Welcome back to Transmissions. Our seventh season commences today with the brilliant Greg Tate, a legendary music writer, musician, creative explorer and sojourner. He passed away unexpectedly only a few days after our December 9th conversation, and this talk constitutes our delayed contribution to the choruses of writers, artists, and thinkers rightly proclaiming his praises last month. 

Though Tate’s episode couldn’t hope to be exhaustive, it does offer a look into his creative pursuits, focusing on the latest timebending record from his Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber, love of comic books, science fiction and Afrofuturism, Santana, and much more. A note from host Jason P. Woodbury: 

“Reading Greg Tate when I was getting into music writing was crucial. Though our time at Voice Media-owned enterprises didn’t overlap, his Voice essays were pivotal in my understanding of what great music writing could do—and he is so fun to read. A stylist in the best sense. Tate listened so deeply musically; he heard deeper. And he understood the human impulses at the core of creative expression. In his essay about William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer, he wrote, 'Along with [Samuel] Delany and [Philip K.] Dick, Gibson suggests that primordial ghosts will haunt the machine-part humans of the future.' I think Tate understood a lot about those ghosts, what a genuine honor to have him on.”  

Episode Playlist: Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber: Oakanda Overdrive-Full Ride ++ Automate No. One, from Angeles of Oakanda

Support Transmissions on Patreon. If you dig the show, please consider rating, reviewing, subscribing, and spread the word if you dig our program. Back next Wednesday with Circuit Des Yeux. Transmission concluded.