Soundwalker

Finally I dare to make myself the subject of an interview in my own podcast. The art/science pioneer Victoria Vesna grilled me on how I got where I am today: What I learned from John Cage, R. Murray Schafer, and all those birds, bugs, and whales I have made music with for years.

David James Duncan worked on his masterwork novel SUN HOUSE for nearly two decades, and it has now arrived. I met him last in the early days of the project, and now sixteen years later we sit down to talk about why the best things often take time, and why it was indeed that we all spent so much of our youth musing on distant spiritualities and philosophies. How to put all that effort into practice? This far-reaching novel gives us the answer.

Sun Chung founded Red Hook Records after working for more than a decade at ECM Records in Munich. It's rapidly becoming a beacon for what a creative music label can be in our tumultuous times. In this extensive conversation, we discuss why it can take years to set up a recording session for improvised music, and why it then might take a few more years to get a project ready for release. Sun Chung, booked up with releases until 2025, explains his meticulous process.

A far-reaching conversation with one of the finest bass players of our time, Glen Moore, known for his work with the Paul Winter Consort and Oregon, he also recorded many albums on ECM and Intuition with the likes of Tim Hardin, Larry Coryell, Art Lande, Rob Scheps, Larry Karush, and of course Ralph Towner, Paul McCandless, and Collin Walcott. Why is he now living in a remote town in the desert? Why has he started playing a brand-new tuning on the bass now that he's over 80 years old?

Today I speak with the poet, activist, and environmental writer Lisa Wells, author of Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World. We talk about the anger of youth, the fallibility of heroes, and the value of art and beauty in dark times.

Composer-performer Ben Neill reveals the history of his invention the Mutantrumpet, and his work over the years with Jon Hassell, John Cage, and La Monte Young, along with new ideas on where music will go in the coming decades. It will still have a beat, but will be played and heard in ways we can only dream of.

Today I speak with musician, software developer, sound experimenter Matthew Aidekman on what computers can and can't do for us in the world of audio, and why the search for surprising ways to transform music electronically will never end.

Erica Cirino, science journalist, photographer, adventurer, discusses her new book THICKER THAN WATER (Island Press), on her journey to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the problem of plastics in our world in general.

Happy to be back in Berlin after an absence of more than two years, I was invited to guest host Bernhard Wöstheinrich's radio show THF Experience, which broadcasts from an old guardhouse at the entrance to the Tempelhof Airport Park. We tackled the theme of EMERGENCE: into nature, after this pandemic, with great guests including Monika Dorniak, Volker Lankow, Christine Kriegerowski, Lima Vafadar, and Ali Sayah. Music is interspersed with ideas....

Today I speak with philosopher and nature writer Kathleen Dean Moore, whose new book celebrates the wild music of the natural world, in the hope that we can attune to its beauty and still clearly see the challenges our species faces in shaping a better place and way for us on this threatened planet. With music by Jane Rigler.