Akio Suzuki "mu ro bi ko" extract (Senufo 44)

Jeremy Young presents “With all our knowable ills, ...” [mix]

In the previous episode, we heard how so-called artificial intelligence is being sold to the public as a revolutionary, inevitable technology that is going to completely transform society. This claim is built around the misleading metaphor of “artificial intelligence,” which equates machine processes with human intelligence. Generative AI products are being marketed as proof that machines will very soon be doing everything a human can do, but better, faster, and more efficiently. We’re being told we can’t stop this technology. Only learn to live with it. 

In this episode, we’re going to show how so-called generative AI is not revolutionary. Instead, it’s an evolution of societal trends that have been a long time in the making and which were not inevitable…Things like the automation of labor, growth of mass media, and vast increases in monopoly power. By understanding this context we can get a much clearer picture of what so-called generative AI actually is, what the companies behind it are really up to, and all the ways it can affect our lives.

This is Media Objects. A Ways of Knowing podcast. Produced by the World According to Sound, in partnership with Media Studies at Cornell University. Support from the college of arts and science and the society for the humanities. Editing and academic counsel from Erik Born, Jeremy Braddock, and Paul Fleming.

Guests include Cornell professors Steven Jackson, Mendi and Keith Obadike, Daniel Susser, Lee Humphreys, and Chris Csikszentmihalyi.

Media Objects 06: Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 2

Skramz. Screamo. Emoviolence.

Welcome to emotive hardcore, a sound that has no definitive origin but is a blend of a variety of settings and tones. 

I'm honored this round to be joined by two very excellent friends, Geoff Rickley of the band Thursday and GENG PTP aka King Vision Ultra. Each of us have curated different snapshots of origin stories, packed living rooms, harsh and melodic sounds, and one big middle finger to America.

We're all ready proud of this. It came from an organic dialogue and if we weren't restricted with time limits probably could've gone on for at least another hour. 

Expect a positive ferociousness.

STRAW:
Rodan - Bible Silver Corner (intro music)
Rites of Spring - For Want Of
Moss Icon - As Afterwards the Words Still Ring
Slint - Nosferatu Man
Universal Order of Armageddon - Mud
Evergreen - Trudy Pushpin
Bessie Smith - See if I'll Care
Indian Summer - Woolworm
Mohinder - Expiration
Drive Like Jehu - Here Come the Rome Plows

GEOFF: 
Frail - Love
You and I - Seascape
Saetia - The Sweetness and the Light
Q and Not U - End the Washington Monument (Blinks) Goodnight
pageninetynine - Richmond is a Hole
Heroin - Meaning Less
Jeromes Dream - Reminders to Parallel
Usurp Synapse - "Man, That's a Big Ass Shirt!"
charles bronson - Marriage Can Suck It
Reversal of Man - Bless the Printing Press
COMBAT WOUNDED VETERAN - My Spine! My Spine! My Spine!
Ink + Dagger - Full Circle

GENG: 
The Judas Iscariot - Thespian Imperative
Murdock - Sweet Stuff
Countdown To Putsch - Coke Okay
Merel - So Lovely Warmth
Policy Of 3 - 1%
Iconoclast - Tales of Vicious Rabbit
MAKARA - Missing Green
Guyver-One - Zero (Version 2)
Yaphet Kotto - Fact Or Fiction
Shroomunion - Bubble Gum Tears And Bloody Fears
The Hareste - pain in decibels
Inkwell - Wash
circle takes the square - We're Sustained by the Corpse of a Fallen Constellation
Portrait - Less Sugar
Off Minor - Remainder
Born Against - Five Dollars An Hour

STRAW + requests*:
At the Drive-In - One Armed Scissor*
Envy - Left Hand
Piri Reis - When Life Hand You Grenade
Peace of Mind & Anomine - I Want My Life (And I'll Get It!!)
Crochet - You Have Destroyed My Flower-Like Life
Braid - A Dozen Roses

Cause & Effect: Emotive Hardcore (with Geoff Rickley & GENG PTP)

A Beautiful Day To Die

RA.1000 launches with Theo Parrish, live at fabric: a vanishingly rare club mix from the king of deep crates and impossible transitions.

There are DJ sets and then there are Theo sets. No matter how many times you've caught him in action, every time still feels like the first. Running hot, levels smoking, isolator working over time. You think you know dance music? Think again.

Parrish's debut on the RA Podcast is a milestone for the series, one we've sought for over 15 years. So it was only right that Theo led off our 1000th celebrations. Recorded live at fabric last December as part of RA's party with the London club for their 25th anniversary, this three-hour segment documents the crescendo of his eight-hour marathon. 

The Detroit legend doesn't release mixes often, and when he does, they're usually studio recordings: think NTS shows, his 100% Detroit edition of DJ-Kicks or classic tapes Body (1997) and Methods of Movement (2000). A capture of the Sound Signature boss on the dancefloor is hard to come by.

Sure, there's galvanising build-ups and crowd-pleasers, but laced throughout a Parrish beatdown are rarities designed to shock the system. In a business dominated by marketing, the vinyl master towers above thanks to a relentless hunger for lustrous melodies, moods and textures of all stripes, which he and he alone can fold into an inspiring and exhilarating joyride.

On RA.1000, blissful reggae precedes new wave disco; '80s R&B morphs into synthy techno; bleepy Chicago jack makes way for a poignant vocal ballad. It's Theo through and through. Once again, he proves that anything and everything is possible with the right records.

@theoparrish @fabric @soundsignaturedetroit @crownruler

Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at https://1000.ra.co

RA.1000 Theo Parrish

The mastermind behind Basic Channel, Hard Wax and Rhythm & Sound doesn't do mixes. For RA.1000, he made an exception.

Trace Mark Ernestus's path, and you trace the evolution of electronic sound itself. The timeline of contemporary Berlin is unimaginable without him. At first, that meant Hard Wax, the crucial hub that shaped the early era of the city's techno revolution. Carl Craig once said it plainly: "Mark was ground zero."

From there, Ernestus never stopped. There's the birth of dub techno and the near-flawless catalogue that followed through Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound. There's his immersion in Senegalese mbalax with Ndagga Rhythm Force. Lately, that means Open Ground the Wuppertal bunker that's letting people hear music as never before.

As part three of RA.1000, Ernestus has kindly supplied his first studio DJ mix. As you might expect, it's technically immaculate, but more than that, it feels like a substantial and generous conduit to one of the world's most vital genres.

Amapiano remains underexplored in music media. Publications like our own are still learning to keep pace with the South African sound's global pull, animating millions across the globe. 

You'll hear the range and richness of the genre across the near two-hour mix, from the gothic, percussive stomp of Caltetonic's "Bambela"  to the devotional glow of GemValleyMusiq's "Something Spiritual."

Through all of this, Ernestus has remained understated. He lets the music speak for him, with a quiet honesty that lies in decades of opening doors—creating the conditions for new sounds and scenes to flourish and carry the culture forward.

@opengroundclub @hardwax 

Find the tracklist and interview at ra.co/podcast/1011. Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at https://1000.ra.co

RA.1000 Mark Ernestus

For RA.1000, DJ Sprinkles' first mix in over a decade is a powerful meditation on the genocide in Gaza.

Dance music often relies on simple narratives: release, escape, unity. But those narratives can often feel inadequate, and even at times, hollow. Or, as Terre Thaemlitz might bluntly put it, just "shitty."

For her first mix in around 15 years, Terre Thaemlitz AKA DJ Sprinkles, challenges us to think differently. "I felt this 1000th podcast should reflect the moment in which it was made," she told us in her Q&A.

And what is this moment? Every day since Israel's 2023 assault on Gaza began, an average of 28 children have been killed. That's an entire classroom, every day, for over 600 days (at the time of writing). It's a staggering figure that only captures a fragment of the listless cruelty imposed on the strip.

Faced with such a genocide, what can music really do? How political can it truly be?  For their RA.1000, Thaemlitz gives us an unflinching rebuke to the idea that music should provide escapism. The mix weaves ambient fragments and jazz passages, woven around samples from Israeli media and the voices of outspoken Jewish critics like Gabor Maté and Norman Finkelstein. 

The result is not just a protest, but a document of our time. For Terre Thaemlitz, music is never just music. Her RA.1000 serves as a reminder that in an age of relentless suffering, the most political act is to reject the illusion of escape, and search for something greater.

Read the interview and find the tracklist at ra.co/podcast/1013. Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at https://1000.ra.co

RA.1000 Terre Thaemlitz / DJ Sprinkles

A live discussion at the Suoni per il Popolo festival in Montreal in June 2025 that was streamed live on Radio AlHara in Palestine. This discussion focuses on various projects, actions and campaign initiatives in Montreal to lift up and support the Palestinian struggle for liberation. There is a particular focus on the role and importance of cultural workers engaging in the struggle here. 

Thank you to Joseph Sannicandro for the technical support in Montreal and to Ibrahim Owais for the technical support in Palestine. 

This panel includes the participation of the following voices:

Tara Alami, writer and organizer with the Palestinian Feminist Collective

Razan AlSalah, filmmaker, educator and member of collectif Regards Palestiniens

Sonya Ben Yahmed, activist, writer and researcher

Jasmin Ghorbani, academic and organizer with Cinema Politica Concordia 

Ehab Lotayef, community activist and poet

Sanaz Sohrabi, artist and researcher of visual culture

Kiva Stimac, artistic director of the Suoni per il Popolo festival 

Zoë Thomas, doctor and musician who will play a live set on violin 

Yasmine, an organizer from the Gaza solidarity encampment at McGill University 

Dominic Marion, of the Make Fuzz Not War project via Tall House Recordings

Aymen from Bikers for Palestine


Palestine solidarity organizing in Montreal - Radio AlHara x Suoni per il Popolo

Kiosk Radio is an online community radio streaming 24/7 from a wooden shack in the heart of Brussels’ historic “Parc Royal”.
More info and music: https://kioskradio.com

Ghost Club w/ DIAN (live) @ Kiosk Radio 13.10.2025

Balonyona, a master geedal player, recorded by Louis Sarno at Yandoumbé in the Central African Republic, 20th August 1992. 

Louis Sarno, a pioneering field recorder, has been recording Bayaka music in the rainforests of the Central African Republic and Republic of Congo since 1985. His ethnographic collection of more than 1000 hours of audio and thousands of images is curated by the Pitt Rivers Museum.

For more information about geedal music, please visit:

http://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/reel2real/index.php/multimedia-film-geedal

For more information about the Louis Sarno archive please visit:

http://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/reel2real/index.php/collections-sarno

Sound Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum project website and blog:

http://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/reel2real/
http://pittrivers-sound.blogspot.co.uk

Balonyona playing geedal (Yandoumbé, Central African Republic, 1992) [1997 21 2 52 A 3]

Since 2012, A Closer Listen has claimed a specialized niche in the music industry: instrumental album reviews!  By concentrating on this above all else (singles, videos, concerts, interviews, lyric albums, announcements), we’ve built a healthy fanbase and a strong reputation.

If music is recorded and nobody listens, does it still make a sound?

Jeremy Young presents “With all our knowable ills, ...” [mix]

acloserlisten

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