Late Junction

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners.

As the final touches are put on the new Bauhaus Museum in Weimar, Verity Sharp marks the centenary of the art school founded by Walter Gropius.

She plays new music by Detroit hip hop producer Quelle Chris, and by Rozi Plain, who conceived her album in an old dentist’s studio, an RAF base in Suffolk and whilst playing bass on tour with This Is The Kit.

There are also tracks by Indian classical musician Mohi Bahauddin who plays the rudra veena, and composer Dobrinka Tabakova.

Produced by Freya Hellier.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Verity Sharp marks the centenary of the Weimar art school.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Where the botanical meets the musically experimental, with Max Reinhardt.

Featured among the blooming wonderful specimens: hip hop star Kojey Radical soundtracks the horticultural neural networks of visual artist Hito Steyerl; composer-improviser Lars Gaugaard leads the listener on a sensory journey; Earthen Sea’s new album ‘Grass And Trees’ yields a fantastic crop of reductionist rhythmic music; Lisa Knapp sings atmospheric folk; Laura Cannell teases minimalist chamber sounds out of the land and sky; recorder player Genevieve Lacey combines with the environment to create a ‘listening garden’; and the tired Earth creaks in a durational opera for the Anthropocene by Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė and Lina Lapelytė.

Plus recorded highlights from Lubomyr Melnyk’s set at the boutique festival Sea Change, and a classic track by keen gardener Cosey Fanni Tutti, ahead of the mixtape that she has cultivated for tomorrow night’s programme.

Produced by Jack Howson.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Where the botanical meets the musically experimental, with Max Reinhardt.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Exotic and familiar sounds combine in the latest record by the ever-evolving Colorado collective Biota who thrive on walking the line between ambiguity and transparency. The traditional koto playing of Kōhei Amada gets a radical reworking by the producer Sugai Ken who transforms the sonic palette whilst retaining small motifs. French composer and producer David Chalmin, who’s worked with anyone and everyone from Madonna to Bryce Dessner, releases his first electronic album of ambient dynamism. Interjecting with words of encouragement and helpful facts is Nick Luscombe, inviting you to share an exciting sonic history.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3

Exotic and familiar sounds, radical reworks and ambient dynamism, with Nick Luscombe.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Lubomyr Melnyk’s continuous, cascading style of composing revels in the rich harmonic possibilities of the piano. Verity previews the ‘prophet of the piano’s’ new album released to mark his 70th birthday.

More new music comes courtesy of prolific Spanish producer and composer Raül Refree, and Yama Warashi, the Bristol based brainchild of Japanese artist and musician Yoshino Shigihara.

Elsewhere on the programme, Sarah Angliss evokes a London tree canopy using recorder and electronics, and Hindustani music meets the harpsichord in William Hamilton Bird’s 18th century transcriptions of traditional Indian music.

Produced by Freya Hellier for Reduced Listening.

Verity Sharp presents new music by Lubomyr Melnyk.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

As Radio 3’s Along the River week continues, Late Junction brings experimental musicians together at the BBC’s Maida Vale studios, to improvise around graphic scores of English rivers.

Kelly Jayne Jones is a Manchester-based artist incorporating music and sound alongside performance art. She has an interest in geology and brings rocks with her into the studio to use as a sound source. Fellow North-wester and songwriter Sam McCloughlin’s interest in water is long-standing: he co-created a 2012 album on the Folklore Tapes label, devoted to rivers and bodies of water in Devon. He adopts a DIY, cut-and-paste aesthetic and plays homemade instruments including a river-powered harp. And Maria Rossi is a Finnish electronic and vocal artist based in Glasgow. Her use of found sounds explains her stage name Cucina Povera, a reference to the Italian style of cooking that makes use of whatever ingredients are available.

Produced by Chris Elcombe.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

A collaboration session featuring Kelly Jayne Jones, Sam McLoughlin and Cucina Povera.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

As Radio 3’s Along the River week continues, Late Junction brings experimental musicians together at the BBC’s Maida Vale studios, to improvise around graphic scores of British rivers.

Kelly Jayne Jones is a Manchester-based artist incorporating music and sound alongside performance art. She has an interest in geology and brings rocks with her into the studio to use as a sound source. Fellow North-wester and songwriter Sam McCloughlin’s interest in water is long-standing: he co-created a 2012 album on the Folklore Tapes label, devoted to rivers and bodies of water in Devon. He adopts a DIY, cut-and-paste aesthetic and plays homemade instruments including a river-powered harp. And Maria Rossi is a Finnish electronic and vocal artist based in Glasgow. Her use of found sounds explains her stage name Cucina Povera, a reference to the Italian style of cooking that makes use of whatever ingredients are available.

Produced by Chris Elcombe.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Music that’s upstream, downstream but rarely mainstream.

As part of Radio 3’s Along the River week, composer and sound artist Annea Lockwood talks about her fascination with these bodies of water. She shares favourite field recordings that have inspired her own work making sound maps of the Danube, Hudson and Housatonic. And she introduces her tribute to Pauline Oliveros: a graphic-score piece modelled on the bayous around Houston.

Plus, Max Reinhardt guides us down a river of his own making - a mini-mix of tracks flowing from source to estuary along a musical approach that has evolved over time.

Produced by Chris Elcombe.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Max Reinhardt with composer Annea Lockwood's river inspirations.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe pulls a rare Japanese ambient record out of the bag from the synth duo Inoyama whose 1983 album Danzindan-Pojidon was way ahead of its time. Italian sound artist and composer Alessandra Eramo presents her vocal reflections on the spirituality of the Mediterranean Sea and the American indie rock singer Anna Domino has re-recorded and reversioned her 30-year old hit single Lake.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Nick Luscombe pulls a rare Japanese ambient record out of the bag.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Max Reinhardt assembles an alternative string quartet for the latest Late Junction collaboration session. The players, from four distinct traditions, come together for one day only in the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios to create musical magic.

Our awesome foursome features: virtuoso scholar of Chinese traditional music Cheng Yu playing the guqin, a seven-stringed zither, and the pipa, a four-stringed lute; Sam Underwood, the instrument inventor and purveyor of ‘doom tuba’, with a new electroacoustic string contraption designed especially for this session; master fiddler Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh on his ten-stringed hardanger d’amore; and rising jazz star Elliot Galvin introducing his prepared piano expertise into the mix.

Elsewhere in the programme Max plays a track from the new album by cellist-singer Ayanna Witter-Johnson, and some classic Bessie Smith, who was born 125 years ago this week and went on to become “Empress of the Blues”.

Produced by Jack Howson.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Max presents Elliot Galvin, Caoimhin O Raghallaigh, Sam Underwood and Cheng Yu in session.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Prick up your ears, loosen those hips, move your feet, open up your mind. Tonight Max Reinhardt has an excellent selection of songs and pieces that resonate with, or respond and relate to, the human body.

American singer-bassist Esperanza Spalding wants to connect you more closely to individual body parts through her contemporary pop songs; Rotherham raver Rian Treanor explores the loss of control of bodily movements with new album ATAXIA; Bristol’s avant-garde ambient music-maker Sam Kidel deconstructs the individuality of the human voice box, and the competency of voice recognition software; and, finally, cult music and performance art collective Throbbing Gristle fill up your adrenal glands.

Produced by Jack Howson.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Songs and pieces that resonate with, or respond and relate to, the human body.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Vicki Bennett joins Anne Hilde Neset to share a couple of her current favourite tracks. Vicki is a presenter on the American independent radio station for outsider music WFMU, she also makes audio-visual collages using found footage to give a dark witty view on popular culture under the moniker People Like Us.

Plus music inspired by sightseeing from the Japanese avant-pop stalwart Haruomi Hosono; a sensational sextet featuring pianist Mal Waldron and saxophonist Eric Dolphy recorded in 1961 and music from The Midnight Hour - the duo responsible for the deep, soulful soundtrack to the Luke Cage hit TV series.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell for Reduced Listening.

Vicki Bennett from WFMU and People Like Us shares her current favourite tracks.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Half a tonne of Double Bell and percussive textures, with Verity Sharp.

Attention-grabbing percussion playing from Sō Percussion contrasts with the soft, deep sound of the giant bell which pervades Harmonic Canon, a new work by composer Dominic Murcott.

Verity also samples the latest release by Lau member Kris Drever, features a new recording of piano music by the Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi and plays a track from Liam Byrne, a viola da gamba player who blurs the lines between old and new.

Produced by Freya Hellier.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Half a tonne of Double Bell and percussive textures, with Verity Sharp.

Attention-grabbing percussion playing from Sō Percussion contrasts with the soft, deep sound of the giant bell which pervades Harmonic Canon, a new work by composer Dominic Murcott.

Verity also samples the latest release by Lau member Kris Drever, features a new recording of piano music by the Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi and plays a track from Liam Byrne, a viola da gamba player who blurs the lines between old and new.

Produced by Freya Hellier.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Half a tonne of Double Bell and percussive textures, with Verity Sharp.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Anne Hilde Neset returns to the presenter chair with music from Eli Kezler, a percussionist that Oneohtrix Point Never describes as bacterial. He says “Eli’s able to parallax into very small, very acute, very specific relationships between percussive textures. It’s beyond just being a drummer—he’s a world-building percussionist.” Plus recordings of indigenous music made in 1955 on a journey overland in a milk delivery van, from France to India by Bengali radio producer Deben Bhattacharya; the voice of Michele Mercure swells from the substratum of 1980s electronic music and a forgotten favourite by Prince from his 1983 album Piano & Microphone.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell for Reduced Listening.

Eli Kezler's small, specific, bacterial percussion, and music from a road trip to Calcutta

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Presenter Max Reinhardt invites you to enter the intensely brilliant mind of multi-disciplinary artist Benedict Drew.

Based currently in Whitstable and Margate, Benedict Drew has a history in electronic and improvised music, though he primarily works with video, sculpture, and sound to create installations that exists as “alternative realities”. Tonight he has thirty minutes of the programme to create and curate a bespoke audio reality, through his Late Junction Mixtape. Thematically the mix explores notions of the ocean, and the tracks come together to create something simultaneously sublime and frightening. Featured artists include Suzanne Ciani, Delia Derbyshire and Laurie Spiegel, as well as several of Drew’s own collaborators, such as Angharad Davies and Helena Gough.

Produced by Jack Howson.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Presenter Max Reinhardt invites you to enter the mind of artist Benedict Drew.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Max Reinhardt takes a trip around the outer edges of experimental music. The genre-defying improvising cellist Okkyung Lee pairs up with Ellen Fullman and her Long String Instrument - 100ft strings of taught stainless steel in a Swedish bakery for a one-off live performance. A new Brazilian big band from bassist Itibere Zwarg, a long standing collaborator with Hermeto Pascoal, brings joy and colour to the end of January. And some bonus material from Trojan label stalwarts The Pioneers and a double reissue of their late 1960s albums Long Shot and Battle of the Giants.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell for Reduced Listening.

Max Reinhardt takes a trip around the outer edges of experimental music

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Verity Sharp presents new music from the New Zealand singer-songwriter Aldous Harding, plus experimental music from Burma and contemporary Norwegian jazz. There’s also a look ahead to May Day, through the “obscure, tense and delicate” sound-world of artist Alice Kemp.

Produced by Steven Rajam.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Experimental Burmese song, Norwegian jazz and Aldous Harding.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe casts his musical net far and wide. Tonight’s selections include newly reissued Cameroonian disco-funk from Felixson Ngasia and The Survivals, and a new compilation that spotlights the experimental electronic/sound art scene in present-day Ukraine.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Nick Luscombe shares tracks from far and wide.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe celebrates the life and work of electroacoustic music pioneer Luc Ferrari on what would have been his 90th birthday. Plus, music from Jim O'Rourke, Swiss composer Walter Feldmann and the vitamin-packed sonic delights of the Vegetable Orchestra.

Produced by Steven Rajam for Reduced Listening.

Nick Luscombe celebrates the life and work of electro-acoustic music pioneer Luc Ferrari.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Verity Sharp is back in the presenting seat with a playlist that exists within the intersection of music, sound and art.

Featured artists tonight include: Tania Caroline Chen, who specialises in improvising on piano and gadgets, showcasing her circuit-bent radio; Jacob Samuel, turning prosaic recorded conversations into performance art; Holly Herndon, operating at the nexus of technological evolution, with her new album that is a collaboration with her own ‘A.I. baby’; and composer Andrew Hamilton, setting text from abstract painter Ad Reinhardt to create ‘music for people who like art’.

Produced by Jack Howson.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Verity Sharp with a playlist that exists within the intersection of music, sound and art.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe is in the presenting seat with a playlist that exists within the intersection of music, sound, and art.

Featured artists tonight include: Tania Caroline Chen, who specialises in improvising on piano and gadgets, showcasing her circuit-bent radio; Jacob Samuel, turning prosaic recorded conversations into performance art; Holly Herndon, operating at the nexus of technological evolution, with her new album that is a collaboration with her own ‘A.I. baby’; and composer Andrew Hamilton, setting text from abstract painter Ad Reinhardt to create ‘music for people who like art’.

Produced by Jack Howson.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Nick Luscombe with a playlist that exists within the intersection of music, sound and art.

Nick Luscombe selects from musical waters deep and wide.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Max Reinhardt hosts, with an exclusive mixtape from legendary performance artist and avant-garde musician Cosey Fanni Tutti. She has a thirty-minute window in the programme to set the mood music, with selections including Coil, Gazelle Twin, and Jefferson Airplane.

Born in Hull in 1951, Cosey Fanni Tutti began her career there in 1969, appearing in art performances, mail art exhibitions, and musical improvisations. In the seventies she brought her experience of sex magazines and films, glamour modelling, and striptease into her performance art. Her infamous exhibition 'Prostitution' at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 1976 prompted walkouts and provoked debate in parliament. The same year, Cosey founded influential industrial music group Throbbing Gristle with Genesis P-Orridge, Peter Christopherson and Chris Carter, who is Cosey’s partner and lifetime collaborator.

Cosey Fanni Tutti’s continuing individual art and music practice takes its place alongside her work with Carter, the enduring, evolving legacy of Throbbing Gristle.

Produced by Jack Howson.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Max Reinhardt hosts, and the legendary Cosey Fanni Tutti compiles an exclusive mixtape.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Late Junction is back for another week of memorable programmes, and the song selections tonight all evoke mysterious, magical memory experiences and sensations: déjà vu, jamais vu, presque vu, and more …

Experience new songs you’ll swear you’ve heard before. Expect intuitive reversions, reworks, and remixes. Explore the famous case of George Harrison’s cryptomnesia. Expose yourself to the power of genetic memory through the music of Timothy Leary and Hand Habits (a.k.a. Meg Duffy).

Produced by Jack Howson.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Songs to evoke memory experiences and sensations: deja vu, jamais vu, and presque vu.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe flies through the jetstream of forward-thinking music. Featuring granular synth sounds from the Iranian-German duo Arovane and Porya Hatami and a reversioning of material from an archive of Appalachian chamber folk by the sound artist Brian Harnetty. Plus, the son of two classical musicians, C Duncan, releases a new album of dreamy alt-pop arrangements.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Nick Luscombe with Iranian sound art, Appalachian chamber folk and Scottish alt-pop.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe tunes his specialist ear to the latest experimental electronic sounds. Featuring emerging Irish producer mcconville, tight edits and bouncy beats from Matmos’ new album devoted to our plastic consumption habit and Stefan Goldmann deconstructs the core parameters of techno.

Breaking up the beats are tracks by British sound artist Viv Corringham who explores people's special relationship with familiar places and traditional Japanese folk meets Caribbean rhythms in the Tokyo based collective Minyo Crusaders.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3

Nick Luscombe hunts down the latest experimental electronic sounds.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Verity Sharp presents electronic visions of the landscapes of England and Japan – as well as brand-new Polish free jazz. And there’s a rare performance of John Cage’s Bacchanale for prepared piano by the late giant of French music, Michel Legrand.

Produced by Steven Rajam.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Verity Sharp with electronic visions of England and Japan.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Max Reinhardt presents a mixtape from Swedish musician, composer and sound artist Ellen Arkbro.

In her own words, the music that Arkbro makes is “very slow”, combining both acoustic traditional instruments and algorithmic sound synthesis to create new sonic textures.

Arkbro has been musically active since early childhood, singing in choirs every day as a youth. While studying at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, she started working more with synthesizers, exploring spatiality and psycho-acoustics.

In 2017, Arkbro released her LP “for organ and brass”, which she wrote specifically for the Sherer-Orgel organ in St. Stephen’s Church in Germany. That same year, she presented a work at the Stockholm Music Hall that lasted 26 days.

Her upcoming release “Chords” will involve organ, guitar and synthesis and explore textural and spatial qualities of harmonic sound.

Her mixtape features music that has inspired and shaped her as an artist, embodying the timeless and complex simplicity that she aims for in her own work, from Robert Wyatt and Arthur Russell to traditional Laotian field recordings and French Baroque harpsichords.

Produced by Katie Callin.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Max Reinhardt with a mixtape by Swedish composer Ellen Arkbro.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Music that departs from normality, with Verity Sharp.

London-based fine artist Li Yilei uses ‘found planetary sounds’ - radio signals from Venus, Uranus and Neptune - alongside synths and guitars. Multi-instrumentalist Anna Webber lets us into a world in which time is twisted and remoulded - a homage to some of the great 20th-century classical percussion music, filtered through the ears of some of New York’s top improvisers.

Plus, ‘otherworldly rhythm and blues’ from Edinburgh singer Callum Easter, a previously unreleased demo track from 70s Brazilian funk legends Azymuth, and solo violin music with reverb on composer Edmund Finnis’s debut album.

Produced by Chris Elcombe.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Verity Sharp shares sound art, Brazilian funk and avant-jazz.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Music that departs from normality, with Verity Sharp.

London-based fine artist Li Yilei uses ‘found planetary sounds’ - radio signals from Venus, Uranus and Neptune - alongside synths and guitars. Multi-instrumentalist Anna Webber lets us into a world in which time is twisted and remoulded - a homage to some of the great 20th-century classical percussion music, filtered through the ears of some of New York’s top improvisers.

Plus, ‘otherworldly rhythm and blues’ from Edinburgh singer Callum Easter, and solo violin music with reverb on composer Edmund Finnis’s debut album.

Produced by Chris Elcombe.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Verity Sharp shares sound art, solo violin and avant-jazz.

Shattering musical moulds with Verity Sharp.

Ostraca are fragments of ancient pottery. Irish composer Roger Doyle uses them as inspiration for his new work, breaking his opera into shards that he puts through a MIDI keyboard and relayers.

More innovation from Cologne’s Andreas O. Hirsch, who has developed the carbophone, an electroacoustic instrument inspired by thumb pianos such as the kalimba and mbira. The promenade of an octopus and a shipwrecked robot are among the musical vignettes to emerge on his new album.

And Verity picks music from a less fractured lineage, from Irish fiddler Martin Hayes.

Produced by Chris Elcombe for Reduced Listening.

Verity Sharp shatters the musical moulds

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Max Reinhardt surfs the cutting edge of adventurous music, old and new. Tonight’s show features freeform punk from 1980s Portland band Smegma, and jazz cornettist Ben LaMar Gay presents his debut public release after making seven albums that were only shared privately between friends and family. Max also plays a track called Music For 18 Hairdressers, a nod to Steve Reich’s minimalist masterwork Music for 18 Musicians.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell for Reduced Listening.

Max Reinhardt surfs the cutting edge of adventurous music, old and new.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Max Reinhardt gets familiar with songs that reflect on friendship and family. Aretha Franklin offers you a compassionate gesture, plus a posthumous collection of previously unreleased songs by American folk singer Townes van Zandt.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Max Reinhardt gets familiar with songs that reflect on friendship and family.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Max Reinhardt gets familiar with songs that reflect on friendship and family, including a simultaneously amiable and icily alienating piece concerning a friendly mineral by Norwegian composer Hilde Marie Holsen. Aretha Franklin offers you a compassionate gesture, plus a posthumous collection of previously unreleased songs by American folk singer Townes van Zandt.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Verity previews the debut solo album from stunning young Gaelic piper Brighde Chaimbeul from the Isle of Skye. Californian composer Julia Holter features bagpipes on her lush new album, Aviary, we’ll hear a track to mark Holter’s UK tour.

Also on the show is a preview of multi-instrumentalist Peter Broderick’s new album on Erased Tapes, music from Lone Taxidermist and an early recording from blues legend Mississippi John Hurt.

Produced by Freya Hellier for Reduced Listening.

Verity Sharp with music from Skye to LA.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe with sounds from the outer reaches.

Sound artist Félix Blume weaves an otherworldly tapestry from recordings of boat horns in Piraeus, Athens. And there’s a cosmic undertone to free-rock trio Mako Sica’s collaboration with legendary percussionist Hamid Drake.

Plus, a new remix of work created by early German minimalist Ernstalbrecht Stiebler. And the songs of the Wayuu people of northern Colombia underscore a new film about the origins of the drug trade in the country.

Produced by Chris Elcombe.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Nick Luscombe with cosmic collaborations from the outer reaches.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

For Christmas week, Late Junction is guest edited and presented by comedian and music fanatic Stewart Lee.

Lee has a long-standing fascination with improvised music, choosing guitarist Derek Bailey as incidental music for his shows, and exploring the parallels with comedy through collaborations with the likes of Steve Beresford and Tania Chen.

From his time spent in record shops as a teenager, to more recent work moonlighting as a music critic, Lee has built up a deep collection, with post-punk and folk traditions also well represented.

And folk is where his first guest choice of the week comes in: musician Richard Dawson is one of the leading lights of the British scene, through work under his own name and in collaboration with Rhodri Davies as Hen Ogledd. Though rooted in the music of his native north-east, Dawson’s influences include psychedelia, art-rock and the Sufi tradition. He brings in some tracks from his own extensive music library to share with Stewart.

Produced by Chris Elcombe for Reduced Listening.

A Christmas week of Late Junction specials begins.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Stewart Lee’s Christmas stint as guest editor continues as he’s joined by fellow comedian and left-field music fan Tim Key.

As a Russian graduate, Key often features unusual Soviet-era music in his live shows, from Vyacheslav Mescherin’s Ensemble of Electronic Musical Instruments, to composer Mikael Tariverdiev, a recent discovery that can be heard in his latest show ‘Megadate’.

Key brings in some of his most treasured tracks; Lee introduces him to some of his own collection too.

Produced by Chris Elcombe for Reduced Listening.

Two comedians share their passions for left-field music.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Max Reinhardt presents Japanese vocalist Hatis Noit and producer Kevin Richard Martin, aka The Bug, in an exclusive Late Junction collaboration session.

Hatis Noit grew up in the remote surroundings of Shiretoko National Park on the Northern island of Japan. Since moving to London she has been signed to Erased Tapes and her ethereal voice combines influences of Buddhist chants, Bulgarian choirs and the Japanese Gagaku Orchestra.

Over the last 20 years Kevin Richard Martin has moved between jazzcore, industrial hip hop, dub, noise and electronics to create shifting atmospheres with a love for the low end. He’s worked under several monikers but is perhaps most widely known as The Bug and as part of the group King Midas Sound.

Also in the show, Max celebrates the 10th anniversary of Brainfeeder, the independent label from L.A. founded by Flying Lotus, and downtempo instrumental hip hop by Muqata’a from Palestine.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell for Reduced Listening.

Max Reinhardt presents vocalist Hatis Noit & Kevin Richard Martin, aka The Bug, in session

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe wants you to please don your headphones for tonight’s show, which features a binaural mixtape by the experimental Los Angeles duo Lucky Dragons.

Binaural sound is immersive spatial audio that is intended to be experienced through headphones. In other words, the headphone listener gets a richer sense of space, allowing for a more exciting experience. Binaural techniques simulate the hearing cues created by acoustic interaction between our bodies and the environment around us.

Luke Fischbeck and Sarah Rara formed Lucky Dragons, their excellent and influential art, music, and research project, in 1999. Tonight they have a thirty-minute window in the programme to explore true binaural sound through a mix that features the work of Alvin Lucier, Kate Moore, and Hildegard Westerkamp.

For the rest of the time, Nick Luscombe will be selecting his favourite tracks that truly come alive through a pair of headphones. However, even if you can’t wear a pair, our programme will still be enjoyable!

Produced by Jack Howson for Reduced Listening.

Nick Luscombe wants you to don your headphones for a binaural mix by LA duo Lucky Dragons.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Verity Sharp shares a symbol of reconciliation – Armenian duduk player Varden Hovanissian and Turkish saz of Emre Gültekin, exploring links between languages, histories and musical traditions. Plus, vocalist Victoria Hanna who presents Hebrew texts and prayers in new ways, integrating techniques from theatre and popular music; and a new release of French-Cuban jazz.

Produced by Chris Elcombe for Reduced Listening.

Verity Sharp with music from across the spectrum.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Max Reinhardt presents a pulsing, genre-splicing mixtape from Hamburg techno legend, the musician and DJ Helena Hauff.

An expert in the art of the mix, Helena became obsessed with DJing in her teens after a particularly life-changing night at a techno club, and soon became a resident at Hamburg’s notorious basement bar the Golden Pudel. Alongside her mixing, she began to make live tracks with vintage synths and drum machines.

It was there that she met Darren Cunningham aka Actress, and through him released her first EP on Ninja Tune in 2013. Two years later, she released her debut full-length album, Discreet Desires, named one of Rolling Stones magazine’s top 20 electronic albums of that year. Her latest release Qualm was unapologetically raw, described by her as the product of “trying to create something powerful without using too many instruments and layers”.

Over the past five years, she’s become one of the most sought after and respected selectors, touring the world with expertly curated DJ sets spanning acid, electro, EBM, techno and post punk and headlining festivals like Sonar and Dekmantel.

Helena’s mixtape reflects her love of crate digging, from ‘70s library music and Yusef Lateef to psychedelic stoner rock and Meredith Monk, and of course a good dose of techno and leftfield electro.

Produced by Katie Callin for Reduced Listening.

A mixtape from Hamburg techno legend, musician and DJ Helena Hauff

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Jennifer Lucy Allan speaks to jazz saxophonist, flautist, bandleader and composer Henry Threadgill about his musical journey, and the mixtape he has crafted for the show.

One of only three jazz artists to have won a Pulitzer Prize, Threadgill has been called ‘perhaps the most important jazz composer of his generation’ by The New York Times.

He was born in Chicago in 1944, and after dabbling in percussion and clarinet he took up the sax aged 16. Soon after, he joined Muhal Richard Abrams’ Experimental Band, which later expanded into the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).

For over forty years, he has been celebrated as one of the most forward-thinking composers and multi-instrumentalists in American music. Throughout his career he has led critically acclaimed ensembles, including the 1970s trio AIR (Artists In Residence) with fellow AACM members, the Henry Threadgill Sextett and the boundary-pushing Very Very Circus. His longest running band and now primary music-making vehicle is Zooid, the Pulitzer-Prize winning ensemble with which he continues his explorations into improvisations and polyphony.

For this Late Junction mixtape, Threadgill guides us through some of his musical inspirations, from Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman, to Edgard Varèse and James Joyce.

Produced by Katie Callin and Jack Howson.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Pulitzer Prize-winning musician Henry Threadgill in conversation with Jennifer Lucy Allan.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Anne Hilde presents Hindustani classical music by Z.M. Dagar, who as a 19th generation Dhrupad musician is part of an ancient tradition of singing spiritual, heroic, thoughtful and virtuous songs in praise of Hindu deities; there’s experiments in drone, tone and flow by the avant-garde, guitar-drums duo Black Spirituals and a song for insane times by Kevin Ayers from his whimsical solo album Joy of a Toy.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell for Reduced Listening.

Anne Hilde presents ZM Dagar's Hindustani classical music and a song for insane times

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Jennifer Lucy Allan talks to experimental vocalist Elaine Mitchener about the work of jazz singer and vocal innovator Jeanne Lee, and the vocal music of the black avant-garde, ahead of Mitchener’s forthcoming performance of her work.

Taking this as a jumping off point, we dig into the history of the voice in experimental music and its potential to carry raw emotion or turn text into pure sound. Expect guttural cries of pain, hums of pleasure and the joy of social singing, from sound poetry at Fylkingen in Sweden, to the extended vocal techniques of Joan La Barbara, through astral jazz with Michael White, and how Japanese folk singer Kan Mikami can bring on the blues, even if you do not speak Japanese.

Produced by Alannah Chance.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Elaine Mitchener talks about the legacy of obscure composer and jazz vocalist Jeanne Lee.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Three singular voices combine in the latest Late Junction collaboration session from the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios. These artists haven’t played together before, but have a day to create something brand new together.

Jenny Moore is a singer, composer, drummer, musical director, and live artist. Raised in Winnipeg, Canada, she moved to the UK in 2007 to study art and her current projects include Charismatic Megafauna, F*Choir, and Mystic Business. Her work has been described as “psycho-sexual choral-punk”.

Merlin Nova is a radiophonic producer as well as occasional vocalist and keys player for cult rock band This Is Not This Heat. Her debut EP ‘Protect Your Flame’ - an explosion of song, sound, energy, and movement - was released in March 2018. She lives and works in London.

Ingrid Plum, who trained as an opera singer, currently combines sound art, contemporary classical, and folk music in her work. Her extended vocal techniques weave around field recordings and electronics to create layered soundscapes. Born in Copenhagen, she is currently based in Brighton.

But that is not all, oh no that is not all. Max plays Pauline Oliveros’ geometrically spaced piece for surround sound and there’s Ethiopian music with roots going back to the 13th Century from singer Ustad Saami.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell for Reduced Listening.

A collaboration session between three vocalists presented by Max Reinhardt.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Co-founder of The Quietus magazine John Doran has been travelling the length and breadth of the country in search of the musicians of New Weird Britain, an underground movement of music in the margins that favours one-off art happenings that are improvised, shocking and surreal. Artists of all stripes in Britain have been driven out of city centres by soaring rent prices, hit hard by cuts in arts funding and dwindling revenues from the digital economy. But untethered from the prospect of making any money and fueled by the current political crisis, a band of musicians are splintering away from convention to stage unrepeatable performances that stand in diametric opposition to austerity.

Ahead of his four-part Radio 4 series on the subject, John talks Max Reinhardt through the bands he discovered on his trip and the heritage of British esoteric music made in times of unrest.

Elsewhere Max plays music by CukoO, a musician based in the west country who makes organic dance music for school children, and languid psychedelia from Vanishing Twin’s latest album.

Produced by Alannah Chance.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

John Doran joins Max Reinhardt to explore the music of New Weird Britain.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe presents a mixtape by writer and musician Kate Tempest.

First emerging as a spoken-word artist at open-mic nights around the start of this century, Tempest has gone on to write for theatre and has published award-winning poetry and a bestselling novel. In recent years, her musical work has come more to the fore, and she has twice been nominated for the Mercury Prize.

This month sees the release of her third album, The Book of Traps and Lessons, an ode to England and love. To mark this, Tempest curates a mixtape of tracks that she loves, cutting across dancehall, contemporary gospel, spoken-word, ambient composition and new Afrobeat sounds from her native London.

Produced by Chris Elcombe.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Nick Luscombe presents a mixtape by writer and musician Kate Tempest.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe presents extended highlights of CURL’s set recorded at EartH in east London on the second night of the Late Junction Festival.

CURL was founded in 2016 by three individual voices on London’s underground music scene - genre-crushing producer and composer Mica Levi a.k.a. Micachu, versatile multi-instrumentalist and DJ Coby Sey, and MC and vocalist Brother May. As a label and performance collective they embrace grime, jazz, experimental soundscapes and hip hop and were joined on stage by Leisha Thomas (a.k.a. Alpha Maid) and George Ramsay.

Plus the usual pick ‘n’ mix selection from the world of adventurous music.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Nick Luscombe with more live highlights from the inaugural Late Junction Festival.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe relives the second of two exhilarating nights at EartH in east London that formed the first ever Late Junction Festival. Tonight’s focus is O Yama O, founded by musician and artist Rie Nakajima and Keiko Yamamoto, the co-founder of London’s top experimental music venue, Cafe OTO.

Nakajima’s performance focuses on the use of found and kinetic objects, using modest items such as rice bowls, toys, clockwork, balloons and small motors as instruments to create a “micro orchestra”. Elements are layered into impressive and immersive atmospheres. Yamamoto alternately floats and charges through this with body and voice; chanting, incanting, thundering, whispering, stamping on the floor. For this special performance they are joined by Billy Steiger on violin, Marie Roux on drums and David Cunningham on electronics.

Plus, Nick throws in a preview of This Is Not This Heat’s live set which will be the focus of Thursday night’s show, as well as the usual absurdly eclectic mixture of music from across the globe.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Nick Luscombe shares O Yama O's set from the Late Junction Festival.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe presents live music from the British avant-garde rock group This Is Not This Heat, the new reincarnation of This Heat which was formed by Charles Bullen and Charles Hayward over 40 years ago. Unleashing their signature sound from three guitarists, two drum kits and a bass, This Is Not This Heat create juggernaut-sized driving rhythms surrounded by swirls of fuzz and chugging guitar. Nick presents extended highlights from their powerful set recorded at Late Junction’s first ever festival held at EartH in east London.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Nick Luscombe presents live music from avant-garde rock group This Is Not This Heat

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe presents live music recorded in a synagogue in Krakow as part of the Unsound Festival 2018. Todd Barton’s Music and Poetry for The Kesh was originally released in 1985 as a cassette tape to accompany Ursula Le Guin’s anthropological fantasy novel Always Coming Home. The novel describes the life and society of an imagined community of people called The Kesh, set in a post-apocalyptic world at an unspecified time. Todd’s soundtrack enigmatically combines poetry and song in the Kesh language with new age analogue synths and borrowed folk traditions. Todd performs with an ensemble of Polish musicians created especially for this performance by Unsound Festival.

Also on the bill was the American sound artist and saxophonist Lea Bertucci. Lea considers the physical space she’s in as a collaborator and talks to Nick before the gig about the sonic properties of the synagogue.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell for Reduced Listening.

Todd Barton's Music for The Kesh and Lea Bertucci perform live, presented by Nick Luscombe

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Verity plays music from two creative responses to the prison system: Distant Voices is a collaborative project between songwriters and people who have experienced Scotland’s Criminal Justice System, and DIRT by Burning Salt (aka Hannah Hull) is inspired by the woman and staff of London’s Holloway Prison.

Elsewhere on the programme landscape and nature inspire, with coastal music from Ellen Fullman and David Gamper, a new perspective on the pastoral courtesy of A Year in The Country, and Apostolos Loufopoulos’ electroacoustic piece depicting a metaphorical journey on the back of a bee.

Produced by Freya Hellier.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Musical responses to the criminal justice system, with Verity Sharp.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Max Reinhardt presents a shimmering array of massed tablas – Ritesh Das’s Toronto Tabla Ensemble – which meets an excoriating glimpse of the ‘final’ live performance by Throbbing Gristle at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in 1981 (the quartet would ultimately reform in 2004).

Plus, John Cage’s “Gemini” variations for prepared piano in a classic recording by Julie Steinberg.

Produced by Steven Rajam for Reduced Listening.

Prepared piano, classic-era Throbbing Gristle, and massed tablas from Toronto.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Max Reinhardt shares classic-era Throbbing Gristle and massed tablas from Toronto.

Verity Sharp presents a tumbling, hallucinatory mixtape from electronic duo Matmos, inspired by the impact of plastic on our world.

Matmos are Baltimore-based, electronic duo Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt. Their new album Plastic Anniversary has been created entirely from sampled sounds of all kinds of plastic objects, from the bizarre to the mundane - police riot shields and synthetic human fat, bakelite and bubble wrap.

The album is a meditation on the pervasiveness of plastics and an acknowledgement of the planetary price yet to be paid for that. The title also refers to the fact that Drew and M.C. celebrated their 25th anniversary as a couple during the making of the album.

Elaborating on the theme of plastics, their approach to this mixtape was to recycle experiments and elements from their past as a band, including some of their plastic samples, invented sounds and unreleased collaborations.

Produced by Katie Callin.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Verity Sharp presents a plastics-themed mixtape from electronic duo Matmos.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Max is joined in the studio by Dr. Salomé Voegelin to talk about listening as a socio-political act.

Salomé Voegelin is an artist and writer engaged in questioning and changing the way we hear and process music, sound, and silence. Her practice includes gallery exhibitions, site-specific work and collective activities, as well as radio broadcasts and publications, such as her latest book ‘The Political Possibility of Sound: Fragments of Listening’.

Elsewhere on the programme featured composers include Ornette Coleman, June Chikuma, and Krzysztof Penderecki.

Produced by Jack Howson.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Dr Salome Voegelin discusses how listening is a socio-political act.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

From the sublime to the ridiculous, tonight’s music will move ethereally through you and lift your spirits.

Featured artists include tabla guru and philosophy teacher Pandit Divyang Vakil, preacher and early protest songwriter Blind Alfred Reed, and spiritual jazz soothsayer Angel Bat Dawid.

Also, hear a classic New Age piece by Brian Eno, alongside new music from Leafcutter John, who has built idiosyncratic modular synth music around his own meditative, environmental field recordings.

Produced by Jack Howson.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, music to move through you and lift your spirits.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Music to remember, console and celebrate with Verity Sharp.

Alex Rex (Alex Neilson from the Trembling Bells) explores the grief he experienced in the aftermath of this brother’s death in his new album Otterburn. Verity previews a track from his album and examines the role that music plays in coping with loss and longing with lamentations from the 16th century and Eastern Europe.

Also on the programme; Radiohead reworked for choir and the latest work by Bristol producer Vessel, a.k.a. Sebastian Gainsborough.

Produced by Freya Hellier.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Music to remember, console and celebrate with Verity Sharp.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Stripped back and slowed down flamenco from Spanish producer Raül Refree; a new compilation of spacious music reflects on the connections, the overlaps, the roots and the future of a music variously referred to as ambient. Plus New York’s Onyx Collective with a track conceived as a vintage soundtrack to an imaginary video game called Space-Wars.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell for Reduced Listening.

Stripped back flamenco, the art of spaciousness and new jazz from New York

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Max Reinhardt presents. West Mongolian DJ Bodikhuu is the darling of Central Asian bedroom electronica – his chilled-out beats meet the oddball world of Icelandic surrealist Atli Heimir Sveinsson’s “21 Sounding Minutes” for solo flute. Plus, for the last eighteen months Dutch punk musician Arnold de Boer has been collecting the sound of massed voices of women from the Frafra region of Northern Ghana – we hear a joyous example, alongside some traditional Hindustani raga sounds arranged for string orchestra.

Max also looks forward to the Late Junction Festival, taking place from 28th February to 1st March at EarTH (Evolutionary Arts Hackney) in partnership with the Barbican Centre, with music from O Yama O and Chaines. Plus, there's sonic experimentation from the collective Common Objects and new music from the jazz composer-trumpeter Nick Malcolm and his band.

Produced by Steven Rajam for Reduced Listening.

Blissful Western Mongolian beats, chilly Icelandic flute and recent music from BEAK>

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Blissful West Mongolian beats, chilly Icelandic flutes and female voices from North Ghana

Rise and shine! Max Reinhardt presents tracks that welcome in a new day with music that imitates the feeling of the sun rising over a hill and a swan sitting on dewy grass. Including Rastafarian spirituals recorded by Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, a delicate vibraphone solo from Japanese artist Masayoshi Fujita and Jenny Hval recounts her attempts to do morning yoga.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Rise and shine! Max Reinhardt presents tracks that welcome in a new day.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Humans made rock music for thousands of years before anyone even dreamed of an electric guitar. In this show Jennifer Lucy Allan chips away at the strata of music made with geological material, from Neolithic lithophones to the textural ambience of Kelly Jayne Jones, and the sparse forms of sound-art pioneer Akio Suzuki.

Plus, a detour around a fragmented experimental scene emerging under an oppressive regime in Indonesia, where electronics and arrhythmia are meeting traditional gamelan.

All this along with a collection of new releases, recent discoveries, and private-press favourites.

Produced by Alannah Chance.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Humans made rock music for thousands of years before anyone even dreamed of an electric guitar. In this show Jennifer Lucy Allan chips away at the strata of music made with geological material, from Neolithic lithophones to the textural ambience of Kelly Jayne Jones, and the sparse forms of sound-art pioneer Akio Suzuki.

Plus, a detour around a fragmented experimental scene emerging under an oppressive regime in Indonesia, where electronics and arrhythmia are meeting traditional gamelan.

All this along with a collection of new releases, recent discoveries, and private-press favourites.

Produced by Alannah Chance.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Jennifer Lucy Allan listens to sounds from deep within the ecological substrata.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye formed Jockstrap when they met as students at London’s Guildhall School of Music & Drama and together they create a woozy hybrid of pop, electronic and classical music.

Georgia talks to Verity about the experimental scene fostered at the Guildhall and selects some of her favourite tracks made by her peers.

Elsewhere on the programme: new music from Faith Elliot, composer Keeril Makan explores the sonorities of the piano with a new piece inspired by his baby daughter, and Sarah Angliss’ new music for a 14th-century relative of the harpsichord.

Produced by Freya Hellier.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Georgia Ellery of Jockstrap selects new music from the Guildhall for Verity Sharp.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe pans for gold in the nonstop stream of available music. 24-carat nuggets include a piece for prepared piano and analogue synth by Australian composer Anthony Pateras, deep percussive grooves from 1970s Nigeria by Ojo Balingo and a suite of chamber music created on the fly by violinist Fiona Brice, cellist Tony Woollard and composer/producer Jim Perkins. Their project began as an antidote to the sometimes laborious academic tradition of composing, scoring, revising, rehearsing, recording, editing and producing music. Instead each piece was created without score or prior preparation, relying on instinct, discussion and collaboration, with a focus on capturing the energy and essence of an idea whilst it is still fresh.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Nick Luscombe with deep Nigerian grooves and a suite of chamber music created on the fly.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

It’s mid-January 2019, so we’re well overdue Nick Luscombe’s ‘ones to watch for the year’ list. He digs through and cleans out the BBC Music Introducing inbox, where undiscovered and unsigned artists can upload their work to get heard on the radio.

Nick comes across fresh new material from Afrofusion seven-piece Dakar Audio Club, Manchester songwriter Chloe Foy, Glasgow vocalist and pianist Luki, Gaelic singer Catherine Rudie, London contrabassoonist Thomas Stone and trio Vula Viel, whose music is built around the Ghanaian xylophone.

The programme is not entirely devoted to the “cult of the new”, however. Hear sixties soul from David Axelrod, late-seventies library music from Paddy Kingsland, and a beautiful Japanese folk song about a bucket recorded in 1932.

Produced by Jack Howson for Reduced Listening.

It's mid-January 2019, so we're overdue Nick Luscombe's \u2018ones to watch for the year' list.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe returns from Unsound Festival in Krakow with a sackful of Polish underground music. During his trip Nick spoke to record labels, musicians and journalists to find out what makes Poland’s underground scene tick and how it came to be this way. He also visited a unique record shop that was more like being invited to look at and discuss the private collection of Peter the owner. Featuring music from the vocalist Agata Harz, the Meredith Monk of Poland; Resina, a cellist at the forefront of the countries neo-classical scene and graphic designer / electronic music maker We Will Fail.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell for Reduced Listening.

Nick returns from Unsound Festival in Krakow with a sackful of Polish underground music.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Danish noise artist Frederikke Hoffmeier, aka Puce Mary, hand picks 30 minutes of music from her record collection for the latest edition of the Late Junction mixtape, presented by Nick Luscombe.

Hoffmeier has said she is drawn to music that expresses the extremes of human experience and her work is often both uncompromising and violent, using ear-splitting frequencies and harsh visual imagery. Her last album The Drought, which was her sixth, is rooted in industrial music and power electronics but goes beyond both, offering shuddering violence and personal vulnerability. For this mix she selects some surprising pieces from the music that has influenced her career so far.

Elsewhere we have new music from Sarathy Korwar which interrogates the idea of ‘Eastern’ music and we salute the season with a twinkly Christmas single by Sufjan Stevens.

Produced by Alannah Chance for Reduced Listening.

Apocalyptic electronic artist Puce Mary turns her hand to the Late Junction mixtape

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Verity Sharp presents a mixtape compiled by legendary experimental composer, guitarist, trumpet player and flautist Rhys Chatham.

Classically trained in New York, after leaving the conservatory in the early 1970s Chatham became the curator at a music venue in Soho and worked with giants of the scene like Maryanne Amacher, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Brian Eno and Robert Fripp - to name just a few. Chatham had originally been introduced to electronic music and composition by Morton Subotnick in the late 60s, had studied composition with La Monte Young and played in Tony Conrad’s early group.

He soon became tired of producing other people’s music and after hearing an early concert recording of the Ramones, he was inspired to combine rock instrumentation with the avant garde minimalism he had worked so often with as a producer.

In 1977 Rhys created the seminal composition Guitar Trio, which he described as ‘Tony Conrad meets the Ramones’. Over the past forty years, he’s been working to make use of armies of electric guitars in special tunings, culminating in A Crimson Grail in 2005 - a piece for 400 electric guitars.

Chatham has also been working with various brass configurations since 1982, deploying techniques inherited from the early New York minimalist and 70s loft jazz period. Since 2014, Rhys has been touring a solo program featuring an electric guitar in a Pythagorean tuning trumpets and bass alto and C flutes.

Rhys’ mixtape draws on his background as a curator of 1970s New York avant garde and reflects the inspiration he finds in minimalism and punk rock, as well as classical and jazz, with pieces from Eliane Radigue, Iggy Pop, Pérotin the Great and Don Cherry.

Produced by Katie Callin for Reduced Listening.

A mixtape from composer, guitarist and trumpet player Rhys Chatham

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Verity Sharp presents the sublime sound of Rokia Traoré singing and performing live in the studio.

A protégé of legendary guitarist Ali Farka Touré, Rokia Traoré has been an innovative artistic force since 1997, never straying too far from her roots in Mali, yet defying the confines of a single culture, genre, or style. In addition to award-winning solo albums, she has collaborated musically alongside artists such as Kronos Quartet and Damon Albarn, and worked in the theatre with Toni Morrison and Peter Sellars. She is in the UK for the 2019 edition of Brighton Festival, an annual multi-arts event, where she is serving as this year’s guest director, placing a particular emphasis on diversity and inclusive collaboration, oral storytelling and Malian culture.

Traces of myth, fable, history and spirituality are also present in the rest of tonight’s programme, which features Ana Roxanne’s devotional songwriting, Tim Hecker’s exploration of ancient Japanese court music, and C Joynes’ new composition inspired by 16th-century travellers' tales.

Produced by Jack Howson.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Verity Sharp presents the sublime sound of Rokia Traore singing and playing live.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Verity Sharp presents the sublime sound of Rokia Traoré singing and performing live, as she premieres songs from her Dream Mandé project, which celebrates Mandinka storytelling and fuses traditional Malian music with the contemporary.

A protégé of legendary guitarist Ali Farka Touré, Rokia Traoré has been an innovative artistic force since 1997, never straying too far from her roots in Mali, yet defying the confines of a single culture, genre, or style. In addition to award-winning solo albums, she has collaborated musically alongside artists such as Kronos Quartet and Damon Albarn, and worked in the theatre with Toni Morrison and Peter Sellars. She is in the UK for the 2019 edition of Brighton Festival, an annual multi-arts event, where she is serving as this year’s guest director, placing a particular emphasis on diversity and inclusive collaboration, oral storytelling and Malian culture.

Traces of myth, fable, history and spirituality are also present in the rest of tonight’s programme, which features Ana Roxanne’s devotional songwriting, Tim Hecker’s exploration of ancient Japanese court music, and C Joynes’s new composition inspired by 16th-century traveller’s tales.

Produced by Jack Howson.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

‘A mix of brutal pop and experiment’ - that’s the state of Rotterdam’s alternative music scene according to journalist and resident Richard Foster, who shares the sounds of the city’s underground with Nick Luscombe. Guitar racket and lo-fi frenzy abounds: Marijn Verbiesen (aka Red Brut) blends tape noise and field recordings, and the punk is as abrasive as you might expect from a band called Neighbours Burning Neighbours.

Plus, Nick takes us into another urban world through the Seoul soundscape evoked by Park Jiha, and a reworking of the music of Australian songwriter Penelope Trappes by Mogwai.

Produced by Chris Elcombe
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3

Rotterdam-resident journalist Richard Foster profiles the city's scene with Nick Luscombe.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Bigging up the start of the week with enormous sounds from across the planet.

Verity Sharp shares new music from Ifriqiyya Electrique, blending sounds from the ancient Saharan Banga (literally ‘huge volume’) ritual with the duo’s post-punk background. Spanish producer Rrucculla’s album ‘Shush’ is anything but quiet - a maximalist journey influenced by free jazz, math-rock and Latin music among other things.

Plus, Anglo-French folk from Topette, and Kate Molleson joins Verity in the studio to offer a glimpse of what’s to come on ‘The New Music Show’ which starts on Radio 3 this weekend.

Produced by Chris Elcombe.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Maximalist journeys and \u2018huge volume' with Verity Sharp.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

In tribute to Scott Walker, to mark his passing this weekend, the chance to hear again a mixtape and conversation with his friend Jarvis Cocker who curates some of the lesser-known cuts from Walker’s back catalogue, first broadcast in 2017.

Elsewhere on the show new releases come courtesy of Québécois producer Jean Cousin, working under the new moniker Joni Void, who has been inspired by ‘mise en abyme’ - the act of placing a copy of the work within itself. And the musical roots of Greece and Armenia are united with Moog synths by Kolida Babo.

Also Irish brothers Ye Vagabonds sing the Hare’s Lament, The Meridian Brothers evoke the spirit of 70s Salsa Columbiana, and virtuoso viola da gamba player Paolo Pandolfo improvises on an ancient ground bass.

Produced by Freya Hellier.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Verity Sharp pays tribute to Scott Walker and listens to Greek/Armenian music traditions.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Verity Sharp marks St George’s Day with an array of music hailing from old Albion to Turkey and Palestine. Featuring kemanche virtuosity from Ibrahim Kaya, new electronics from Jad Atoui and Jawad Nawfal and a mythical vision of England by Thomas Ades.

Produced by Steven Rajam.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Marking St George's Day, an array of music from old Albion to Turkey.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe enters the sound world of Stephen O’Malley from drone metal band Sunn 0))). Formed in Seattle in 1998, the band is known for an extremely heavy sound that blends diverse genres including drone, black metal, dark ambient, and noise rock. Founding member Stephen O’Malley crafts a special 30-minute continuous mixtape to tickle your ear drums.

Also in the programme La Vox’s 1980s inspired atmospheric glitch-techno, an other-worldly sound collage from Isambard Khroustaliov and modern European jazz from trumpeter Christof Mahnig.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3

Nick Luscombe enters the sound world of Stephen O'Malley from drone metal band Sunn 0))).

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe enters the sound world of Stephen O’Malley from drone metal band Sunn 0))). Formed in Seattle in 1998, the band is known for an extremely heavy sound that blends diverse genres including drone, black metal, dark ambient, and noise rock. Founding member Stephen O’Malley crafts a special 30-minute continuous mixtape to tickle your ear drums.

Also in the programme d’Voxx’s 1980s inspired atmospheric glitch-techno, an other-worldly sound collage from Isambard Khroustaliov and modern European jazz from trumpeter Christof Mahnig.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3

In his final show as guest editor, Stewart Lee presents a mixtape from recorder player and violinist Laura Cannell.

Cannell’s work explores the territory between composed and improvised music, drawing on medieval and early music while rooted in contemporary techniques and approaches. Her mixtape spans Thomas Tallis, Breton bagpipes, violinist Galya Bisengalieva and improvising saxophonist Colin Stetson.

She joins Stewart in the studio, and he shares some final cuts from his own collection too.

Produced by Chris Elcombe for Reduced Listening.

A mixtape from recorder player and violinist Laura Cannell

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Verity Sharp talks about apala, jazz, Malian pop and Romantic music with Teju Cole, the compiler of tonight’s exclusive music mix.

An acclaimed photographer, art historian, critic and author of four books, Teju Cole also happens to be a music-obsessive and a longstanding Late Junction super-fan. Tonight he fulfils a bit of a personal radio fantasy by appearing on the programme.

After a childhood spanning the USA and Nigeria, Teju Cole currently lives in Brooklyn, and is Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard.

Produced by Jack Howson.
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3.

Verity Sharp talks music with photographer, author, art historian and critic Teju Cole.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe presents Terry Riley in concert, recorded in a chandelier-lit underground chamber of a 700-year old salt mine outside Krakow, Poland as part of the Unsound Festival. Nick travels 100m under the surface of the earth to watch one of the great American composers of the 20th century. Riley’s performance was a varied set encompassing atmospheric electronics, melodica, piano and devotional vocals alongside his son, the guitarist Gyan Riley.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell for Reduced Listening.

Nick Luscombe reports from a salt mine in Poland where Terry Riley plays live

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

... Travelling under the cloak of darkness, destination unknown. Nick Luscombe presents a high-speed selection of forward-thinking music. There’s obscure tape music by composer Joji Yuasa, the piece consisting of echoing wooden bells in the woods, made from lowered marimba moderated by square wave. Andreas Spechtl offers a survival strategy for the new world in the form of motoric beats, catchy hooks and cutting lyrics. And after all that grit, American musician and producer Tycho offers a comforting voice to remind you not to get so lost in work.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3

Travelling under the cloak of darkness, destination unknown. Nick Luscombe presents.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

It's that time of the year again when we ask the Late Junction presenters and production team to flick through the releases of 2018 and scroll back through their music libraries to pick their favourite album of the year, presented by Nick Luscombe.

It’s been a year marked by some strong electronic albums, often gritty and uncompromising. But as ever Late Junction goes beyond the trends in the music press, digging deep to find the rough diamonds across a vast range of genres. Expect heart melting avant-folk guitars, conceptual latex-pop, woozy post-R&B and prepared piano that sounds ‘like someone performing open-heart surgery on a grandfather clock’. But will your album of the year make the list?

Produced by Alannah Chance for Reduced Listening.

Nick reveals 2018's best albums as chosen by the Late Junction presenters and producers.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Deciding on a favourite album of the year is a hard business, not to mention all the fantastic compilations and reissues from the year that didn’t fit the bill. So to redress the balance we’ve saved over some of our other favourite releases from 2018, including some rare creole music from Guadeloupe, a modern take on musique concrète and some otherworldly Gaelic psalm singing to help us get in the Christmas spirit.

Nick will also be brushing up on his Spanish as we climb the ‘stairway of the blind’ hand in hand with Luc Ferrari, who crafted a radiophonic portrait of Madrid via the voices of locals and actresses.

Produced by Alannah Chance for Reduced Listening.

Nick shows some appreciation for the other releases we loved from 2018.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Two duos come together to make new music for Late Junction’s next collaboration session.

Devotional pop polymath Lafawndah makes music that is neither imperial or local but a freedom of movement. Live, she shares a stage with the inimitable percussive force that is Valentina Magaletti, best known for her work with her bands Tomaga and Vanishing Twin. For this session Lafawndah explores vocals and live FX processing, whilst Valentina raids the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s percussion cupboard to create an expansive rhythmical palette including timpani, bongos and kit.

Brass-playing brothers Theon and Nathaniel Cross form the second duo. Tuba player Theon plays with the revered jazz-meets-afro-futurism group Sons of Kemet. His trombone-playing brother Nathaniel is about to release his first solo EP and has toured with Macy Gray and grime star Kano.

As soon as the recording light went on the chemistry was instant, the four players each finding their space with little navigation. The result was an exhilarating half hour of exploration, integration and imagination.

Also in the show, slow-motion glitch jazz from downtown New York, music inspired by Hungarian brutalist architecture, by Art of the Memory Palace, and a new piece by Australian performer and sound artist Alexandra Spence. Presented by Nick Luscombe.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3

Two duos come together for Late Junction's collaboration session. With Nick Luscombe

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Get set for some long-haul musical travel with intrepid itinerant Nick Luscombe tonight.

Join multidisciplinary artist NSDOS on an Alaskan expedition, where he uses ‘bio-feedback’ to turn data into extraordinary textures and rhythms.

And, experience the environmental sounds of the Arctic Tundra through the responsive composition of Derek Charke and the evocative playing of the Kronos Quartet.

What means of transport will we use for our journey? Why, the wind of course! Eisuke Yanagisawa channels the airwaves and the weather for his unprocessed field recordings made outdoors in Japan.

Produced by Jack Howson for Reduced Listening.

Some long-haul musical travel with intrepid itinerant Nick Luscombe.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Nick Luscombe presents another chance to hear actor and occasional DJ Toby Jones’ takeover of the Late Junction mixtape. Featuring dub from Prince Far I, British post-punk courtesy of Gloucestershire's Blurt, and blues from Mississippi-born Robert Belfour.
As well as acting on stage and screen in productions such as BBC Four's The Detectorists and films including Infamous, Frost/Nixon and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Toby has also appeared in a whole host of radio plays. In 2016 he took the lead role in the radio broadcasts of Anthony Burgess's Napoleon Rising and Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party. He is the co-creator and star of upcoming dark BBC 2 sitcom Don’t Forget the Driver’ and later in 2019 will also feature in The Last Thing He Wanted, a film based on a novel by Joan Didion, alongside Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck and Willem Dafoe.

Produced by Katie Callin for Reduced Listening

Nick Luscombe presents a Late Junction mixtape from actor Toby Jones.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Verity Sharp is joined in the studio by Turner Prize winner Charlotte Prodger, as the pair discuss the musical inspirations behind Charlotte’s acclaimed mixed-media work. Verity also presents contrasting electronic visions of England and Japan – plus, there’s brand-new Polish free jazz from Low Vertigo, and Michel Legrand performs John Cage.

Produced by Steven Rajam.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Turner Prize-winner Charlotte Prodger, plus electronics from southern England and Japan.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Max Reinhardt is joined by Arlen Dilsizian of Uganda’s Nyege Nyege collective, who champion new electronic sounds being produced across East Africa through their annual festival and record label. There’s menace and beauty combined in Bogdan Raczynski’s latest release, tellingly called Rave ‘Till You Cry, and jazz pianist Elliot Galvin stages a quiet protest against modern, overproduced records by live-mixing and recording his trio direct to vinyl.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Max Reinhardt is joined by Arlen Dilsizian from Uganda's Nyege Nyege collective.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Max Reinhardt puts a spotlight on Uganda’s Nyege Nyege collective who champion new electronic sounds being produced across East Africa. There’s menace and beauty combined in Bogdan Raczynski’s latest release, tellingly called Rave ‘Till You Cry, and jazz pianist Elliot Galvin stages a quiet protest against modern, overproduced records by live-mixing and recording his trio direct to vinyl.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Max Reinhardt puts a spotlight on Uganda's Nyege Nyege Collective.

Max Reinhardt is joined by Arlen Dilsizian of Uganda’s Nyege Nyege collective, who champion new electronic sounds being produced across East Africa through their annual festival and record label. There’s menace and beauty combined in Bogdan Raczynski’s latest release, tellingly called Rave ‘Till You Cry, and jazz pianist Elliot Galvin stages a quiet protest against modern, overproduced records by live-mixing and recording his trio direct to vinyl.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Max Reinhardt is joined by Arlen Dilsizian from Uganda's Nyege Nyege collective.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

Eclectic, aquatic acoustics with Verity Sharp.

Kate Carr’s latest field-recording project gathers together sounds harvested underwater and along shorelines – including drones broadcast into a fjord, spluttering radios, and geese.
And Mare Romantico is an Italian library music album created in the early 70s to evoke the mysteries of the depths for documentaries about the ocean.

Plus, a new release of Ethiopian begena music, and New York composer and violinist Jason Kao Hwang blends East-coast improv and traditional Chinese sounds with his Burning Bridge ensemble.

Produced by Chris Elcombe for Reduced Listening.

Eclectic, aquatic acoustics with Verity Sharp.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners

West African rhythms and jazz harmonies combine on Benin guitarist and vocalist Lionel Loueke’s latest album; British trombonist Raph Clarkson’s uses jazz and poetry to portray himself as a child trying to understand his grandmother’s experiences and Mica Levi’s cinematic piano music performed by Eliza McCarthy.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell for Reduced Listening.

Benin guitarist/vocalist Lionel Loueke, a tribute to a grandma and cinematic piano music.

Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners