Gianni Papa, Author at RadioPeng

Watching Kahil El’Zabar at 229 and thinking of the older musicians: creative music in expansion.

Seniority and the strange acceleration of creativity There's a quiet revolution happening in plain sight: musicians who once embodied youthful rupture now carry their art deeper into age, as a new perspective on creativity. The surface story—legends touring stadiums—is easy to tell. The more interesting truth is internal: as the body slows, the internal listening ear gains momentum; experience pares away the unneeded flourish. What we call "seniority" is not […]

November 13, 2025 42

Avant-Garde

Mary Halvorson – Amaryllis Sextet live in Amsterdam at the BIMHUIS, 7 November 2025

Fasiel and Broz were there from Sicily. Alix and her friend Rocco were fresh from his band's gig in Rotterdam. Costa and I came from London. We arrived in Amsterdam from different European countries, and Mary Halvorson's Amaryllis Sextet was the reason for this end of year reunion trip. My expectations were high. I bought tickets back in June, assuming she wouldn't play London this autumn. I was wrong: she […]

November 9, 2025 61

Ambient

Gianni Papa Listens: Tangerine Dream’s Zeit and the Patience of the Cosmos

Tangerine Dream’s Zeit is a slow, dark, and patient record. It came out in 1972. It is four long pieces. The mood is heavy, quiet, and cosmic. There are almost no rhythms. There are long drones, soft waves, and deep tones. It asks you to listen closely. It rewards you if you do. What listeners say Many fans call Zeit a tough album. They also call it unique and powerful. […]

October 26, 2025 24

Avant-Garde

Musical cellphones in the world

The story begins with songs moving by Bluetooth from one phone to another across the Sahara. Cheap handsets held MP3s on memory cards. People traded tracks in markets, at roadside stalls, and at weddings. Bluetooth was the wire. The phone’s tiny speaker was the radio. This was a music network built by people, not towers. Sahel Sounds listened to that network and became a bridge. The label found the songs […]

October 25, 2025 28

Avant-Garde

Piero Scaruffi: A Life in Knowledge, From Italian Rock Encyclopedias to a Vast Online Archive

Piero Scaruffi (born 1955) is an Italian-American polymath whose work spans cognitive science, artificial intelligence, cultural history, poetry, and, most famously, music criticism. Best known to the public for a sprawling website—often called the “Piero Scaruffi Knowledge Base”—that houses decades of reviews, essays, and syllabi, Scaruffi has also authored multi-volume histories of rock, jazz, and avant-garde music, as well as studies on consciousness, Silicon Valley, and the history of knowledge. […]

October 21, 2025 25

Avant-Garde

Drexciya’s Afrocentric Surrealism and the Re-Centering of US Electro

The Reissues as a Portal Journey of the Deep Sea Dweller (Clone, 2011–2013) is a four-volume reissue series that reintroduces Drexciya’s early EPs, singles, and deep cuts to new listeners while restoring historical context for longtime fans. Far more than archival housekeeping, the series functions as a curated portal into an undersea mythology—Drexciya as a Black Atlantis—which reframes Detroit electro not merely as machine funk but as speculative narrative and […]

October 17, 2025 23

2 5

Jazz

John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme: Recording & Pressings

Recording the suite On December 9, 1964, at Rudy Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs studio, John Coltrane’s classic quartet, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones, tracked the four-part suite in a single, charged evening. Coltrane then explored an alternate “Acknowledgement” the next day with Archie Shepp and Art Davis, but the released album preserves the intimate quartet performance, including small postproduction touches like the doubled chant on “Acknowledgement” and a second […]

October 13, 2025 40 5 2

2 4

Jazz

Bad Brains and the Discipline of Lightning

Bad Brains are a force-field in American music—speed, precision, and spiritual intent fused into a singular continuum that rerouted punk, widened metal, and folded reggae into the hardcore engine. Formed in Washington, D.C., in 1976 as the jazz-fusion outfit Mind Power, the core quartet—Dr. Know (Gary Miller, guitar), Darryl Jenifer (bass), H.R. (Paul Hudson, vocals), and Earl Hudson (drums)—began by studying the intricacies of Return to Forever and Mahavishnu Orchestra. […]

October 7, 2025 21 4 2

Uncategorized

The reclusive psychedelia of Kendra Smith

Kendra Smith’ s musical life reads like a dreamer’s continuum—alchemy and psychedelia braided through underground scenes, whispered departures, and quietly luminous returns. A founding force in the Paisley Underground, Smith co-created The Dream Syndicate in 1981 after a KDVS-era garage apprenticeship, shaping the group’s feedback-kissed minimalism and contributing bass and vocals to The Days of Wine and Roses (1982). Even at that origin point, her voice felt like a compass […]

October 6, 2025 44 5