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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 83 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 15 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 13 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 32 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 23 2

Ambient

Les Rallizes Dénudés: The Loudest Band You’ve (Sort Of) Heard Of – And Why Google Image Search Is a Trap

Let's talk about Les Rallizes Dénudés - Japan's most enigmatic, ear-melting psych-rock band and possibly the only musical group whose name doubles as a browser history liability. If you're not familiar, Les Rallizes Dénudés (pronounced something like "leh ra-LEEZE deh-noo-DAY," but let's be honest, we're all just mumbling it differently and nodding) were a Japanese avant-garde noise-rock band formed in the late '60s. They didn't record albums in the traditional […]

todayJuly 21, 2025 241 3 2

Folk

“Canción Mixteca”: A Lament That Crosses Borders (and Breaks Hearts)

In Wim Wenders’ 1984 film Paris, Texas, one of the most affecting moments is non-verbal. Ry Cooder’s sparse slide guitar shimmers in the American desert. A man’s voice rises to meet it, a song that has no name, at least for the audience. As it goes on, the film’s absent father, Travis (Harry Dean Stanton), kneels and looks skyward, as if the sound of that voice had summoned it. “Canción Mixteca” (written in 1915 […]

todayJuly 16, 2025 64 3 2

General

Lucio Dalla: The Astronaut Who Played Clarinet in the Alley

Lucio Dalla looked like your eccentric uncle—the one who reads Rimbaud in dialect and believes jellyfish are psychic. He wore fisherman’s caps and round glasses like he was both blind prophet and jazz pirate. But behind that disarming appearance was one of Italy’s most unclassifiable musical minds: part chanson, part prog, part street ballad, part prayer. He didn’t write songs. He built them like strange, little cities—populated with time travelers, […]

todayJuly 10, 2025 17

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