Tired: Super Bowl party Wired: Sátántangó party

oh yessiree, here's a rundown of everything new on The Tonearm from the past week (including today's brilliant podcast episode featuring Lawrence English) — and Blake Leyh tells us all about his beautiful new EP, Satie et Les Oiseaux (click) → www.thetonearm.com/r/bd537506?m...

even lovelier than expected — v. recommended:

❝ The album is dedicated to Futurist Luigi Russolo, whose 1913 manifesto The Art Of Noises is basically the “Rocket 88″ of making a hideous racket. →

❝ ‘Content’ is defined by other. It is defined by filling something else, being part of something else. It is something that only exists within another context. … And that is the direct through line to the cultural challenge of calling everything content – it is being othered. →

hot damn, @literaryhub.bsky.social going hard today

here's a quick roundup of breaking music news you might have missed over the past several days

The people will survive

PBS = Parables Beyond Saturn → www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpZO...

DJ tip: Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Run Through The Jungle" → Chrome - "New Age"

paused → www.thetonearm.com/paused-in-so...

solid Orlando vibes here

whoa

❝ As far as we know, this is the first video of seagrass fairy circles in Scotland’s seas. Our marine monitoring team call them seagrass doughnuts — but whatever you call them, they’re spectacular, → petapixel.com/2026/01/28/a...

Today mood. Glenn Branca, Live at Jeffrey Lohn's Loft, NYC, June 15th 1978.

I speak for truth I shout for history

I can't believe this is getting screened here … now I need to find someone to join me who's also into nihilistic black-and-white Hungarian masterworks as my stupid eyes won't allow night driving

❝ The Line’s failure should serve as a warning to other firms seduced by outrageous consulting and design fees—not only for the sheer scale of its barbarism but for the obvious frivolity of its lies. Is it not humiliating to aid and abet a project that is so evidently bullshit? →

i always know something's going down when my mute list empties the timeline

❝ In October of [1776] a young woman named Jemima Wilkinson claimed to have died + been reborn as a genderless messenger sent by God to save lost souls. Adopting the name 'Universal Friend,' within months the minister was preaching a message of universal salvation to crowds throughout New England. →

Criticism is a very lonely work. (1982)

you didn't ask but I now insist the best rating system for albums/movies/books/etc is 'out of 4' 1/4 - yuck 2/4 - didn't hate it but would rather have spent my time on something else 3/4 - didn't 'love' it but I'm glad to have it in my life 4/4 - loved it + doesn't allow for hedging in the middle

❝ The release centres on the 32-minute hypnotic title piece, designed as an aural counterpart to Gysin’s legendary stroboscopic light sculpture. The album also features “The Door,” a collaboration with saxophonist Steve Lacy. →

❝ Many of the most dynamic images in my memories come from the tip of an odious and brutal aerosol can. Artists didn’t create these objects and systems, but they dignify our lives in spite of them, transfiguring the banality and disgust of our age into something worth living for. →

❝ What I do not do is predict the future. No one can predict the future, which is a good thing, since if the future were predictable, that would mean we couldn’t change it. → (not Doctorow's fault, but darkly funny that The Guardian chose a prediction for the title of this article … worth a read)

❝ Parker cut the trunk of the diseased tree into “wood cookies” or cross-sectional slices. He carved grooves directly into the discs to create playable records. He then built a Victrola or record player that is specifically designed to play the wooden records. → www.yankodesign.com/2026/01/17/a...

love to see Erick Bradshaw writing about Tall Dwarfs + Chris Knox in Bandcamp Daily today — kudos btw — my very first artist interview 'phoner' was with Alec Bathgate of the Tall Dwarfs, back in like 1992 for @ink19.bsky.social, then a print-only magazine (what else could it have been right)

💥 I am happy to confirm that The Tonearm will be in a frenzied state of attendance at this year's Big Ears Festival 💥

gotta say I did not expect shoegazey motorik — this is pretty great

❝ [Matthew McConaughey] has filed (and had approved) eight trademark applications in the US “featuring him staring, smiling and talking”. … “We want to create a clear perimeter around ownership with consent and attribution the norm in an AI world.” →

Steven Soderbergh is 63. ‘It takes a lot of energy to be an asshole’ www.vulture.com/2017/11/stev...

❝ Today we are fortifying our mission by articulating our policy on generative AI … Music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp. →

bonafide hero

no new pictures - where are you mentally

on my way to see this for the umpteenth time — will never pass up a chance to see it projected in a theater → enzian.org/film/touch-o...

❝ After trudging through the rain, we finally saw it: a small hut on a hillside, smoke curling from its entrance. A teahouse. Reaching the doorway, I ducked beneath a low beam and found Pembadoma Sherpa, 14, and her sister, Mingmakanchhi, 7, tending the fire. → www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/nepal...

"I'm not knocking on the door. I kick the door."

me, in 1992, after being blown away by another outstanding performance from my favorite Memphis-based indie rock band: "I wish The Grifters would someday just take over the country!" monkey's paw in back pocket: (curls)

"I don't know about you, but 2026 feels like it's lunging at us. It's demanding we stay sharp, act accordingly, insist frequently, and savor the memorable. Let's lunge back at it, like wild cats." →

RIP Béla Tarr this is what the afterlife looks like rn

Bela Tarr, 1955-2026 I interviewed him once & he smoked so much that the bar staff intervened & swore so hard that the translator refused to translate. Which is to say that he was as tough, hazardous & uncompromising as his films. Gone in a puff of smoke, hopefully raising hell someplace else

I'm so excited to share my new article/interview about @faetooth.bsky.social in @thetonearm.com that dives deep into their career and second album "Labrynthine"!! Faetooth excites me so much and it was a thrilled to spend time with them and their music last year www.thetonearm.com/beyond-fairy...

I wrote this

the website for Mona, an art museum in Tasmania, as well as "a temple to secularism, rationalism, and talking crap about stuff you really don’t know very much about," is a total joy to explore →

"People might call you a ‘luddite’, or an ‘enemy of progress’, or they might find other ways why you’re wrong and nothing you do will change anything. Ultimately, that doesn’t matter at all. Because passivity, fatalism and ignorance are definitely not the way forward either."

Blue (1993) Derek Jarman

i think this is more important than ever

boy am I excited to dip my brain into Bi Gan's Resurrection in a few hours

yesterday on The Tonearm we published a conversation between composer Bryan Sethi Lawrence Peryer — some terrific chat in there about musically translating the migration experience and intentionally smashing together the traditions of classical + Latin American folk music … well worth checking out