Classically trained string player Isabel Pine recorded her new album across 15 wilderness locations in British Columbia, embracing imperfection, improvisation, and the unpredictable feedback of the natural world. The Tonearm's Meredith Hobbs Coons listens to the trees: In Dialogue with the Forest:

"'DJs purposely started to play these records at the wrong speed. And even producers started to record this way, because it was such an interesting sound.' … The sound in question was new beat, a hypnotic, slowed-down form of dance music that exploded across Belgium in the mid- to late 1980s."

"Hear prayers from many traditions around the world - Hinduism, Islam, Native American and Yemeni Jewish traditions, Christianity, Buddhism, and sound healing- in work by Julius Eastman played by Wild Up, Barcelona-based duo Tarta Relena, and a Scandinavian-rooted duo project called Gabbarein."

Today's Tonal Treat ✨ #SongOfTheDay #NowPlaying #MusicSky #TonalTreat

"Since the release of Heavens, [Blu] suffered major label heartbreaks, robberies, mental breakdowns, incarceration, and tragic loss. If it weren’t for his determination, we might not be speaking to him right now." Blu is The Warmest Color:

In this excerpt from the latest episode of The Tonearm Podcast, Tomeka Reid reflects on the photographs brought into 'dance! skip! hop!' as documents of unencumbered life and rare images of Black people simply existing. Don't miss the full conversation: podcast.thetonearm.com/tomeka-reid-...

"Shitty roads, shitty hotel rooms, shitty food, shitty promoters who begrudged them shitty dressing rooms and shittier sound systems. All for a shitty forty pounds a day." On the Crazy 1963 Tour That Established the Rolling Stones’ Bad Boy Image:

"I’m thinking so much about how much stuff young jazz musicians — or regardless of age, emerging jazz musicians — have to deal with. Musicians are being tasked with doing the impossible." Nate Smith Is Bringing a Big-Tent Approach to the Newport Jazz Festival (gift link):

Billy Fuller, founding member of Beak> and longtime collaborator to Portishead, Massive Attack, and Robert Plant, discusses the bass-first compositions and private creative philosophy behind 'Fragments,' a debut solo album assembled from nearly a decade of home recordings. The Mud and the Melody:

"Vitiello has released numerous albums throughout the past 3 decades with artists like Scanner, Machinefabriek, Lawrence English, + Steve Roden … Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Vitiello to discuss his New York upbringing, getting tricked by Pauline Oliveros, and his collaborations over the years."

"It’s four decades since Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds released their debut album From Her To Eternity, a record that found Cave attempting a new musical and lyrical language that could free him from his past and help him create – and curate – his future."

As Locrian reissues their landmark 2010 album, Terence Hannum discusses the band's evolution from experimental duo to post-metal trio, his separation of visual art from music, and why heavy metal "rewards playing it safe." The Going Gets Weird — Locrian Revisits 'The Crystal World':

"His heroes, the first recording session, jazz, and what made the Rolling Stones the best - 'We swung, a lot.'" "The Beatles happened, and it became the thing to be in a beat group" — Classic Charlie Watts interview:

"The setting for one of these nights was in South London’s Jumbi, where Nick was joined by legendary producer and engineer Dennis Bovell. The evening centred on Ryuichi Sakamoto, specifically his 1980 outlier ‘B-2 Unit’ and its defining track ‘Riot in Lagos’." Origins of a Future Sound (Part 1):

'Música Para Quinteto: Live at Jazz Cava' captures Juanma Trujillo's Barcelona quintet at full burn, following a prolific decade of recordings and a deliberate exit from New York for a life the Venezuelan jazz guitarist believes feeds the music. Juanma Trujillo — A Cantaclaro in Barcelona:

"Here, finally, was a British hip hop artist who not only displayed an utterly distinctive production-style but delivered his raps in a thick Bristolian accent. Even more uniquely, ‘Tricky’ wasn’t just one person, nor even one gender." The Vanishing Twin — Tricky’s Nearly God turns 30:

"Dowland was well regarded; the poet Richard Barnfield wrote that his 'heavenly touch upon the lute doth ravish human sense.' Yet his musical expression was dominated by melancholy." How John Dowland Built a Music Career on Tearful Melancholy (gift link):

Today's Tonal Treat ✨ #SongOfTheDay #NowPlaying #MusicSky #JazzSky #TonalTreat

"Singing about solar and lunar eclipses on 'Javelin,' [Morby] evokes what it’s like to feel cosmically infinitesimal alongside a person you love. But it’s also a poignant metaphor for two songwriters constantly on opposite sides of the globe." Life & Death in Kevin Morby’s Midwest:

Heidi Hart + Beate Schirrmacher's 'Piano Decompositions' follows Annea Lockwood's Piano Transplants into an argument about ecological crisis, political control, and why a burning instrument unsettles us when a burning forest does not. 'Piano Decompositions' and the Politics of Instruments in Decay:

"A performance, he explained, should sound like 'the musicians were making it up at that moment, as if they were not reading music but playing with a kind of larger sense of commitment and abandon.'" Michael Tilson Thomas, Celebrated American Conductor, Dies at 81 (gift link):

"I had been so worried about screwing up the changes on any given gig that even when I played with singers, I wasn’t really listening to the melody or the words. I was watching the piano player. Or the guitarist. So I asked Ray who I should start with. He said, 'Nat, Ella… and Frank.'"

Acclaimed cellist + composer Tomeka Reid reflects on 12 years with her quartet, the making of their fourth album, 'dance! skip! hop!', a family archive of Black life in Wyoming, and the two figures named CeCe who bookend her path in jazz. Interview by Lawrence Peryer. Tomeka Reid's Low End Theory:

"As a solo artist, Mr. Mason racked up three gold albums … His lead guitar work, marked by fine fingerings, fiery solos and soulful phrasings, was a consistent feature of his solo career." Dave Mason, Songwriter and a Co-Founder of Traffic, Dies at 79 (gift link):

"They were the UK’s first reggae band and played with everyone from Bob Marley to Paul McCartney. So how have such an influential group been so overlooked?" ‘The way they’ve been exploited is obscene’ — the untold story of forgotten UK reggae heroes Cimarons:

Acclaimed banjoist Wes Corbett discusses his recording process, the Pacific Northwest landscapes that inspire him, and why assembling players like Sam Bush, Darol Anger, + Bryan Sutton meant working with musicians who make him play his best. Generational 'Drift' — Wes Corbett's Acoustic Dream Band:

“'I’d always thought music was too formal,' Don Van Vliet told one US critic in 1973. 'So I thought, ‘I’ll get into this and fix it.'” "Once you've heard Beefheart, it's hard to wash him out" — The Captain Beefheart albums you should definitely listen to:

"Despite not being a goth band, The Banshees are one of a handful of artists whose work defined the musical tenets of the genre, and whose singer is still an icon of gothic style. That’s just a fact – whether they like it or not." Combustible Material — Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Tinderbox at 40:

Charles Mingus was born in Nogales, Arizona on this day in 1922 📸 Christian Rose, 1976

Olive Ardizoni and Michael Flanagan of the LA-based electronic duo Green-House talk imaginary video games, Sanibel Island shells, a stuffed sloth named Flanby, and the gentle stubbornness behind their new album on Ghostly International. Plush Life — The Soft Resistance of Green-House:

"In the wake of the storm [music] became a way to rebuild and reconnect, and from London to Kingston, club nights turned into fundraisers and sound systems into lifelines, its familiar rhythm something to return to when everything else felt uncertain." How music carried Jamaica through devastation:

"The natural world and Adams' art are as inextricably tied as his life and music. 'Music is not what I do; music is how I understand the world …'" The dissenting musical life of John Luther Adams: www.npr.org/2026/04/21/n...

Today's Tonal Treat ✨ #SongOfTheDay #NowPlaying #TonalTreat

"He’d go to First Avenue to dance, and then he’d meet someone, be with her for a few hours, and then often, when his dates ended, he’d come back to the studio, and we’d resume. That was quite common." Inside Prince’s world:

In this clip from The Tonearm Podcast, Tomeka Reid describes her fundamental orientation toward the cello as that of a bass player — less interested in carrying the melody than in being what she calls "the glue" that holds an ensemble together. Hear more: podcast.thetonearm.com/tomeka-reid-...

"I’ll put a record on and think 'Albini recorded this' and then 'Albini is gone,' and it’s still strange, not just because he’d been working in music for so long but also because I imagined he’d be here for much longer." Four Fragments on Steve Albini:

On 'Good Effort!', Youniss turns the city into subject matter, drawing on Burial's London, a shuttered Antwerp venue, and a revolving cast of collaborators to make the most outward-looking record of his career. From Antwerp, With Reservations — Youniss's 'Good Effort!':

"With a tandem career as a mixer/mastering engineer and label owner, Rafael is a 'musician’s musician' – someone who spends his days in the surgical precision of the mastering suite and his nights coaxing emotive, bowed-guitar ghosts out of stacks of amplifiers." Rafael Anton Irisarri interview:

"The music publicist was given up for adoption and always had a sense of not belonging but, in his job, he found his kindred spirits." Bowie and Spice Girls PR Alan Edwards: ‘Through punk I found another family’:

"Tunisia is still one country, but within it, you feel the history, and you feel it deep inside." The Tunisian-born jazz bassist's debut album unites Arabic maqams with modern improvisation, interpreted by an artist who speaks in many musical tongues. Through The Gateway with Marwan Allam:

"Originally published in 2006, Iggy talks us through the highlights of his 40-year career – including skiing trips with David Bowie and a cameo from Princess Margaret …" Iggy Pop — “I wanted more aggression for the music”:

"There’s music inspired by and collected from the natural world by London saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi, New York-based Saapato, and Colombia’s Simón Mejía, working as Monte. Plus, music by Brian Eno, London naturalist and songwriter Cosmo Sheldrake, and London-based violinist/composer Ruby Colley."

Wayne Moss was a towering guitarist who played the riffs of so many important American songs. RIP sir! savingcountrymusic.com/wayne-moss-g...

Flaming Lips members Tommy McKenzie and Matt Kirksey spent fifteen years building the trust required to make Brainwasher's '39 Lightyears from Heaven,' a trip-hop-influenced debut that shoves ego aside as part of its creative process. Wild at Heart — Brainwasher's Okie Psychedelia:

"Whether or not he knew that would be his last concert is still up for debate, but the fact that he played ‘Purple Rain’ as the final song in his last ever set proves its significance …" “Lightning captured in a bottle” – The making of “Purple Rain” by Prince:

In this excerpt from the new episode of The Tonearm Podcast, cellist Tomeka Reid describes deliberately setting out to write music with dance energy—a push against the cello's reputation for long, sustained lines. #JazzSky Listen in to the full conversation: podcast.thetonearm.com/tomeka-reid-...

"Moya played the harp. But it was her lead voice — breathy, with a delicate vibrato yet also a deep resonance — that provided Clannad with its signature sound." Moya Brennan, Whose Gaelic Pop Band Won Worldwide Fame, Dies at 73 (gift link):

"The archive, known as the Aadam Jacobs Collection, now has thousands of Jacobs’s concert recordings, and a team of about 10 volunteers is working to upload more every day. The process will take years." A Chicago Man’s 10,000 Concerts on Tape Are Becoming Digital History (gift link):

Today's Tonal Treat ✨ #SongOfTheDay #NowPlaying #MusicSky #TonalTreat

England's south coast gives Golden Samphire Band's debut 'Dream Is the Driver' its emotional coloring, but behind it are 4 decades of shared record-digging by brothers Rich and Mik Hanscomb and the transformative arrival of vocalist Hannah Lewis. Golden Samphire Band's Imagined Albion by the Sea: