order to “trick” my mom into thinking I was practicing the piano when I was avoiding practicing my assigned pieces. I think she knew, but was just happy I was playing. My first time I remember writing something was actually an orchestra piece for the DePaul youth orchestra I was in as a kid. It was just a string orchestra, but I wrote out a piece by hand for everyone to play, and they were kind enough to have us perform it! It was kind of monumental for me. My first foray into composition. But my first recordings were made in Garageband in the basement of my parents house. I had taught myself to play guitar, so I decided to record full covers of my favorite songs. Actually – one that stands out to me was a cover of St.Vincent’s “Laughing with a Mouth of Blood” that I made in high school. I played all the parts and tried to recreate it as best as I could. It was a good exercise in learning production/ear training/recording skills/etc.

WJ: In middle and high school, I wrote out compositions by hand on 5-line staves. Later I went into scoring software such as Finale and Sibelius, but I have a strong memory of the pencil on page. I still use Sibelius to make scores more quickly, but I prefer pencil on paper when possible.

LK: When I was really young I would make up stories and songs, and sometimes my mom would put a tape recorder nearby (with my permission), so I have some great and very weird recordings of myself as a four-year-old. A favorite is a story about a farmer visiting the Statue of Liberty with all his animals. It’s full of songs sung by cows. Once I started studying cello at age eight I didn’t really make my own music again until after college, when I started improvising. In spite of my extensive classical training, I don’t love making or reading traditional scores – I prefer to learn and teach things by ear, or make graphic or text scores.

How did you three meet? When did you start playing together, and how did you decide to make an album together?

MS: We’ve all circled around each other in various ways throughout the Chicago music scene. That’s a beautiful part of being in that city – it often feels like a small town in that way even though there is such a wide variety of music and art being created. We played our first show together in… 2017? 2018? At Elastic Arts which is a really wonderful venue in Avondale/Logan Square. It’s definitely stuck in my mind as an important performance to me, and I think the three of us all felt it. Since that moment we tried to get together at least once a year, and finally decided around 2023 that we should make this a real thing and make a record together. I just admire Lia and Whitney’s music so much – and I’ve realized how rare it is to have such a deep connection in this way, so it felt like a no-brainer to pursue this in a deeper way.

WJ: The improvised music community in Chicago is so strong, and so many of us play with one another for single shows. This trio first performed in a one-off setting but it wasn’t until more recently that we decided to make a solid ensemble out of it.

LK: There was a show sometime in late 2024 – one of these one-offs – that had a really special energy. I think we all came off stage feeling like “this is why we make music.” It’s important to follow those impulses, and we did! I think that’s when we decided to make a record.

What music (or other media) were you listening to while working on Body Sound, and which ones showed up in the work?

MS: We’ve talked about this a lot – it’s very hard to draw direct musical references for us with this record. We found that we were much more influenced by visual art, books, and textures rather than other albums. I also think very few things were intentional references and rather things we look back on and can see how they influenced us in the moment. The work of James Turrell, Pauline Oliveros’s music/practice/text scores, Irish fiddle music, The Bulgarian State TV Choir…

WJ: My listening desires are quite diverse, and I try to push at the edges as often as possible. I remember listening to a couple heavier noise records on the way to a recording session – Merzbow and Wolf Eyes – but I also gravitate toward the subtle timbral relationships in Éliane Radigue’s compositions. I don’t really listen to rock or country music, but pretty much every other genre pops up in my daily listening.

LK: I am often more inspired by visual art than by music – I tend to experience music very visually/architecturally. Magali Lara’s large scale abstract paintings come to mind as inspiration for this work: organic and intuitive and detailed. Helen Frankenthaler, Hilma af Kint. Artists who are working with bold colors and find this balance between being super exact and also very alive.

Your approach to Body Sound emphasized improvisation. Tell us about your personal experience of improvising – we imagine much of it is instinctual, but perhaps your instincts have changed as you’ve rehearsed together more or listened back to recordings.

WJ: For me, improvising is a listening practice more than a sound-making practice. The incredible percussionist and composer Jon Mueller said once in an artist talk, “It’s less about what I’m doing and more about what’s happening.” That turn of phrase really stuck with me.

LK: I love that, Whitney! Very much resonates with my own experience. Improvising is one of the most profound experiences of present-ness, for me. And all the more profound because we’re doing it together, moving through time in community. This trio is such an exciting balance of comfort, trust, and surprise. I do feel that I can rely on instinct, intuiting the choices of my collaborators in advance, but I also am so often surprised and delighted by their unexpected choices. It’s a very alive creative relationship.

MS: Yes! What Whitney and Lia said definitely resonates with me. Something that struck me is how our familiarity with improvising can extend beyond our individual string instruments and voices – and into this process of making a record. I think it expanded a lot of our shared vocabulary, and allowed us to stretch in ways we had not anticipated before making this record. Being present, listening, and making something with people you love… with anyone in fact, is one of the most profound and guiding forces in my life.

How did the final record come together, in terms of original improvised recordings versus layers added later?

WJ: Most of the tracks are excerpts of live free improvisation that we brought into the studio with the expert production of Dave Vettraino for tape manipulation and mixing. On one of the tracks, we overlaid two live improvisations that fit together well. Can you guess which one?

LK: We actually didn’t do any traditional overdubbing. All the studio magic is another layer of improvisation and composition with tape machines: running our recorded improvisations through tape machines and slowing them down, speeding them up, and looping them. But we think of everything on the record as improvised in different senses of the word.

MS: I like to conceptualize the record as layers of improvisation layered on top of improvisation, whether it is one of tape manipulation, or of two separate improvisations on top of each other, or of segments of another improvisation cut and manipulated. We had a day of cassette looping which was really fun and stands out to me as part of translating our improvisatory practice to an instrument like a tape machine where we played the four-track faders and different loops. Our process is very intuitive, so it feels like every step of the process is one where we are improvising as a group.

Name an underrated artist from the past 50 years.

WJ: I feel out of touch with the widely held ratings of artists! For instance, I love Michael Asher’s sound installations from 1969 to 1979 and I don’t hear people talking about them very often. He used architecture and acoustics with such precision and hidden speakers to interact with materials and angular reflections. Masterpieces!

What are you working on next?

WJ: It’s time for our trio to start recording some more improvisations! Just when an album is released, I realize how long it will take for another one to go through the process of composition/improvisation, recording, production, and then the material process of pressing vinyl, printing artwork, and making videos. I hope it won’t be too long until we start working on something new!

LK: We’ve talked about making something with drum machines, how fun would that be? And we’re always looking for inspiring spaces to work in – get in touch if you own an empty grain silo/cathedral/marble ballroom!

MS: Searching for interesting spaces! Interesting textures! We definitely have some ideas in mind, but don’t have anything nailed down at the moment.

0:00:00 - Taylor Deupree - Snow-Sand (For Clarinets, Vibraphone, Cello, & Percussion)

0:15:49 - Joseph Branciforte & Jozef Dumoulin - ⊐

0:23:10 - Joseph Branciforte & Theo Bleckmann - 4.19

0:30:33 - Phillip Golub - Loop 3

0:38:40 - Taylor Deupree - Temper (For Clarinets & Shaker)

0:52:42 - Kenneth Kirschner - July 8 2017 – xi.

0:57:30 - Phillip Golub - Loop 5

1:06:10 - Greg Davis - Pierpont

1:12:10 - Joseph Branciforte & Theo Bleckmann - 1.13

1:18:50 - Taylor Deupree - Stil. (For Vibraphone & Bass Drum)

1:37:14 - Joseph Branciforte & Theo Bleckmann - 5.5.9

1:45:31 - Greg Davis - Proth

1:49:38 - Catherine Lamb & Ghost Ensemble - VI.

1:54:27 - Philip Golub - Loop 7 (Flow State Edit)

1:57:10 - Greg Davis - Sophie Germain

2:02:40 - Joseph Branciforte & Jozef Dumoulin - ⊐

…a “coffee coloured” classical music of the future – both in terms of the adoption of entirely new modes of structural organisation (as might be suggested by the computer ability to rearrange, dot-by-dot, a sound of video image) and in terms of an expansion of the “allowable” musical vocabulary in which one may speak this structure – leaving behind the ascetic face which Eurocentric tradition has come to associate with serious expression.

We’re playing two of Hassell’s records release about thirty years apart. 2009’s Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street is a freeform, airy record, half live recordings, reminiscent at times of Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way. Vernal Equinox from 1977 combines global styles with synthesizers and jazz improvisation. On NTS, Roadkill Ikebana recently released a great one-hour set of music from across Hassell’s oeuvre.

Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street - Jon Hassell (63m, no vocals)
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Vernal Equinox - Jon Hassell (50m, no vocals)
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We wish you a great start to your week.

Hyperphantasia - Lone (60m, some vocal samples)
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Galaxy Garden - Lone (50m, vocals on tracks 3 and 12)
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What’s your earliest memory of music?

I think it was probably watching the old He Man cartoons. I used to watch that shit all day from the age of like 3 til maybe 6 or 7. I rewatched an episode not too long back, I think I was trying to trigger some deeply lodged in memories from back then and what struck me the most was how trippy the background music was. Tons of weird synth horns and just generally quite a weird vibe at times. Like, some of the more serious scenes have a bunch of weird bits and they brought back some exact feelings from back then. Weirdly anxious... like, not cool – really strange and anxiety-inducing and it all came back. So yeah, feeling anxious to He Man. That and hearing Swing Out Sister in my Mum’s Peugeot.

When did you start making music? What were your first recordings like?

Around the age of 9. I used to have two tape recorders – on one I’d play rave tunes and on the other I’d hit record and let the microphone pick up me jamming along to the other on my toy keyboards. The recordings were crude as fuck and my playing was borderline unlistenable but I guess that’s where it started. I’d make artwork for the tapes as well with felt tip pens, pencils, paints – whatever I had lying around. That would’ve been 1994, terrifyingly.

What artists/albums most influenced the direction of your sound early on?

• The Prodigy - Experience

• Altern8 - Full On… Mask Hysteria

• Orbital - In Sides

• Baby D - Deliverance

• Aphex Twin - I Care Because You Do

• Boards of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children

• Autechre - LP5

• Wagon Christ - Musipal

• FSOL - Lifeforms

• The Orb - Orblivion

• Black Dog - Bytes

• Plaid - Rest Proof Clockwork

• Wu Tang - 36 Chambers

• Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole

You’ve described Hyperphantasia as “unhinged, unrestrained, self-indulgent.” How did your approach to this record differ from your approach to previous records?

I guess the main difference was how long I spent on it. Initial sketches started in early 2022 and didn’t deliver to the label until March of 2025, so easily the longest I’ve taken on anything. Also working with more guests changed the shape of the whole project quite a bit. I was adamant this time that if I was gonna make the best possible record, I needed to take a step back from touring completely – just go off the radar and dive in fully. A pretty risky move on my part for sure, and there’s definitely some rebuilding to be do with launching the project but was definitely the only way I could go fully in and realise these ideas.

What was your studio setup for Hyperphantasia? What gear/instruments/software did you use to make the record?

Set up is pretty basic in the grand scheme of things... I’ve got a fair bit of a hardware now which was all used, and tons of software I’ve been collecting for the last 26 years… A thing called Granulab was used for some of the noisy / sound design bits on a couple tracks – hadn’t used that since like 2002! Honestly though, I prefer to keep this side of it opened ended though to be honest. Partly due to the fact I think it’s way more interesting to keep a bit of mystery around these things but mainly, I hate the idea of boring people with the logistics of this shit... A huge reference point on this project was late ‘90s / early ‘00s R’n’B so one of the early pieces of gear I picked up when starting out on this was the Korg Triton, that’s all over this thing. Prophet 5 on the other end of the spectrum… My trusty JV-1080, 101, M1..... all the usual suspects. I dunno – listen to the record and see if you can pick out what else, that’s more fun. There’s way more gear on this album than any other I’ve made.

How do you discover new music these days? Any recent notable finds?

I tend to spend most of my time hunting for old and obscure, weird music – shit that has very little connection to anything I make myself... In terms of new stuff though, I’m digging the same way most people are – down rabbit holes online, in shops... through mates who put me on… all the usual ways. There’s an artist called Ax14 – this track called “Dataflow” is feeling good with the rare sunshine coming through my studio window this morning.

Name an underrated artist from the past 50 years.

You know, my mind has gone completely blank on this – I’m sure there are so many... maybe they are so underrated they’ve disappeared from my mind… Luke Vibert should’ve had a number one hit / album by now though I reckon.

What are you working on next?

I’m keeping very busy – I haven’t taken a break since finishing the album so plan to keep things very much moving. I’m sort of working on 5 projects simultaneously – an ambient project and a ton of weird club bangers. More soon!

Vol. II - Angine de Poitrine (37m, occasional extraterrestrial vocals)
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Vol. I - Angine de Poitrine (33m, occasional extraterrestrial vocals)
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▲

For Flow State, we’re listening to two of Balmorhea’s albums released on Deutsche Grammophon. The Trap, their latest album, came out in August of last year, and is an original score for a film written and directed by Lena Headey (not the M. Night Shyamalan Trap). As they discuss on today’s episode, that record is just Rob and Michael playing keys and guitar together. We’re also playing The Wind from 2021, which features a range of accompanists including cellist Clarice Jensen.

The Trap - Balmorhea (24m, no vocals)
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The Wind - Balmorhea (46m, spoken vocals on track 1)
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Have a great Wednesday.

0:00:00 - Aphex Twin - Avril 14th

0:01:51 - Vanessa Wagner - Avril 14th (Loscil Remix)

0:06:50 - Shane Parish - Avril 14th

0:08:38 - The Westerlies - Avril 14th

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Ave Grave x Unlearn - Ave Grave & Unlearn (61m, basically no vocals)
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Field Notes - Ave Grave (52m, spoken vocals on track 8)
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We wish you a great start to your week.

IKIGAI - Nadia Struiwigh (70m, some non-lyric vocals)
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Birds of Paradise - Nadia Struiwigh (70m, no vocals)
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What’s your earliest memory of music?

Ohhh… honestly, music just always felt like something that was there. Not even something separate. Even as a kid, I already had this feeling that everything is kind of moving in rhythms, frequencies, energy. It might sound a bit deep haha, but that’s really how I see the world. Like everything has a tone, a texture, something underneath it. If I think back more practically, it really starts with my parents. There was always music playing at home. Dire Straits, Pink Floyd, Enya, Genesis… all of that just kind of lived in the background of my childhood. And I think I didn’t even realize at the time how much that shaped me. But now when I hear those artists, it hits something instantly. It’s very grounding, in a way.

What did Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin’s music teach you about music production?

It’s funny, because I don’t think they “taught” me in a technical way. It was more like recognition. When I heard their music, I just felt like “ah okay… this is it.” Like this is a language I understand. I never really sat there thinking “how did they make this sound?” It was more about the feeling. That slightly nostalgic, emotional, sometimes a bit strange atmosphere. Production came quite naturally to me anyway. I grew up with a lot of tech around me, gaming, experimenting… so working with machines felt quite intuitive. And I think what I really took from them is that it doesn’t need to be perfect. If anything, I prefer when it’s not. When something feels a bit rough or off, that’s usually where the emotion is for me. My music now is just a mix of everything I’ve absorbed over time. It doesn’t really sit in one box. It’s always about the mood I’m in that day.

What is the weirdest piece of music that you like?

Haha, I think my “weird” is probably quite normal to me at this point. But there’s this project, Sinfonie 4 by Bauhaus x Audi, where they used car sounds as part of an orchestral composition. And it’s actually really beautiful. Not gimmicky at all. It has this balance between something very mechanical and something very emotional. That contrast really stayed with me. The more robotic side of electronic music, combined with something very organic and flowing. That’s still something I’m always drawn to in my own work. And yeah… working with an orchestra like that one day would be insane.

What was your studio setup for IKIGAI? What instruments/gear/software did you use to make the record?

This album kind of changed direction halfway through. I originally had something else in mind, but when my dad passed away, I just couldn’t continue like that. I needed to make something that felt more honest to what I was going through. Something that could hold that emotion. So the process became quite fluid. A lot of the ambient parts were made with modular, just recording long takes and layering things through my Push 3. That helped me build these evolving textures without overthinking too much. Then everything comes together in Ableton for me. That’s where I shape it properly, do the post-production. I also use some of Ableton’s plugins, and a few others I like to keep a bit to myself 😉 Gear-wise I used the Korg Electribe (my baby), Yamaha DX200, Arturia MiniFreak, Roland SH-4D… but honestly, I don’t really think in gear first. I just go by feeling and pick whatever matches that.

What is your composition process like these days?

Music is kind of everything for me, so my days can easily turn into long sessions without me even noticing. The main thing I need is space. No interruptions. That’s really important for me. I don’t really store ideas. If I feel something, I go straight into it. I go into my studio, my little gear cave, and just see what fits that moment. Usually I start with something simple, like a pad or a texture that sets the mood. And then I just follow that. I don’t really believe in creative blocks to be honest. I think it’s more when we get stuck in our heads. If I stay with my body, with the feeling, things just move. And yeah… I can easily lose hours in it. It’s still the best thing ever.

How do you discover new music these days? Any recent notable finds?

It’s a bit intense these days, there’s just so much music. And also AI coming in, which makes it even more overwhelming sometimes. I get a lot of promos, so I usually start there. But what I enjoy more is just going down a rabbit hole. Finding one artist, then checking the label, then seeing who else released there… Bandcamp is still my favourite for that. It feels more real somehow. I also love the listening parties, it’s such a nice way to connect to music again. I recently checked out Supreems, which I liked. I’m always drawn to that slightly ‘90s kind of feeling.

Name an underrated artist from the past 50 years.

There are honestly so many… I feel like a lot of really good artists don’t get the attention they deserve, because everything is so focused on hype. But Space Afrika is definitely one for me. I’m actually surprised they’re not bigger already. Their music is really special.

What are you working on next?

Haha… a lot. Maybe a bit too much sometimes. My creativity just doesn’t really stop, it keeps going. Coming up is STOOR, which I’m really excited about. Also Stone Techno Festival, where I’ll do an ambient set and a B2B with Function. Then I’m building Distorted Waves (my label) further with my team, doing scoring, coaching, writing a book, making new music… Superbooth as well, we have two shows there, so that’s going to be really fun. It’s just ongoing. Always moving. And yeah, big thanks for the interview and to everyone supporting me. It really means a lot 🤍

The Budos Band - The Budos Band (37m, basically no vocals)
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The Budos Band II - The Budos Band (38m, no vocals)
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Have a great Thursday.

Rings of Juniper - Deniz Cuylan (35m, no vocals)
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No Such Thing As Free Will - Deniz Cuylan (27m, no vocals)
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Have a great Wednesday.

0:00:00 - Matt Morton - The Burdens and the Hopes (Apollo 11 OST)

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Brahms: Late Piano Works - Johannes Brahms & Piotr Anderszewski (49m, no vocals)
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Brahms: Violin Concerto, Op. 77 - Johannes Brahms, Itzhak Perlman, & Chicago Symphony Orchestra (43m, no vocals)
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We wish you a great start to your week.

Super Flight - Casiopea (39m, vocoder on track 5)
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Casiopea - Casiopea (37m, no vocals)
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Have a marvelous weekend.

Ethiopiques, Vol. 4: Ethio Jazz 1969-1974 - Mulatu Astatke (65m, no vocals)
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Mulatu Plays Mulatu - Mulatu Astatke (61m, no vocals)
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Have a great Thursday.

antagonist - Tomu DJ (43m, no vocals)
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FEMINISTA - Tomu DJ (42m, no vocals)
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What’s your earliest memory of music?

Listening to the same Celine Dion CD over and over again on road trips with my parents/siblings. I couldn’t understand a lot of the words so I often made up my own ones.

When did you start making your own music, and what were your first recordings like?

If we wanna get technical I first messed around with DAWs in middle school, making songs out of loops in GarageBand and scoring little video projects. Before that I had piano lessons until I was like seven and my teacher fired me because I didn’t practice, but I kept improvising on the piano at home after lessons ended. I also did some band and choir in school throughout most of my school years. I’d say that had more of an impact on my music making than the Garageband stuff, because I gained an elementary understanding of music theory that never really went away. I didn’t really make music again until after high school when I got into DJ Rashad’s music and learned how to use Ableton.

My first recordings can probably be found on SoundCloud if you scroll far enough; I think there might be an alternate account I used to have before starting the Tomu DJ project in 2017 or so. Like a lot of producers you can tell by listening to those demos that I didn’t take it that seriously, though in retrospect I was masking a lack of confidence and skill with ironic disafectedness, if that is a word. It’s not that I wasn’t trying to be good, I was just telling myself I wasn’t even trying to be good to cope with the fact that I wasn’t that good. In 2015 I made a few EPs that were definitely still along the lines of “joke music” though there were some moments of actual decent production throughout. It wasn’t until around 2017 that I thought hey this is pretty good, to the point where others might even think that as well.

Though I never recorded any of it, I always felt I was pretty good at music when playing the piano. I did not learn any complex theory or methods of playing, but improvising I always felt a sense of freedom, and using the few tricks that I did know helped me to create pleasant sounds that also reflected my inner experience. It’s definitely an honor to be able to put this piano album out decades later. I think it represents a playful and explorative side to my music that can get lost in the beat grids of DAWs and the confines of common time.

What artists/albums have been most influential on your sound – both your previous electronic work and your new solo piano record?

DJ Rashad, Terre Thaemlitz, and many other artists have been an influence on me… Honestly when I list my actual influences upon being asked a lot of people will not believe me or think I am trolling because they are not within the house/techno/whatever electronic genre the asker has pigeonholed me into, but hopefully that’s not as much of a problem with this album! Grouper, Julius Eastman, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Mila Culpa, Future, countless jazz piano players I’ve been fortunate enough to see like Sullivan Fortner, Abdullah Ibrahim & the late Ahmad Jamal (for the record I’d never compare my technical piano skills to any of theirs, but they inspire me nonetheless), so many other artists have been huge inspirations in one way or another. Not just in sound but in process. Honestly, I am just as inspired by artists in non-musical mediums too. Everything we observe can expand our ideas of what is possible as an artist.

Tell us about the life experience that led you to want to focus the new record on solo piano.

Obviously the project is open to interpretation (hence the single “loose interpretation”) and I hesitate to describe any experience too concretely here. I will say ever since my music started gaining more recognition in 2020, I have experienced what was pretty unambiguously the hardest period of my life (mostly unrelated to music). And I’ve been able to process a lot of that through making art but by the time I started working on antagonist I felt the need to express a different side of myself using different tools than I usually use. No “sound design,” no spending years mixing the same track, no caring about what people think about the project, just raw conversations with myself depicted through a digital piano. I think if you take the time to listen to the record you’ll understand it (i.e. what it means to you).

I’m doing okay so far this year, which is the first year in so long that I’ve been able to say that, and it feels better to release the project from a place of renewed hope and self-esteem compared to when I made it.

Tell us about the process of recording these “a stream of consciousness” tracks. How much planning was done in advance / how much improvisation was there?

There was zero planning at all as far as writing the tracks prior to performing them. However there was a lot of material recorded that did not make it. What you hear in the record is technically basically me rolling my face over a digital keyboard for 40 minutes but in reality the process was a bit more complicated. If that were really all it was I could make an improvisational piano album several times a day. But I have to be in a certain state of mind (I was going to say mood but that doesn’t quite capture what I mean) to be able to perform at my best ability. And I can’t manually induce that when it comes to music like this. So all these songs are like documents of different times of my life.

In the corners of electronic music I often find myself in, there’s a very capitalistic culture around making as many tracks as you can which I never really understood. I have made thousands of tracks too but most of them are awful. I think my strength as an artist is in curating my own seemingly endless catalog and stringing together coherent pieces from an overwhelming amount of material. This is also the first mainline album of mine where I did the photos myself, which I really loved doing. Photography has been one of my favorite hobbies for the past few years so it’s super cool to have one of my photos on a record (even though it is my own)!

What instruments/gear/software do you use on your albums, past and present?

I use a lot of software instruments and Ableton; that’s mostly what you’ll hear in my released music on streaming. I can play other instruments like guitar but I am not as proficient with them as I am with a computer so they don’t make it on to my records that often. That being said I like to record in different places and studios and will pretty much use whatever is there.

antagonist was recorded in my home completely on a Roland FP-7F, a discontinued digital piano. I ordered a Roland FP-7 from Guitar Center and they shipped this instead, a way heavier, way more antiquated piano that I didn’t order. I decided it would be funny to just stick with it, especially after how hard it was to load into the car. One could say the Roland FP-7F itself was the antagonist of my back muscles. I just googled it and it is 52 pounds without the stand. I really want to get a lighter piano for shows eventually because there’s no way I’m bringing this out to a gig unless I am getting paid enough to risk injury to my body. But the sound of it is pretty hard to imitate; you can’t even get one online anymore. The keys are weighted heavier than any actual piano I’ve played which creates a unique sound. Despite the album sounding similar enough to a real piano being played (it fooled one of my friends), antagonist is actually distinctly a FP-7F album rather than a piano album. I’d love to record a studio on a Steinway or something like that someday. If anyone reading this can hook that up somehow, please let me know!!

How do you discover new music these days? Any notable recent finds?

Discovering new music has honestly not been my priority these days, but it is still an inevitability. A lot of stuff is shown to me by friends and sometimes it’ll come up on autoplay on my favorite streaming service, YouTube Music. Some recently discovered faves have been Denyah, Muslimgauze (admittedly I’ve known about his music for a while but for some reason I keep getting in this mood where it is all I can listen to), Joanne Robertson and MIKE. I have also really been loving salsa; it is ridiculously good sometimes.

Name an underrated artist from the past 50 years.

For this question I’m always gonna have to go with myself. But to be honest I’m beginning to see artists less as underrated and overrated and more as having a level of public visibility that reflects their commercial viability at a certain point and time. Like I’d never say Taylor Swift is overrated or something like that. I do not think I am actually “underrated” as my music has consistently received nods from famous artists, major industry players, and the press alike, but I think the commercial viability of anti-essentialist transgendered artists who do not capitulate to social media trends and industry standards is relatively pretty low. If your music isn’t getting the attention that you want there’s probably things you can do to fix that but nobody ever promised they’d be dignified things.

What are you working on next?

Too much, yet too little… I’m hoping to finish my fifth album this year (it’s more in line with my typical electronic sound) that I’ve been working on alongside antagonist, but I said the same thing last year. I also want to continue putting time into developing my proficiency in multiple mediums, mainly writing and photography but also playing musical instruments. There’s also other projects I can’t talk about and I’m not saying that to be cryptic or mysterious. I actually wish I could talk all about them.

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