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The music podcast that does music differently. I'm Giles Sibbald and I'm talking to extraordinary musicians, DJ’s and producers about how they use an experimental mindset in their lives to amplify their own creativity, pursue new challenges, overcome fears and bounce back from mistakes. Don’t miss out on conversations that might inspire you to find your own experimental mindset!
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Send us a Text Message. I met up with my old friend John Robb over the UK May bank holiday weekend. He was in London talking about his birthday, sorry life and career (!). For those who don’t know John, he formed The Membranes in the early 80’s and he’s an author whose writing about music and the future I admire hugely – and his talk was called “Do…
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Send us a Text Message. My first experience of censorship in music came with the battle between the Dead Kennedys and Tipper Gore’s PMRC (remember the “Parental Advisory Explicit Content” stickers?) which culminated in the obscenity trial in 1985/6 over the artwork for DK’s record Frankenchrist. I don’t know if anyone remembers but the board member…
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Send us a Text Message. If I were to create a mixtape (it’d have to be an old school cassette cos that’s probably the last time I made one!) for Amanda and her music life, it’d probably open with The Undertones’ Family Entertainment with the classic line “Got To…Keep it In the Family”. I mention family not so much to talk endlessly about the quite …
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Send us a Text Message. You know when you hear a song or a collection of songs that literally make you shiver? Songs that could make you cry at how effortlessly beautiful they are. Another thing that interests me is the neuroscience of how some pieces of music can transport me to a time, a place, an older version of me, a perhaps as yet unseen vers…
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Send us a Text Message. What’s been intriguing me today? Reality. What is it? Is there “a” reality or is it all subjective and determined by our own perception, prediction and interpretation. I think it's a word - like so many others - that has been hijacked – you see it used in order to dogmatically defend belief systems or stances and this plays …
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Send us a Text Message. As regular listeners will be painfully aware, I’m no fan of genres. I can hear the groans already….here he goes again getting on his soapbox…yes, well, you know you gotta reinforce the message, right! I do believe that genres are obsolete to the point of being dangerous, created by an industry to keep people in their lanes, …
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Send us a Text Message. We live in a culture of immediacy and entitlement, brought upon us, in part at least, by the emergence of new technologies of the last 20 years that were supposed to democratise society, to disrupt the big corporates, but have laid themselves bare as the same old monolithic structures where the power bases and wealth are mai…
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Send us a Text Message. Listening to the music of Belle Chen brings me some mixed emotions – firstly, incredible love and admiration for the creativity and innovation of her thinking and the beauty and talent in executing this thinking through her composition and playing, yet still leaving room for the listener’s own interpretation. The second, and…
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Send us a Text Message. As a habitual loafer, I spend a fair bit of time thinking about how some songwriters can create music that can feel familiar yet unfamiliar and why I’m attracted to music that gives me both of those feelings. I also love finding music that feels very unfamiliar to me and I’m interested in why. As you might expect I’ve failed…
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Send us a Text Message. When we’re kids, before we get to school and start to get hemmed in by society’s expectations, we don’t have the inhibitions that start to follow us around and start to influence our words, our actions, the clothes we wear, the way we cut our hair (although that’s not really been an issue for me for decades). I think this is…
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Send us a Text Message. As with most stuff, I was late to the Skinny Pelembe party and the way I got into his music was as random as it gets: I came across an Instagram post (see, Instagram does have its uses) of his about buying an Austin Allegro with his streaming royalties ( I think that was the gist of it). Now my old man - rest his soul - was …
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Send us a Text Message. Nayana AB is an outstanding songwriter, musician and producer, who, for me, is taking influences from great songwriters of the past but making the music in very much her own vision. She’s using that history and those legacies positively to shape her own future and the future of others. I think this is exactly what legacy is …
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Send us a Text Message. In the bands my guest has played with over the past, what 30 years maybe – like Minority, Brick, One Against Many and presently Black Mercy – I’m getting influences from some outstanding bands and I’m thinking Negative Approach, Whipping Boy, Poison Idea, Artificial Peace definitely a bit of Napalm Death thrown in there to g…
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Send us a Text Message. Situations and elements of duality, dualisms and paradoxes have started to become more evident in my life. I think I started to become more aware of this maybe 6/7 years ago when I started thinking and writing about the importance of mindset for surviving and functioning in this very complex and volatile world which, with a …
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Send us a Text Message. I think more and more these days about how we’ve sleep walked into allowing our world to become one that doesn’t serve us, one that does its best to prevent our ever-evolving identity to find its path, to do things on our own terms and away from being defined in a certain way by preconceptions or however our brains uses pred…
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Send us a Text Message. I interviewed Andrew Butler from Hercules and Love Affair last year and he made a really great point about how the most exciting music is produced when one “scene” starts to fade but the next “big thing” hasn’t yet arrived – l think of it like when a new star is being born from all this gas and dust coming together - before …
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Send us a Text Message. If this podcast were a musician, it's highly likely it would be called Trevor Dunn. Trevor is a hugely respected and valued composer, bassist, double bassist, collaborator, ultra-improviser and fantastic conversationalist, coming to prominence with the ever fluid and experimental Mr Bungle. He has also played with John Zorn,…
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Send us a Text Message. There’s so much about the work of J. Willgoose, Esq. of Public Service Broadcasting that really is everything that this podcast is about – resilience, curiosity, the importance of your physical environment, reinvention, collaborations, adaptability, trying things out, learning from the past – from successes or mistakes to wh…
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Send us a Text Message. Since I started this podcast malarkey (maybe before actually, maybe the podcast just encouraged me to be more open about it - gawd, this sounds like a confessional!), I’ve developed a fascination with how music can whisk you off into a distant world, a kind of musical Narnia, not just through the lyrics, but the song structu…
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Send us a Text Message. I first met Alaura when we did an online workshop for the South London Arts Lab in October 2020. It was a practical exploration of Stream of Consciousness writing. It was called “Telling The Stories We Were Always Told To Keep Secret”, where we were encouraged to delve into our memory to write about things that have a hold o…
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Send us a Text Message. Our mindset is super important to how we handle life and what the future might hold for us. The importance of maintaining and regenerating our friendships and relationships shouldn't be overlooked but they often are. Of course, how we view them can be wrapped up in things that happened to us going way back. I’m also interest…
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Send us a Text Message. Tony Njoku is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, musician, producer and visual artist whose music is impossible to categorise. It has so many influences that its identity is unique – just like it should be. He's assembling his art in ways that tell a story that helps him and helps others by bringing us together over shared…
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Send us a Text Message. Curiosity is one of the most endearing things that we have as children – the never ending barrage of “why?”. It’s also one of the things, along with playfulness and adaptability, that can get kicked out of us as we get older. Stephen Mallinder is one of the most prolific, influential and pioneering DIY sound, art and writing…
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Send us a Text Message. We're signing off Season 9 with a pioneering legend. Here's what the incomparable Vivien Goldman wrote about Lora Logic back in the nascent days of punk: “The remarkable Lora Logic, several phases ahead as usual, proves yet again that she’s the best thing that ever played in the Roxy…The woman defines herself, un-pompously f…
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Send us a Text Message. Alianna Kalaba is a multi-instrumentalist, most renowned, I guess, for playing drums for the past 10/11 years with Cat Power and this beautifully distorted, snake-like bass with FACS, signing off from them with their latest album Still Life In Decay which is just a masterpiece - I’m totally in love with that record. Alianna …
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Send us a Text Message. When I started thinking about experimental mindsets, I started looking for examples of that mindset at use in real life. I wrote something about Detroit. Detroit has always fascinated me, just like Moscow (weird how we get drawn to certain places or scenes isn’t it?). It went something like this - Detroit is THE example of h…
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Send us a Text Message. One of the wonderful things about an experimental mindset is that it gives you the willingness and desire to be not just open to other ways of living and approaching your life – whether that be your work, your hobbies, your relationships - but to actively going to find those other ways. In terms of music, this could be being…
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Send us a Text Message. Elisabeth Elektra has lived with and through change, uncertainty, improvisation and transformation – the sort of things that today’s world throws at us. She gained her degree in experimental music and visual art, so she has got used to throwing herself into strange creative situations. She’s always pushed herself outside of …
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Send us a Text Message. Marissa Paternoster is doing too many amazing things to be defined by any one of them – she’s best known for her music in the Screaming Females, a band whose whole ethos of self sufficiency, open mindedness, strong integrity and ability to evolve without ever not being the Screaming Females I just love, she writes phenomenal…
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Send us a Text Message. Dedicated to the memory of Matt Evans. "Brixton is God" Brix Smith is a rock legend. Her life story is as inspirational as it is turbulent. It’s inspirational because of that turbulence and how she’s navigated it all. From growing up in LA and starting her first college band Banda Dratsing, to moving to Chicago and joining T…
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Send us a Text Message. Matt Black is half of the magnificently innovative and renegade DJ + multimedia pop group Coldcut, co-founder of Ninja Tune, one of the world’s leading electronic music labels and a beacon for the independent music spirit and creator of the brilliant sample instrument Jamm, and Pixi a visual synth instrument. Amongst other t…
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Send us a Text Message. It's a great privilege to have conversations like I do with so many talented and amazing humans, each of whom is making their mark through their music and other creative projects. Today's conversation is one of those. Gena Rose Bruce is a phenomenally talented Melbourne-based artist who has just released her sophomore album …
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Send us a Text Message. Louise Distras has always made her music with a progressive mindset. New visions, new influences, new collaborations and new ways of doing things. I think she’s challenged the way that we behave when we're on our own and when we're part of groups and also the way movements have a tendency to institutionalise themselves the l…
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Send us a Text Message. Three things struck me about Billy Nomates when I first heard her work - vulnerability, humanity and what a bloody exciting talent. I first saw Tor perform live when she supported the Sleaford Mods at the 100 Club in September 2020. She played with such charisma - perfectly DIY, raw and defiant intensity with gallows humour …
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Send us a Text Message. “There’s a world outside if you want it” …. …. this lyric from Jesse's 2015 song Oh Sheena kinda sums up his desire to find the positive in life, to make the best out of the good times and the tough times. Jesse Malin is someone who embraces all sorts of influences to produce a music that is full of honest emotion, humility,…
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Send us a Text Message. It's the early '80's and I'm going through one of many identity searches. I was always drawn to the non-conformers, even though I conformed in many ways. Therein lies a struggle. Music was obviously a massive part of that identity search and the early 80s kinda gave me the chance to experiment with clothes (usually atrocious…
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Send us a Text Message. Thank fuck for Starcrawler When I first heard their debut album around 5 years ago and I was like, well, this is what the world’s been waiting for. A good dose of Hollywood underbelly, a bit of glam, a bit of punk rock horror, a bit of No Place for Old Men and a huge dose of heart. Starcrawler were just feeding me all of thi…
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Send us a Text Message. Today's special guest is Kelly Ogden! Kelly, together with her husband Luis, started The Dollyrots for a bit of fun whilst college students in Florida. They then decided to take the leap of faith and make the band a full time gig, moved to LA and have been on an epic journey playing their brand of music that is chockablock f…
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Send us a Text Message. Sam Quartin is the guitarist and vocalist for THE BOBBY LEES. They're one of my favourite bands, rooted in punk, the blues, the garage and a big old dose of weird. Live, they are a tight, ball of wild, nihilistic claustrophobia that comes and finds you and detonates in your face. They're free of inhibitions and straitjackets…
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Send us a Text Message. The Butthole Surfers didn't play the UK that often back in the day. And when they did, I missed them: damn that shit English Pennine weather! One of life's regrettable moments. So, 35 years later, the Butthole healing process continues and I finally get to talk to the legendary Pinkus from his home near Asheville, NC. And wh…
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Send us a Text Message. Steve Hillage is one of music’s greats - a great musician, a great innovator, a great free thinker and great experimenter whose achievements and career is just one whole wall of inspiration for doing the things that excite you and on your own terms. It's a terrific conversation, talking about how family circumstances dictate…
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Send us a Text Message. As I'm writing these show notes, I'm listening to The Minutemen's History Lesson Part 2 which opens with this wonderful line: "Our band could be your life". For me, this succinctly captures what Mike Watt is about and what music is about…... One day, way back when, a 13 year-old D. Boon jumped out of a tree and landed in fro…
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Send us a Text Message. The powerful precision, swing, rhythmic and melodic inventiveness of Sam Fogarino, drummer with the mighty Interpol, sets him apart from most drummers. I feel truly privileged to have been able to talk to Sam ahead of Interpol's show at Primavera Barcelona and ahead of the release of Interpol's 7th studio album since the sem…
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Send us a Text Message. Sub Pop Records is still the most totemic symbol of alternative music, 35 years after it was first formed by Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman in Seattle. It’s roster over the years is like being a kid in a sweet shop – Mudhoney, Dwarves, Hole, J Mascis, Sleater-Kinney, The Mary Chain, Moor Mother, The Vaselines…..oh, and a …
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Send us a Text Message. Everybody should listen to Ron Gallo, not just because his music is so bloody exciting, eclectic and innovative, but also because his emotional intelligence is through the roof. As Ron has said himself, searching to find out who you truly are can mean some beautiful moments, but also some terribly dark moments. I love the fa…
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Send us a Text Message. Punk’s blast might have faded but its impact didn't. By 1978, a new guard was taking over, one that was meshing together exciting sounds and influences and creating exhilarating music for the open minded, for the outsiders and for the curious. The Bush Tetras have taken their own place in history and it's kinda fitting that …
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Send us a Text Message. Hurricane G is the amazing singer of a band that is in this exciting renegade maelstrom that is happening in Austin, Texas. Böndbreakr are crossing over musical influences and styles bringing together punk rock, metal, thrash, hardcore with a dash of psychedelia and a lot of commentary that addresses the pain and grief that …
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Send us a Text Message. Two of my favourite things about this podcast: 1. I get to meet some amazing artists, sometimes by design, sometimes by chance and really understand what makes them who they are 2. I get to see how these artists have evolved over the years. Kid Moxie has been releasing music since around 2008 and her musical evolution is fas…
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Send us a Text Message. By day, Sam Grant is responsible for producing some of the most intense, bone crunching yet life affirming riffs for Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs. Also by day (and probably also by night sometimes), he’s an artist and a producer who has built Blank Studios, a top recording facility in the North East of England. Talking…
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Send us a Text Message. One positive thing that I’ve taken away from the past two years is how big a role music plays in creating strong human connections. And there’s not just the music, but the touring is especially important for just that physical connection. Artists meeting fans, fans meeting artists. Like-minded people brought together by the …
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