Torn Light Records

The Medium is Indifference: How Will We Navigate Musical Taste in a World with Artificial Intelligence?

A couple months ago, I was hanging out with a friend who shared with me an article by sound studies scholar Ryan Blakeley from the Musicology Now blog titled, “Welcome […]

March 17, 2025

“Every Instrument is Alive”: Susan Alcorn’s Pioneering Pedal Steel Guitar

Several years ago, NPR published a piece on the ever elusive nature of the pedal steel guitar, an instrument nearly fettered to the “classic mid-century Nashville sound,” despite its potential […]

February 28, 2025

Estoy Aquí: Smithsonian Folkways Music Pathways, Accessible and Public Education Opportunities, and Advocating for the World of Sound

Coming from a background of studying music history in graduate school, and assuming teaching responsibilities as part of that program, I perked up when I read that Smithsonian Folkways has […]

February 16, 2025

Digesting at the Buffet: Binge Culture, the Streaming Model, and Its Reinforcement of Passive Listening

When I was thirteen, my parents gifted me with the red and blue Beatles compilation CDs, the last CDs I used before I received my first iPod touch, which launched […]

February 1, 2025

David King, Logos, and the Messages in Underground Graphic Design

A little over a month ago, Colpa Press and the San Francisco Center for the Book put out a collection of David King’s designs, Publications 1977-2019, in tandem with the […]

January 19, 2025

Do Not Disturb: Autechre, Electronic Music, and the Role of the Laptop Onstage

Warp Records placed me on high alert a couple months ago when they made an enigmatic post on Instagram featuring a gradient black and blue square and the mysterious caption […]

January 6, 2025

The Internet, Micro-Communities, and the Future of Interdisciplinary Art

The other day, I was waiting for a friend to meet me at a coffee shop when I decided to pass the time with a Wire article or two. In […]

December 17, 2024

Go Undetected: Data, Music Listening Habits, and the Indispensable Value of Physical Records

There were a few intertwining threads in my life the past couple weeks that led to this rumination on the subject of music listening as data and surveillance, and how […]

November 17, 2024

Topic Records, Industrialization, and the Second British Folk Revival

In Ohio, I find that the distinctive, autumnal chill in the air comes a bit later than I’m accustomed to from my early life in New England. It’s only in […]

November 3, 2024