Sound Propositions
The Podcast: Seasons 1 & 2
Dear Listeners, Joseph here with quite a lot to listen to: Bandcamp downloads of the first two seasons of the Sound Propositions podcast. 21 episodes in total, including interviews with Lea Bertucci, Longform Editions, Alvin Curran, Die Schachtel, Kassel Jaeger, La Meme Young, GENG PTP, and many others, plus some bonus content. Seasons 3 & 4 will follow later this year, but I wanted to share this with our newsletter subscribers.
I’m in pretty dire straits financially this summer and can really use some additional support to help get me through to September, when my next adjunct teaching gig begins. So if you’re in a position to part with some disposable income and would be interested in supporting my work, purchasing these episodes via Bandcamp is one means of doing so. In order to fit the episodes into Bandcamp, I had to break them up into parts, but the episodes are also freely available in whole form via Soundcloud and streaming wherever you get your podcasts.
The podcast debuted in early 2019, while I was based in southern Italy doing research for my dissertation. I’d been doing an interview column called Sound Propositions since we founded ACL in 2012, which included longreads with the likes of Machinefabriek, steve roden, Giuseppe Ielasi, Kate Carr, Christina Vantzou, Taylor Deupree and many others. But as dissertation writing picked up I found myself in need of a different workflow for my contributions to ACL, and decided it was the right time to launch a podcast. The first episode documents the 2018 edition of Krakow’s UNSOUND festival, and it just evolved from there.
After over 100 mixes as part of the Lost Children net label, I decided it was time to switch things up, and while this series maintains something of the feeling of a mix, with music and sound, it is also something entirely different, as each episodes foregrounds the voice of the subject.
Sound Propositions the podcast has the same mission as my written Sound Propositions features: to share in depth discussions with artists whose work we love, to delve into the details of their creative practice. The podcast has a unique format. Rather than two people chatting in front of the mic, each episode is an audio-documentary, blending music, field recordings, and sound design with the voice of each subject. I cut myself out almost entirely, trusting the listener to follow along, and letting the use of sound help provide additional context and allusion. My presence can be felt in the framing, the editing, and the sound design.
I am in conversation not only with musicians and composers, but also sound artists, labels, journalists, musicologists, and even a popular music meme page. Some important influences on the project come from Italian art critic and radical feminist Carla Lonzi’s Autoritratto, which was composed of fragments from interviews with visual artists, as well as William Furlong’s Audio Arts cassette magazine, and (my erstwhile colleague at McGill) Tara Rodgers’ Pink Noises.
I’ve been a big fan of radio, radio art, and podcasts for a long time, and while I’ve produced segments for community radio before, I decided it was time to try to do something on a more regular schedule, something that would allow me to explore sound itself rather than simply write about it.
The first season stuck to a fairly regular schedule, but once the pandemic hit, and my writing and teaching obligations intensified, that became harder to keep up with, and the show has continued somewhat irregularly. Season 4 will conclude later this year, after which it will go on indefinite hiatus while I work on a book drawing on these interviews in order to synthesize five “sound propositions,” or practical and philosophical lessons for contemporary sound practitioners, especially those operating outside of the mainstream.
Sound Propositions is available wherever you get your podcasts, so please keep an eye out and subscribe (and rate and review, it helps others who might be interested find us). Please follow the show on iTunes, Stitcher, RadioPublic, RSSradio, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen and purchase via Bandcamp links below. But you can also download mp3 versions via Soundcloud for free, and can send a one-time donation of whatever amount via PayPal. Thanks for listening and considering supporting my work. Happy listening.