I'll say it again: I enjoy supporting my friends who write newsletters, so it's always a sad thing when some of those friends use Substack (a couple of you are following me here), as I just can't give that vile platform a cut of your money in good conscience
a glorious golden sunrise over a calm morning lake — two ducks, barely visible, swim by
drop some BATHTUBS
posted this one on my own feed some minutes ago — I interviewed this guy a few years back and based on the main topic of that conversation I'd wager he most certainly voted for the opposition
here's the excellent 2025 album from my favorite Budapestian beat-maker if you feel like celebrating the news from Hungary with some spaced-out tunes →
guy who greenlights the Moby x Bono podcast: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
unleash the newsletter!
catch up with what happened over the past week on our cosmically-aligned site — as well as a newsletter-exclusive interview with universe-wrangling musician Rachel Lime and a heap of clickable links to fascinating shizz
via the affectionally titled Talk Of The Tonearm 💥
the genie turns to the tour manager and asks, "now what wish shall I grant you?"
the tour manager immediately replies, "I need those guys back here in five minutes"
the front-of-house guy knows he's smarter than a mere guitar tech, so he says, "my wish is to be transported to my own private island with the ONE HUNDRED most beautiful women in the world!"
POOF — and he's now gone …
a genie pops out of the bottle and says, "to show my gratitude for releasing me I shall grant each of you one wish"
excited, the guitar tech says, "my wish is to be transported to my own private island with the most beautiful woman in the world!"
POOF — and he's gone …
the guy who was Nine Inch Nails' '90s tour manager once told me this fantastic joke:
it's after a concert and a guitar tech, a front-of-house sound guy, and a tour manager are checking behind the stage to make sure nothing gets left behind … and they find a genie bottle …
❝ I recognize that any theater screening “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” has already placed itself well beyond the reach of God’s light, but enduring it at the Brooklyn Drafthouse circa April 2026 was a special kind of hell. →
one might imagine a person recording under the moniker worriedaboutsatan would be a spooky, morose individual, but Gavin Miller @worriedaboutsatan.bsky.social is anything but — he was quite open + generous about his life and process with writer @doomgolly.bsky.social in her debut for The Tonearm ✨
❝ It’s tiresome, frankly, to have to clarify yet again that no form of cultural expression exists apart from the history unfolding around it. Nothing is timeless, though many things (besides spaceships) can leap through time. →
dawn breaks over the lake — calm water, vegetation floats, orange and blues on the horizon, sputters of clouds and occasional airplane trail
a punishable offense
then he got close to me with a serious look on his face and said in a near whisper as if he was revealing nuclear launch codes: “that shit’s funky at 33”
in the 90s I used to own a record shop … one quiet Sunday afternoon, Afrika Bambaataa, who was DJ’ing nearby that evening, walked in and asked me, “do you have any good jungle records pressed at 45 RPM that I can play at 33?”
now and then, we get to publish a feature on The Tonearm on an artist that I am personally sooo excited to have on our site — consider this a two-for-one →
Brion Gysin & William S. Burroughs, Dreamachine-gazing, 1979 | © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn ; photo © ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, photo: ONUK
❝ They are not trying to produce images, but to set up the conditions for them to happen. → www.designboom.com/art/dreamach...
a Keith Wood memory: returning to the Astralwerks office after recording in Iceland, with a burned CD in hand of my cover version of Faust's "Jennifer" … Keith listened to it on headphones, one of the first people to hear it, and remarked "sounds like I've taken drugs"
R.I.P.
riveting tbh
that prior to the 1500s the only place you could find potatoes was in the Andes never ceases to blow my mind … and then the hypothesis that the 'little ice age' of the 1600s might have been caused in part by an explosion of wild growth in farmland abandoned by all the people who died over here wtf
David August, known to most as a DJ of eclectic taste but still within the 4-on-the-floor province, released a lovely piano album called 'Hymns' that will (IMO) have much appeal for those mourning the late, great Harold Budd … and so I spoke with August about it for The Tonearm →
looks promising but I'm disappointed there's not a slowed down minor key whispery female vocal cover version of that old Cure song in the trailer
it's pretty cool that our writer Bill Kopp got to speak with Peter Baumann for a feature in The Tonearm, even cooler that Conrad Schnitzler was a topic of conversation →
A still from the movie Jaws. Brody tells Quint: "You're gonna need a bigger doomsday clock."
