Ear Expansion Podcast

In this episode of Ear Expansion, LaMont Hamilton speaks with Jess Rowley about her path from architecture and librarianship into sonic archival practice and research on Black sonic histories in Victorian Britain. They discuss wax cylinders as early sound-recording technology and Jess’s discovery of the Bohee Brothers, who may have been the first Black artists to record commercially on wax cylinder in Europe, leading to the Brothers Archive Project: a digital archive that gathers ephemera and invites musicians to create interpretive arrangements to revive a lost duet. Jess links this work to lecture-performances exploring wax, stone, and earth as tactile vessels for “sonic rememory,” including Emmanuel Road and Stone Circle Project, emphasizing non-linear, living archives. They also cover Jess’s Ghost Edit Group within the Decolonising Wikipedia Network, which collaboratively edits and builds Wikipedia pages to address gaps and misrepresentations in underrepresented Black British sound histories.

In this episode of Ear Expansion, host LaMont Hamilton speaks with Eiliyas, a Macon, Georgia–born artist based in Berlin for over a decade, about his formative influences (Hendrix, Prince, A Tribe Called Quest), early experiments with mixing, sampling, instruments, and poetry, and the making of The Violet Tape and Basel No as cathartic, voice-fragmented “exorcisms” focused on energy over technical perfection. Eiliyas explains how an accident while recording saxophone led him to feedback as a self-made instrument, evolving into spiritually grounded live pedal-floor performances and 2014 releases Invocation, Encryption, and Crimson and the Indigo, later extending into 2025’s Tithes and its renewed vocal presence. He discusses his exhibition Bugging Out and Cutting the Fool (Holy Ghost Adjacent), shaped by James Baldwin’s “uses of the blues,” layered feedback compositions, visual feedback, and the joyful “Black Twitter Quilt.” He also outlines MixTape Menage’s intimate, rule-light music conversations and Black Communion Berlin’s two-night format fostering black diasporic experimental sonic community.

In this episode of Ear Expansion, host LaMont Hamilton speaks with Anaïs Maviel about how her Haitian lineage—especially her mother’s artistic influence and Haiti’s history—braided music with political and spiritual life, shaping her grounding in ancestry, tradition, and collective eras. Anaïs reflects on long-term disembodiment as an Afro-descendant woman in Eurocentric patriarchal contexts and describes a return to embodiment through dropping concept-driven language, becoming a wordless (and consonant-less) singer, and focusing on listening, attunement, relation, and harmony as practices for truthful connection and collective liberation. They discuss how instruments and vocal work relate to healing, how oral and choral traditions transmit wisdom through breath and the body, and how mantra, prayer, repetition, and collective singing can intentionally shape reality and invite the “Holy Ghost.” Anaïs also discusses her element- and trigram-based work Listen to the Rain as an evolving, immersive live practice.

In this episode of Ear Expansion, LaMont Hamilton converses with percussionist-composer and educator JoVia Armstrong. In this conversation, they speak about wide-ranging topics from her early sonic formation and major projects to her later immersion in global rhythms. She discusses the ensemble Musique Noire, her first solo album Fuzzy Blue Robe Chronicles, and her performance ethos of receptivity— which led to Eunoia Society and music aimed at deep audience connection. Armstrong recounts encountering the cajón through the work of Susana Baca, learning it on a South American tour, and developing her hybrid cajón kit. Also in this conversation, JoVia explains her use of drones, repetition, deep bass, time-based effects, and hybrid scoring as a way to elicit the therapeutic aspect of sound. Later, they discuss her PhD concept “Black Space,” and its central thesis: composing meditative music through a Black lens to combat unconscious bias (as reflected in her albums The Antidote Suite and Inception).

In this episode of Ear Expansion, host LaMont Hamilton speaks with Tongo Eisen-Martin about the revolutionary atmosphere that shaped his poetry and praxis. Tongo reflects on his upbringing in San Francisco within alternative community institutions, and music as a vessel for spirit and a foundation for craft. They discuss imagination made praxis, resisting bourgeois cultural subjugation, police terror and dehumanization, and a relational ethos summarized as “the humanization of others is the only thing that humanizes me,” linked to interconnected reality and craft. Tongo explains his polyvocal, trickster-inflected poetic method and discusses the We Charge Genocide, Again curriculum as a creative, flexible tool for ideological clarity about extrajudicial killings as systemic policy, writing against tyranny toward liberation, and collective survival.

In this episode of Ear Expansion, LaMont Hamilton and guitarist-composer Brandon Ross dive into his expansive musical journey. Ross recounts his early experiences, including self-teaching on the guitar and absorbing his brother’s musical influence, as well as his father’s jazz and classical tastes. He also shares accounts of his first professional recording with Archie Shepp and reflects on formative collaborations with artists like Marion Brown, Leroy Jenkins, Butch Morris, and Henry Threadgill. Along the conversation, Ross speaks about collective listening, generative silence, vibrations, cymatics, chordophones, and composing as affective experiences. He cites For Living Lovers with Stomu Takeishi as an example of a telepathic duo while traversing topics such as his band Harriet Tubman, his research into blues processes in Mississippi, and his later sound-world projects (Pendulum, Phantom Station, Dark Matter Halo). 

In this episode of Ear Expansion, host LaMont Hamilton engages in a deep and reflective conversation with sound artist Nour Sokhon. They discuss Nour's journey from visual arts to sound, driven by a desire to capture and archive fleeting moments and memories through soundscapes. Nour shares her personal experiences and the impact of growing up in ever-changing Lebanon and Dubai, which influenced her fascination with capturing vanishing moments. The conversation delves into various projects, including 'Rectification of the Wretched' and 'Louder than Words,' which focus on collective memory and preserving narratives through sound. Nour talks about the emotional and cultural weight of her work, using everyday objects and recording techniques to create immersive soundscapes. They also explore her collaborative piece 'Onion is Definitely Tears,' which uses the onion as a metaphor for layered memories and emotions. The discussion touches on themes of migration and displacement, particularly in the context of the Lebanese diaspora. Nour's work emerges as an ongoing act of witnessing, processing trauma, and maintaining a connection between those who have left Lebanon and their homeland. The episode highlights Nour's innovative approach to sound, memory, and the power of collective narratives in reshaping identities and preserving histories.

In this episode of Ear Expansion, LaMont Hamilton engages in a deep and expansive conversation with interdisciplinary artist, musician, and theorist DeForrest Brown Jr. They discuss Brown's early musical influences, the integration of black history and techno within his work, and the critical intersections of race, class, and cultural history in America. Brown talks extensively about his major projects, including 'Assembling a Black Counterculture,' 'Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry,' and 'Techxodus,' highlighting the themes of empathy, trauma, and the sonic futures of black America. Additionally, they delve into the intricacies of Brown's collaborations and his reflections on techno as a form of black cultural production, as well as his innovative blending of music, writing, and activism. 

In this episode of Ear Expansion, host LaMont Hamilton speaks with multidisciplinary artist, DJ and theorist Ryan C. Clarke about his practice, which integrates sedimentology, coastal geomorphology, black electronic music studies, blues epistemologies, ethnomusicology, regional environmental history, and more. Clarke shares his early influences, from his grandparents' gospel radio to video games, and explains deltaic thinking, a framework connecting black music's social histories with geological processes. They discuss blues epistemologies, the relationship between blackness and ecologies under colonial pressures, and the deep time concepts in techno music. Clarke also highlights his work with the Dweller festival to support black electronic artists and foster community.

In this episode of Ear Expansion, host LaMont Hamilton engages in a conversation with artist and sonic explorer Bonnie Han Jones. They explore Bonnie’s artistic journey, particularly her experimental work in sound and language. Bonnie shares her unique approach to instrumentation, her experiences in diverse musical communities, and the conceptual frameworks that guide her exploration of sound and language. The conversation also delves into her interests in the materiality of sound and her projects that examine the complexities of transnational adoption and identity, the concept of sonic citizenship, and her ongoing engagement with sound and language as a medium for personal and cultural storytelling.