As a curator at the Alan Lomax Archive, Nathan Salsburg is no stranger to reaching deep into the past to bring forth music that speaks to us in the present moment. As a guitarist and songwriter, he's primarily focused on instrumental sounds, but on...

“Music shapes us and fundamentally changes us. Once we have listened we do not stop. We do not ever recover from music. We will return again and again to the radio, the record store, the bedroom where girls listen to records all day.” That’s a...

A sprawling talk with record maker John Leckie. As a tape operator at Abbey Road, he oversaw the All Things Must Pass and Plastic Ono Band sessions and rolled tape on Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett, Kevin Ayers, Fela Kuti, and more. Soon he began producing...

A sit down with bassist and composer Melvin Gibbs. Emerging from the fertile New York art scene of the early '80s where he played with Defunkt, Gibbs has brought grace and heaviness to work with Arto Lindsey, John Zorn, Caetano Veloso, Bill Frisell,...

This week on Transmissions: Anika. Best known for her work with Geoff Barrow and Mexico City's Exploded View, she returns with Change, an album of subtle electronic pop, driving bass lines, and lyrics that veer from quixotic to inspiring....

Today on the show, Brazilian singer/songwriter Rodrigo Amarante joins us to discuss his new album, . A lush and enveloping listen, it blends gentle pop with cinematic flourishes. Reflecting on the confines of masculinity, his artistic...

It’s a bonus episode for you as we head into the weekend. Today on the show we're joined by Ripley Johnson of Moon Duo, Wooden Shjips, and most recently, Rose City Band. Reviewing the latter’s excellent Earth Trip, an album of rural psychedelia,...

Today on the program: Tom Scharpling of The Best Show and Double Threat. He’s written a deeply funny and moving new book called , available now wherever you get books. It documents his early days writing and producing a DIY fanzine, working his way...

This week on Transmissions, a heady conversation with Carlos Niño about spontaneous composition, the influence of hip-hop culture, his radio roots, and his latest, . "...Frequently, I would say I'm doing some version of supercomputing, where I'm...

This week on the show, Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance. His new album is called , out this week via Three Lobed Records. Six Organs records can often sound very different from each other—think quiet acoustic sketches or long, blown out psych...

Welcome to a special bonus episode of Transmissions. Our guest this episode is musician and writer Jeffrey Silverstein. His new EP of gently cosmic guitar music is called , and he's the head the wonderful , a tribute to the late cult folk musician Ted...

Our guest this week on the show is singer/songwriter John Grant. You might know him from his work with Midlake, the Czars, Sinéad O'Connor or Hercules and Love Affair. His new album is called Boy From Michigan. It's produced by Cate Le...

Our guest this week is Cécile Schott, who records under the name Colleen. Since the early 2000s, she's generated soulful electronic and ambient music, utilizing vintage synths, drum machines, music boxes, and acoustic instruments. Her latest is...

Music is never incidental in a movie made by our guest this week: director, collage artist, and music maker Jim Jarmusch. Music is part of his films’ DNA, a through line running through his characters’ black comedy gags and existential...

Guitarist, songwriter, and producer Sarah Louise joins us this week on the show to discuss her new album, Earth Bow. Though Louise is known for her 12-string folks fantasias, her work is wide ranging, evoking the soundscapes of Robert Fripp and the...

Welcome back. Our guest this week on the show is Wadada Leo Smith, trumpeter, music theorist, and composer. Over his many years, he’s pioneered his own musical notation system, helped popularize and contextualize Miles Davis’s electric period, and...

Our guest this week is guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson. One of the founding fathers of British folk rock, he's the author of a new book, Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice (1967-1975). It chronicles the early days of his band,...

Our guest on the show this week is J Mascis. Along with Lou Barlow and drummer Murph, he formed Dinosaur Jr in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1984. After their original run, which ended acrimoniously in 1989, Mascis continued on with Dinosaur Jr, the Fog,...

This week on Transmissions, we're digging into the Aquarium Drunkard vault for a 2016 conversation with the late New Age pioneer, composer, author and creator Joanna Brouk. An edited and condensed version of this conversation was in 2016, but we are...

As we've noted here , Durham-based songwriter al Riggs keeps very busy. Their new album is called . Though they bounce around genre-wise, this LP is rooted in country rock traditions and it features contributions from cosmic pedal steel guitarist ,...

This week on the show, Chicago’s Angel Bat Dawid. A composer, clarinetist, poet, and vocalist, she’s one of the shining stars of the International Anthem label, where she’s issued some incredible records like Live, with her band Tha Brotherhood,...

Pino Palladino and Blake Mills are two of the most dynamic studio wizards in music and they join us this week on Transmissions to discuss Notes With Attachments, their Impulse! Records-released collaborative long-player. Backed by a set of LA studio...

This week on the show, we're joined by poet and music journalist Noah C. Lekas and Ethan Miller of Howlin' Rain and Comets on Fire. They've got a new collaboration featured on , a 10" record from Blind Owl: a rock & roll adaptation of "Saturday...

Our guest this week on Transmissions is Martin Courtney of Real Estate. On March 26th, the long-running New Jersey group releases its new EP, , which embraces the jammier side of the band and continues the stylistic explorations of 2020's . We...

Description: Our guest this week on the show is Shahzad Ismaily, whose recorded with, well, he’s recorded with a lot of people, from Moses Sumney and to , Martha Wainwright, , , Jolie Holland, and many, many more. With his buddies Ches Smith and...