Flavortone

Alec and Nick discuss a concept of the miniature in this one. Touching upon music from the onkyo, wandelweiser and microsound genres, the discussion approaches various methods of compositional and improvisatory reduction. Topics include Gaston Bachelard's "The Poetics of Space," Participatory vs. Presentational music, the Time-Image of Gilles Deleuze as well as Marvel's Ant Man.

Alec and Nick inaugurate a BBQ Roast sub-series of the podcast, where a guest of honor is subjected to jokes and analysis at their expense. The series begins with a roast of British singer, songwriter, and producer James Blake as a relatively "neutral" starting point for these juicy, sizzling take downs. The conversation discusses the cringe-to-cool and UK Bass continuums, hauntology and paradoxes of post-modernity, personal expression and songwriting, adolescent listening experiences with spatialization, silence, and transparency + more.

Reprising the "flavor-phonic," "gastro-acoustic" discussion charted in Flavortone Episode 4: Tasting Menu 1 (Dégustation), Alec and Nick step into the kitchen once again in this second edition to the Tasting Menu series, as they articulate a concept of the Stinky. Considering a range of malodorous musical and culinary selections, this episode takes up the olfactory sense as reference for how perceptions of the repugnant vs. the delicious are embodied in nuanced discourses on cultural value. Topics include: steamed broccoli, ranch dressing, fish as well as the dubstep producer Stenchman, the Pulitzer Prize winning music of composer Caroline Shaw and the media/music theory antics of the barefoot wünderkind, Jacob Collier.

Opening mix: Caroline Shaw: Partita for Eight Singers, No. 1: Allemande, performed by Roomful of Teeth; Stenchman, 80Fitz.

Opening theme music: Xander Seren

Closing music: "Uh Oh Stinky but It's a Soft Lofi Beat" by LLusion, EGG

Flavortone has produced a mini episode for Edition Erich Schmid on Montez Press Radio. Alec & Nick articulate "The Fudd-Flynt Complex" which charts a Fuddsian analysis of the work of Henry Flynt as splicing the species war between Math & Language (Rabbit & Duck Season) into the world of Elmer Season—where Flynt's ideas of "Meta-Technology," "Concept Art," "Veramusement," "Brend," and "Acognitive Culture" turn the hunt inward & beyond. The work was presented alongside other work by Benjamin Scott and Matt Voor.

Fresh from a visit to the Billie-Jean King National Tennis Center for the U.S. Open Grand Slam tournament, Alec & Nick consider a comparison between the sport of tennis and music. The episode charts out three conceptual spaces shared by sports and arts: the cultural production of iconic figures, an emphasis on the management of time, and political economies of Winning and Losing. Discussion of amateurism vs. professionalism, Jacques Attali's book, "Noise," and the Marvel cinematic universe all feature in this deliberation on constitutive elements in sport and music.

Opening theme music: Xander Seren

Closing music: John McEnroe with Patty Smyth & Scandal, "Rocking in the Free World," live at The Canyon Club Agoura 7/28/2018

Having recently celebrated experimental hodgepodgeist and artist Ying Liu's 10th anniversary as a resident of New York City, Alec & Nick embark on discussing a central question she has asked Flavortone: what is an experiment? The episode features a self-checklist of questions Ying asks herself when inquiring if something "is an experiment." The conversation responds to these questions and broadly discusses Ying's two recent works PLAYDATE and PIGTAIL—centering questions around the production of willingness, commitment, our technological reality, the shifting reality paradigm, and the implications of Ying's work and approach for experimental music, specifically.

In this episode, Alec and Nick discuss the daily life poetry of digital workflows. Through a range of topics including the media art works of Yasunao Tone, Walter Benjamin's paradigm of Distraction vs. Concentration, Ableton Live, iOS, and more, the episode conceives of the laptop computer as a kind of "Flat Stanley," which accompanies us in life's mundane adventure and tacitly frames our normal actions as momentous events.

Named after Theo's recent Longform Editions release, the episode features Alec, Nick, and Theo embarking on a slightly turnt post-red-sauce conversation that discusses his work as well as ideas around sincerity, duration, ambient music vs. ambivalent music, the piano, "Blue" Gene Tyranny, Tim Hecker, Phillip Corner, Dark Souls, and more.

Opening Theme Music: Xander Seren

Closing Music: "window" by Theodore Cale Schafer

Alec and Nick discuss Blighttown, a notoriously punishing level in the video game Dark Souls where everything wants to poison you, or give you toxic status. The discussion uses the level as way of talking about "condemned structures" in contemporary music & discourse. Subversions of ascent and reward, the curatorial platform Blank Forms, anarchy, impermanent structures, cartography, reverb and more are all discussed—as well as the microtonal music of Pascale Criton and Harry Partch.

Opening skit audio: A collection of Dark Souls "rage quits" overlaid with "Toxicity" by System of a Down

Opening theme music: Xander Seren

Closing Music: "Don't Wanna Go Down To Blight Town," Written and Arranged by TheGoodShipGWP team; Produced and recorded by JonnyAtma!

Alec and Nick discuss some of the quandaries of reopening the live music and performance economy. Ideas around liveness, civic engagement, participation, self-determined infrastructure, commitment, diminishing returns, site, assemblage, and citation are discussed—specifically in experimental, improvised, and popular music, as well as in the work of interdisciplinary artist Ying Liu.

Opening and closing theme music: Xander Seren