Although I had heard of Floating Points, the project of London-based musician Sam Shepherd, it was the 2021 album Promises – made in collaboration with Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra – that captured my attention, and I wrote about it in the End Rant ("One Degree") of Tape Op#160. Through mutual friends, Stella Mozgawa [Tape Op#169] and Suzanne Ciani [#148], I met Sam a few years ago, and we ended up doing some cycling and...
Interviews
Hidden Musics
By Ian Brennan
By 2014, I'd already been transitioning for more than five years from working in traditional studios to almost exclusively doing field recordings overseas. As a result, I'd had some success with groups like Tinariwen, Malawi Mouse Boys, and The Good Ones. At that point, the co-founder of Glitterbeat Records, Chris Eckman, reached out about a Hidden Musics series that he was starting for his label, which was just a year old. Chris and I shared similar sensibilities of embracing rawness and edge, having both started releasing records independently on the US West Coast in the late 1980s. Chris' band, The Walkabouts, had been one of the early artists on Sub Pop Records. In particular, Chris and I were both averse to the slick, performative, "world music" sheen. Now, more than a dozen releases later, the latest Hidden Musics edition comes from Oman. Recorded prior to the 2026 Iran war, this new album has acquired added and...
