Do a colour walk
Here’s how you do a colour walk: go for a little walk and pay attention to a colour or a colour range. Reds. Blues. Any. Notice the light as...
Josh is a writer, artist, musician and uni lecturer. This site is a 'kluge' of articles, audio interviews, experimental art and music, unusual ideas about life, and practical strategies for learning and working. If you like what you find here, please do get in touch.
Check out these articles, radio shows, and other bits of kluge:
AI Fatigue in Education
Originally published in WONKHE Raise the topic of AI in education for discussion these days and you can feel the collective groan in the room. Sometimes I even hear...
Marcus Boon part II
In this episode we catch up on some missed items from the previous interview with Marcus. We talk the politics of listening, being a musician, and doing long-form things...
Marcus Boon on time, the universe, Hennix, Nath, and DJ Screw
Writer Marcus Boon thinks unusual thoughts about music and time. We discuss his book, The Politics of Vibration: Music as a Cosmopolitical Practice. Our focus hovers around how long-form...
Annie Dunning, owls, and the infrathin
Annie Dunning, sound artist, discusses object and sound, interspecies encounters, owls, crows, toads, magpies, Chinese spouting bowls, Alvin Lucier, and Maryanne Amacher ‘s “third ear”. The episode begins with...
Chiyoko Szlavnics is all ears
Berlin-based composer Chiyoko Szlavnics and host Josh Thorpe discuss phenomenology, psychoacoustics, making music from pictures, and the wonderful experience of listening to, and playing, Indian dhrupad music. We listen...
Maria Chavez is a module
Maria Chavez, turntablist and sound artist, discusses her life as a DJ, getting kicked out of boys clubs, Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening, not listening, sound art, the moon, mentorship,...
Christof Migone: art, radio, burps, and farts
Christof Migone is a sound-artist working with language, voice, bodies, performance, intimacy, complicity, and endurance. We discuss teaching, radio, sound art, rhythm, sounds the body makes…and a typology of...
KMRU writes music on trains
Composer KMRU (aka Joseph Kamaru) joins host Josh Thorpe to discuss field recording, synthesis, and writing music on trains. We talk about process, listening, collaboration, fan reactions, and several...
Mariam Rezaei talks turntablism and gooeyness
Interview with Mariam Rezaei, turntablist, improviser, composer, and teacher. Rezaei speaks fascinatingly about free juggling, needle dripping, old time turntable experiments from the early 20th century, Lukas Koenig, Elvin...
Karen Ng on saxes and cities
Karen Ng on saxophone and more…a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and curator based in Toronto. She talks with host Josh Thorpe about round-robin collaborative composing, how cities and spaces shape musics,...
Jez riley French listens to earthworms
Jez riley French is a listener, recordist, artist and composer living in East Yorkshire, England. In this episode, host Josh Thorpe and Jez riley French discuss French’s extraordinary compositions made...
Allison Cameron has charme
Composer and improviser Allison Cameron on indeterminacy, charme, wonder, cadences, fragmented melodies, treating the ensemble as a single instrument, codas, the ineffable, prepared vibraphone, small noise improvisation, and much...
Just music
This month it’s mostly listening. We listen to Allison Cameron, Powerdove, Semay Wu, Jon Hassell, Ailbhe nic Oireachtaigh, Eric Chenaux, and Raven Chacon and Marc Sabat…not necessarily in that...
AI for Students
Announcing AI for Students, a book about using generative AI large-language models (LLMs) in education. This books starts with the basics of a critique and continues to describe a...
Stephen Chase on natural harmonics
A listening session and interview with composer / improviser Stephen Chase. Stephen and Josh met at Glasgow’s Tectonics Festival to chat about various works. Listen to Stephen’s works for...
Stephen Chase follows his nose
A listening session and interview with composer / improviser Stephen Chase. Stephen and Josh met at Glasgow’s Tectonics Festival to chat about various works. Listen to Stephen’s works for...
Fun House Mirrors: Interview with composer Charles Uzor
This interview with composer Charles Uzor discusses melody, timbre, texture, mimicry, guitars, accordions, Ligeti, and more. We listen to a work for guitar and accordion, a guitar quartet, a...
Psychedelic organs and chickens: the music of Natalia Beylis
The music of Natalia Beylis is deceptively simple and very unusual. The Ukranian-American-Irish composer, speaks with host Josh Thorpe about her work with field recordings, found objects, tape collage,...
Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives
Today we just listen to two acts of Perfect Lives by Robert Ashley. A strange ‘opera’ for TV. This is one of my all-time favourites. It has old synths,...