The appealingly danceable music of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, or OMD, as the trailblazing synth-driven electronic band came to be known, has delighted and charmed listeners for decades. They formed in the late 1970's, greatly inspired by Kraftwerk, and with influences ranging from CAN to Barry White. Their string of breakout hits stretched through the 1980's, like "Electricity," "Tesla Girls," & "So In Love," while their song, "If You Leave," written specifically for the John Hughes film, Pretty In Pink, was also a huge hit. The unusual OMD blend is one of melody and melancholia, created with keyboards, synths, sexy saxophone, and drums, while never straying too far from the dance club and pop radio. The band reformed in 2006, and with the 2017 release of their third album, The Punishment of Luxury, Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys - OMD - performed in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)

Polymathic composer, producer, and video artist Emily Wells plays new works off her latest album Regards to the End. On it she explores the AIDS crisis, climate change, and her lived experience—as a queer musician from a long line of preachers, watching the world burn—in immaculately layered yet spare songs that impel the listener to be attuned, acting like a magnet on our attention. Wells, a multi-instrumentalist who comes from a classical background in violin, builds the songs by sampling her own vocals, synths, drums, piano, string instruments (violin, cello, bass), and wind instruments (clarinet, flute, French horn).

Set list: "I'm Numbers," "Come On Kiki," "David's Got a Problem," "Two Dogs Tethered Inside"

Watch "I'm Numbers":

Watch "Come On Kiki" & "David's Got a Problem":

Watch "Two Dogs Tethered Inside":

Portland, Oregon-based Pink Martini whisks listeners away on globetrotting musical journeys, singing in Armenian, Portuguese, Arabic, French & Xhosa, among many other languages - and that's just their latest record, Je Dis Oui!. Their founder, pianist Thomas Lauderdale, recently described the group this way: "If the United Nations had a house band in 1962, we aspire to be that band." The 'little orchestra'- some 12-members strong, takes over our studio. 

The wonderfully twisted, self-possessed, wry, leather jacket-armored dark humored queen of the downtown night, Shilpa Ray, survived working the door at the Lower East Side / New York City bar Pianos. And she’s turned that harsh reality into an album of cutting commentary.

On the 2017 record Door Girl, Shilpa Ray plays with throwback “girl group” sounds – except she’s got backing guy vocals and crisp production. Her songs are full of acerbic observations on desperate people, some quite personal - "Manhattanoid Creepazoids," "Revelations of a Stamp Monkey," and "Rockaway Blues"; the portraits are far from pretty, and definitely no longer glittering, with a blaze-of-lights-at-closing-time-feel delivered in her singular brassy croon and growl. Shilpa Ray joins us, (sans harmonium), in the studio to play some of these songs. (Archives, 2017.) 

The musician, songwriter, and producer, Cate Le Bon, offers new music from her latest album, Pompeii, composed in the “uninterrupted vacuum,” of the current times –global pandemic plus climate emergency’s colliding eco-traumas. Le Bon plays every instrument (except drums and saxophones) on hazy, opulent, and sometimes sonically minimal songs, which are of the moment, playful, satirical, and surreal. Unhinged opulence rests in sonic deconstruction that finds coherence in pop structures, when Cate Le Bon plays these new songs. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: "Moderation", "French Boys", "Pompeii"

Watch "Moderation": 

Watch "French Boys":

Watch "Pompeii": 

This session was recorded in The Greene Space. Many thanks to their crew, and our Senior Concert Engineer, Ed Haber.

FPA, aka Frances Priya Anczarski, the Minnesotan songwriter, producer, artist, and daydreamer, works with a slow and romantic beauty in her music. She loves the ellipsis of possibility, and on her 2021 release, Princess Wiko, fuses bedroom pop, folk traditions, spoken word, hip hop, and chamber orchestration (aided by producer/musician Andrew Broder, a mainstay of the 37d03d collective) for a melancholic, medieval-era princess on a journey of love and self-discovery. FPA performs a few of these songs remotely. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: "Princess Wiko," "The Loved One"

Watch "Princess Wiko":

Watch "The Loved One":

Shamir is a musician, songwriter, producer, painter, chef, actor, and filmmaker, and on his new album, Heterosexuality, uses the sounds of rock, R&B, and industrial synth - all within a pop framework - to challenge perceptions about gender and to explore his own queer identity. As he croons on his song “Cisgender” that “I don’t want to be a girl / I don’t want to be a man / I’m just existing on this god forsaken land /And you can take it or leave it / Or you can just stay back”, he reaches heights with his self-trained voice that one would expect of Swedish pop star Robyn.

“Having multiple skills and talents in a world of side hustles and late stage capitalism,” Shamir has released a book of mixed media – essays about paintings he has made, But I’m a Painter (from his statement published on Pitchfork), also runs his own record label, and pursues gluten-free cooking. For this remote session, (recorded while on tour), Shamir performs intimate, stripped-down versions of his intense but catchy music in a live trio setting. - Caryn Havlik

Watch "Nuclear":

Folk collective Spell Songs was born as a musical companion to the two books of meditations on nature by writer Robert MacFarlane and artist and naturalist Jackie Morris. The recordings are tender naturalist-chamber-folk spell-poems of wildness, beauty, loss, and hope, inspired by the creatures, art and language in The Lost Words and The Lost Spells books. Each spell is a summoning of sorts, conjuring an animal, bird, tree or flower - from Barn Owl to Red Fox, Oak to Bramble, Jay to Jackdaw - with which we share our lives and landscapes.

The musicians wrote together on their “open plan” of musical ideas for Spell Songs II: Let The Light In, combining their guitar, harp, cello, keyboard, woodwind, kora, percussion and vocal harmonies. Spoken voice, whispers, accents, dialects, native languages, birdsong, the bark of foxes, the soft sound of a moth’s wing, the sound of a children’s climate strike; all increase the intimacy and power of the musical world conjured by Spell Songs II. Spell Songs performs excerpts from the new album; and Scottish singer Julie Fowlis and Senegalese-born kora virtuoso Seckou Keita chat about the project from London. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: "Heron," "Daisy," "Thrift"

Watch "Heron": 

Watch "Daisy":

Watch "Thrift":

"Oak":

"Bramble":

British singer, producer, and composer Anna Meredith is a musical chameleon, fusing contemporary chamber with electronics and dance music on her record, Varmints. Actually, classical, rock, electronica, and minimalism are all part of Anna Meredith’s sonic palette, and in addition to a stint as composer in residence with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, she is also a singer/songwriter who leads her own unusually constructed band - wielding keys, laptop, bells, & clarinet alongside a band of musicians playing tuba, cello, drums and guitar. This creative and unusual band plays in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)

The British singer/songwriter Laura Marling returns with a refined sixth record Semper Femina, whose Latin title implies a more gender-specific note. The album is a gripping collection of poetic takes on womanhood- complete with seductive and ravishing arrangements. Unexpected deployments of strings – all kinds - and electronics create graceful swooping textures to augment her poised and polished songs. Laura Marling and her band play some of these intimate literary musings in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)