Under the Radar Podcast

Listen for a teaser to our Season 2 launch episode and other upcoming guests. Follow us on Apple Podcast so you don't miss our first episode with The Flaming Lips, out next Thursday, April 8.

Send us your thoughts at [email protected]

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Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist and cultural critic. His book Go Ahead in the Rain blended criticism, history, memoir, and poetry to pay tribute to A Tribe Called Quest, and the upcoming A Little Devil in America (March 30) explores how Black performance is woven into American culture. His website, 68 to 05, is mapping the music that shaped him with personal playlists for each year—between 1968 and 2005. He is also the host and creator of Lost Notes: 1980, named one of 2020's best music podcasts by The New Yorker and The Atlantic.

We had an opportunity to chat about Object of Sound, his latest podcast. It centres around topics such as what makes a great cover song? Or what you would include in a future playlist made during a Pandemic? Or Afrofuturism in music today?

Here's the original article that was published at Under the Radar magazine's website. And links directly to Object of Sound and Driving The Green Book—a podcast I mentioned at the end.

UnEdited is our off season mini-series featuring raw tape with Tastemakers, Podcasters and Cultural Critics.

Under the Radar podcast is curently on hiatus. But we will be back next month for Season 2. To get in touch please join our Facebook group. Ask to be a member and I will welcome you with open arms. Or reach me on twitter and instagram.

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Song Exploder's Hrishikesh Hirway has had a busy 12 months. He launched two new podcasts as the Pandemic hit last year. And by Thanksgiving had a Netflix hit when Song Exploder his longtime music podcast made the transition to a television show. I was unaware of his TV show when we spoke but we did chat about this business of making podcasts, couple's therapy and how for years the piano he practiced on was made of paper.

Here's the original article that was published at Under the Radar magazine's website. And links directly to Song Exploder, Partners and Home Cooking.

UnEdited is our off season mini-series featuring raw tape with Tastemakers, Podcasters and Cultural Critics.

Under the Radar podcast is currently on hiatus. We are working on Season 2 which will launch in March/April 2021. To get in touch, please join our Facebook group. Ask to be a member and you will be welcomed in.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Roman Mars has been producing one of the most popular podcasts ever—his show, 99 Percent Invisible—for over a decade. Last year, they marked the occasion by releasing a design book called The 99 Percent Invisible City: A Field Guide to The Hidden World of Design. I was presented with the opportunity to interview him about it.

Here's the original article that was published at Under the Radar magazine's website. And a link directly to 99 Percent Invisible where you can purchase the book.

UnEdited is our off season mini-series featuring raw tape with Tastemakers, Podcasters and Cultural Critics.

Under the Radar podcast is currently on hiatus. We are currently working on Season 2 which will launch in March/April 2021. To get in touch, please join our Facebook group. Ask to be a member and you will be welcomed in.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As KCRW Music Director for a decade and host of the radio show Morning Becomes Eclectic, Jason Bentley is a respected tastemaker. He has been pivotal in introducing us to artists and bands that have ascended pop charts and become permenent fixtures in the culture. He left a hole in my radio-listening habits when he left the station, late in 2019. It was a treat to get the opportunity to interview him about his new podcast, in partnership with Soho House called The Backstory.

We discuss how he hopes to forward conversations in culture with The Backstory. His move from public media to the private sector. His desire to be a creator as well as curator. And finish the interview with his thoughts on Zoom cocktails. Well, it's happy hour somewhere!

Here is a link to the original feature that appeared at Under the Radar magazine. And a link directly to The Backstory podcast. UnEdited is our off season mini-series featuring raw tape with Tastemakers, Podcasters and Cultural Critics.

Under the Radar podcast is currently on hiatus. We are busy working on Season 2 which will launch in March/April 2021. To get in touch, please join our Facebook group.

Picture Credit: Mark Leibowitz

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The Show On The Road is a great music podcast hosted by Zach Lupetin from folk rock outfit, Dustbowl Revival. I'm excited to share this episode where he speaks to Danish composer, pianist and singer/songwriter Agnes Obel. It was recorded at the Capitol Records Building in Los Angeles before there was a hint of Pandemic. And Obel was still looking forward to playing at the Greek Theatre over the Summer. They discuss her latest album Myopia, how perhaps we are not masters of our own fate and how when she has an album to finish she frets about her mortality: worrying about being hit by a truck before she can finish her songs. And one of her most beautiful tracks on this album is "Won't You Call Me" so be sure to check it out.

Also, don't miss this opportunity to catch other episodes from The Show On The Road. Some of my favorites are the interviews with Dave Stewart of The Eurythmics and New Jersey-raised singer/songwriter Nicole Atkins.

We are currently hard at work preparing for Season 2 which will launch in March/April 2021. And to kick off the new year we've got a mini series of interviews lined up as well as a Bonus episode or two. So stay tuned. And come say hi to us by joining our Facebook Group. We have plans to do more listening parties and giveaways. We would love to hear your thoughts about Under the Radar or The Show On The Road. Click here to join.

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When Scottish band Travis landed their bonafide hit with "Why Does It Always Rain On Me?"—we were all taken with frontman Fran Healy's cheeky grin, affable persona and the way he seeminly wore his heart on his sleeve. After years of Brit-pop feuds and Oasis infighting, it was refreshing to have a band that wasn't grabbing the headlines with tiresome rock n'roll antics. Travis were nice.

After their 1997 debut Good Feeling—a rock record that fitted the zeitgeist but failed to make an impression, they took a year off to write and find their own sound. They returned with "Writing To Reach You" — a quiet single off their sophomore record, The Man Who. It riffs off the chords from Oasis's "Wonderwall" and begs the question "what's a wonderwall anyway?" Their second single, "Driftwood" capitalized further on this introspective, honest sound, bouyed by Fran's mellifluous vocals. When the heavens opened for their Glastonbury 1999 set during "Why Does It Always rain On Me?" the band's future would be forever changed. They would return to Glastonbury the following year triumphant, as festival headliners, alongside David Bowie and The Chemical Brothers. The Man Who would go on to chart around the world.

I'm not sure if I ever thought about who the person writing these songs were? What kind of life did they have? What had happened to make them write a song about someone who never seems to have good things happen to them? All I saw was Fran's smile, lovely topline melodies and an optimism in his lyrics that was easy to relate to. In part, this was their plan all along. As a band they wanted the songs to be the stars. After the success of The Man Who, their follow-up was deliberately titled The Invisible Band. It's an art to be everywhere without most people knowing more beyond the songs, the accolades and perhaps what haircut Fran was spotting next?

"Mirrors are problematic for me," he said with his face scrunched up, on our zoom call. "There's something in this," he circled his finger around his still boyish face, ashen hair tucked under a basecall cap, "—that makes me not happy." Back in the day, 'this' was the the face that launched a thousand haircuts with the fauxhawk.

That dread, however, is deeply rooted and has over the last 25 years helped Fran write some of the best pop songs for Travis. Their latest album, 10 Songs, has now debuted at No 5 on the British charts, proving they haven't lost their touch.

Many thanks for making this possible—Fran Healy for your honesty, being so 'nice' and recording additional audio for the podcast. Also for granting us permission to use the trailer from Almost Fashionable. Sony ATV and Concord Publishing for permission to use songs. To Chloe Walsh and Katie Nelson at Grandstand for all the support.

Songs Featured: "A Ghost," 'Why Does It Always Rain On Me?" "Driftwood," "Closer," "A Million Hearts," "Nina's Song," "Only Thing," "Butterflies" and "Waving At The Window."

Photo by Ryan Johnson.

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Fantastic Negrito is the latest incarnation of Xavier Amin Dephrapaulezz. As a child, he was raised in an orthodox Muslim household in New England. His Somali-Caribbean father was an Oxford-educated immigrant who played traditional African music. Just before he hit his teens, his father relocated their family to Oakland. Coming from his conservative childhood, it was at once an intense culture shock and liberating. The street was alive with the new sounds of hip hop, rap and punk. And he was drawn to it.

In his youth, he thought that the Blues was the music of his grandmother's generation. When he landed in LA in the Nineties, he had plans to be a star. And it didn't take him long to land a major label deal. As Xavier, he released the album, The X Factor. Things did not go as planned and in 2000, a near-fatal car crash would take him further away from his musical ambitions. Eventually, he sold all his instruments and moved back to the Bay Area.

When he won the 2015 Tiny Desk Contest as Fantastic Negrito, it was with a newfound mission—to make music free of the corrupting influence of capitalism where he could discuss freely the societal ills he observed around him. In the course of three albums—The Last Days of Oakland, Please Don't Be Dead and his latest Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?—he's tackled big issues such as racism, capitalism, gentrification, poverty and misogyny. Despite winning 2 Grammys, he's eschewed big label deals and continues to record at Blackball Studios, part of a collective he co-founded with Empire producer and writer Malcolm Spellman. Based in downtown Oakland where he was recorded for our podcast, you'll hear siren and street sounds outside and that's how he likes it.

Like most, I became a fan of Fantastic Negrito when he won Tiny Desk Contest. His backstory was captivating. I have often wondered what would have happened if police had found that the person trying to sell those artist-backstage passes was white? Or that the intern was working for a white artist or band member? Would they have been taken away in handcuffs too? It was the first time, I became aware that America had a racism problem. And since then, it has become painfully obvious how deep it goes.

Many thanks for making this possible —To the one and only Fantastic Negrito for having these conversations with me over the years. For all the support from Blackball Universe and Ken Weinstein at Big Hassle PR. To Cooking Vinyl and Position Music for permission to use music.

Songs Featured: "Chocolate Samurai," "Lost in a Crowd," "Last Days of Oakland," "The Nigga Song," "In The Pines," "Plastic Hamburgers," "I'm So Happy I Cry," "Justice In America," "All Up In My Space," "Searching For Captain Save A Hoe" and "How Long."

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Everything Everything frontman, Jonathan Higgs grew up in the North of England in a home filled with music. As early as six years old, he was experimenting with making music and rudimentary computer games on a free software program. By the time, he got to University he knew he wanted to be the frontman of a band. Everything Everything's line-up was complete when Alex Robertshaw joined Higgs, and his friends, Michael Spearman and Jeremy Pritchard—just in time for the quartet to ink their first label deal.

Higgs spoke to us ahead of the band's upcoming album Re-Animator which will be released on September 11th. Like most artists and bands putting new records out during a pandemic they've had to adapt. Re-Animator's release date was pushed back. A music video they had already begun production on had to be scrapped because it's lyrics were inappropriate given COVID 19. Unable to meet or do photo shoots, Higgs set about using computer software and animation for their promo shots as well as their latest music videos:— "Arch Enemy," "In Birdsong" and "Planets." The "fatberg" in "Arch Enemy" (the outro track on the podcast) is unmissable. No prizes for guessing the inspiration for the oversized, congealed, blob.

I first encountered the band's music with their third album, 2015's Get To Heaven. The track "No Reptiles" was like nothing I had heard before. The lyrics were as violent as the news stories they were referencing - ISIS beheadings and school shootings - yet tender in it's odd refrain: "Oh baby, it's alright. It's alright, to feel like a fat child, in a pushchair, old enough to run. Old enough to fire a gun." How it folded the brutality with mocking humor, then a tenderness, in the most erudite manner, expanded the bounds of Math Rock exponentially.

Re-Animator's most uplifting track "Violent Sun" — echoes that sentiment but with a simpler, more impassioned plea: "I'm too old, to be crying out...." At a time when we're supposed to be strong, at every turn the world keeps burning and we have every cause for incredible sadness. But still we keep singing, hoping, re-animating.

For those interested in the theories that inspired Higgs on Re-Animator, please check out Julian Jayne's book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

Many thanks for making this possible — Jonathan Higgs for sharing your time, thoughts and music with us. To Alexander Baker and Jamie Sward at High Rise PR for the support. And to Kobalt Music for permission to use songs from the albums Get To Heaven, A Fever Dream and Re-Animator.

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Caroline Rose grew up on Long Island, New York, in a happy household where her artists-parents encouraged her creativity—she won coveted roles in musical theater productions, performed in a regional middle school band and instead of Summer jobs, she would take to the streets busking to earn her keep. However, like many of us, she was eager to see the big world. She couldn’t wait to get out of her small town and live the life she craved— to “hop trains and write songs”— the way vagabonds and storytellers, in the vein of her most favorite artist, Tom Waits, did. Her parents insisted that she have a back up plan. So she got a degree in Architecture. As soon as she was done with College, she lived out her fantasy of writing songs, living in a car and traveling around the country. In 2012, her first record of songs was self-released as America Religious.

“Soul No 5” on her excellent record Loner, was the first Caroline Rose song I ever heard and I was smitten. An earlier version of the song was featured on “NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert”— introduced as “I Got Soul,” it was marked by lashings of slide guitar and her earnest Country-inflected vocals. I was keen to find out how she went from Americana to the electro-pop heights of Superstar.

This is the first interview we’ve done since the Pandemic hit. It was conducted via Zoom, so apologies for the less than perfect audio in parts. The day we spoke, it was obvious that Caroline was going through some heartbreak—foregrounded by all the unrest erupting from George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police, and the general state of our world in crisis, I can only imagine how much more difficult it must be to navigate a broken heart during lockdown.

This was going to be her champagne year. Now, it will be Covid’s year. The pandemic has made her think of Superstar as suspended in time and space. She adds: “Like in The Matrix how things get frozen; and you can walk around it and view it from all these different perspectives... There is something magical about creativity that you don’t even fully realized it’s depth and true meanings when you’re creating it. Or fully understand it.“

Many thanks for making this possible—Caroline for graciously helping me, tell your story. To Nancy Rose for digitizing old VHS — “Connemara Sketches: A Folk Suite” performed with Caroline in her HMEA band (2003) and “Out of Time.” (I also loved Caroline performing music from Annie Get Your Gun, Annie and doing her “Wonderwall” cover but alas, it didn’t make the cut). To Anthony Borgatta for additional audio on the drums. To Pitch Perfect PR for support, plus New West Records and Words & Music for use of Caroline Rose’s music. 

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