Mixtape: The Bay Area’s Inventive Experimental Musicians
Download: Mixtape: The Bay Area's Inventive Experimental Musicians (Podcast #432) This episode first ran on KQED.org. A wide range of experimental musicians are pushing Bay Area music in inventive directions, deploying sound artistry to craft exciting new electronic, rock, punk and hip hop compositions. This mixtape features ten local experimental artists, ranging from the loud, abrasive guitar contortions of Cube, to warmer ambient sounds from Cruel Diagonals and Gonzalez & Reinhardt. The last of those acts is a new collaboration between two longtime musicians, manifesting drones via synthesizers and the tambura, an Uzbek string instrument. Unsurprisingly, there are a number [...]
Cruel Diagonals preps debut LP of experimental compositions
Oakland's Megan Mitchell wears many musical hats, as a field recorder and audio archivist, as the publisher of the Many Many Women index of women/trans/non-binary composers, as a DJ, and as a musician recording and performing as Cruel Diagonals. Mitchell's debut Cruel Diagonals LP, Disambiguation, comes out in July, and you can listen to a first preview, "Render Arcane," below. As you'll hear on the song, the artist adeptly draws from ambient and experimental forms to create a rhythmic, captivating composition. Disambiguation by Cruel Diagonals Disambiguation comes out on Drawing Room Records on July 13, 2018.