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Endless Love with RadioPeng

RadioPeng doesn't usually dip into the glossy waters of mainstream pop. Our orbit tends to favor the cosmic, the obscure, the droning, the free-jazz freakouts and the ambient abysses. But every so often, a song comes along so unabashedly human-so universal in its naked sincerity-that it breaks through the firewall. Enter Endless Love (1981): Lionel Richie and Diana Ross's gloriously over-the-top hymn to devotion, a duet so pure it could […]

todayOctober 27, 2025 20 1 2

Avant-Garde

Genesis: The Shape-Shifting Beasts of British Art Rock

Genesis is what happens when a group of posh schoolboys accidentally invent three different genres and then spend the next twenty years trying to outrun themselves. Formed in the late 1960s at Charterhouse School, they started as mild-mannered psychedelic folkies and ended as global pop deities with laser lights, gated drums, and Armani blazers. Along the way, they became a sort of evolutionary chart for British rock itself, one band […]

todayOctober 23, 2025 24

Ambient

Brian Eno: The Man Who Taught Machines to Daydream – Part 2

Welcome to the shimmering, softly pulsing universe of Brian Eno—composer, sonic tinkerer, ambient architect, and possibly an alien trapped in a British man’s body. If you’ve ever heard music that sounded like a ghost whispering in a rain-drenched cathedral and thought, “This slaps,” you may already be under Eno’s spell. Glam Rock’s Most Mysterious Synth Wizard Long before he was ambient royalty, Brian Eno emerged from the art-rock primordial ooze […]

todayOctober 23, 2025 12 1

Avant-Garde

Masks, Mirrors, and a Night at The Cube

So here’s the deal: last night The Cube in Blacksburg wasn’t The Cube at all. It was a wormhole disguised as a black box, a dream-tunnel made of sound and reflections. You walk in, and the air’s already vibrating like it knows something you don’t. Front and center? My friend, Kyle Hutchins. Not just a sax player, an experimentalist sorcerer. A guy who knows the saxophone so well it might […]

todayOctober 3, 2025 97 6 3

Jazz

Jaco Pastorius: The Bright Comet That Burned Too Fast

Some bend the strings; Jaco Pastorius bent the entire instrument. He brought the electric bass out of hiding, stripped the frets off of it, and coaxed it to sing like a Coltrane horn or Mingus' heartbeat. With Weather Report, Joni Mitchell, or just soloing on stage with battered Jazz Bass in tow, he wasn't playing notes—he was painting with thunder. But like so many brilliant comets, Jaco's was turbulent. He […]

todaySeptember 25, 2025 14 3

Jazz

Cosmic Frequencies: Happy Birthday, John Coltrane

Some birthdays are more than just a way of marking time. They are resonant birthdays, vibrating through the center of the universe. And so it is today, for today is saxophonist John Coltrane’s birthday, the man who turned sound into a language for the spirit to speak. His music has always seemed to be some sort of communication from elsewhere. ‘Giant Steps’ dashing across impossible harmonic ground, ‘A Love Supreme’ […]

todaySeptember 23, 2025 21 2 2

Jazz

Goodbye, O Bruxo: Hermeto Pascoal, The Mad Sorcerer of Sound

Farewell to Hermeto (1936–2025) Hermeto Pascoal, Brazil’s beloved mago maluco (“mad wizard”), finally traded in his flute, pots, pans, pig squeals, and teapots for the Great Gig in the Sky on September 13, 2025, at the age of 89. Somewhere, the birds, frogs, and bus brakes of Rio are throwing a jam session in his honor — and you can bet RadioPeng would’ve been there with a mic to capture […]

todaySeptember 15, 2025 16 2 2

Avant-Garde

Grateful for Biggie at 5 Points Roanoke — A Surprising Mashup That Works

Last night at 5 Points Music Sanctuary in Roanoke, I saw Grateful for Biggie, and here’s the thing: I’ve never been a fan of The Notorious B.I.G. or The Grateful Dead. No old CDs, no t-shirts, not even a playlist. I went mostly out of curiosity, expecting to leave with a shrug and a “well, that was different.” Instead, I walked out smiling. The whole idea seems like something a […]

todayAugust 10, 2025 33 4 2

Avant-Garde

Henry Flynt: Appalachian Noise, Conceptual Fire

On the far edge of art, thought, and sonic rebellion stands Henry Flynt-a hillbilly fiddler, philosopher-logician, and avant-garde saboteur of Western culture. Long before the term "concept art" was gallery-ready, Flynt coined it as a critique, not a commodity. He studied under Quine at Harvard, jammed with La Monte Young, and publicly protested the "serious music" establishment by calling Stockhausen a cultural imperialist. Yes, really. But Flynt didn't just critique. […]

todayJuly 31, 2025 28 2

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