Absent Sounds Archive

There is a banner plane making loops over downtown Boise, as we showed up to record this episode. It says USA LOVES TRUMP. Below it, Treefort music festival is happening. This is the first of four episodes Absent Sounds made at the fest in March 2026 — a docuseries built from ten artist interviews done over five days in Idaho. Each episode weaves between voices, asking some version of the same question: what is your music trying to answer right now?Episode one: we're sitting with Dan English, Jo Passed, and VERTTIGO. Together we move through the moral weight of crossing the border to make music during political collapse, the eight years it took Jo Passed to come back to releasing, the fifteen years it took VERTTIGO to become the band they are now, and the particular shame and relief of making something anyway. Is any of this enough? Is showing up enough?

In today's episode of Absent Sounds, we sit with Alice Gerlach: also known as alice does computer music. Her latest record, Bliss, is four ten-minute electroacoustic compositions assembled from cello improvisations, field recordings, and mementos of a life being lived. The record places you in a lush disorienting world full of frog ponds and wind chimes, chopped vocals, leftover audio from tour stops, solar eclipses and more. We cover a range of thoughts, from the terror of the blank page, being connected to your creative center, Hildegard von Bingen's secret language, the KLF setting a million pounds on fire, and why bliss, by Alice's definition, is the fleeting kind. The episode ends with a few tracks from BC based musician, hydra:bad. Their latest EP No Diving is a stripped-back but evocative form of electronic club music that sits in a similar register to Bliss. We're grateful for her art and for you. As always, thanks for listening, and be well. You can find the full episode transcript here, and more at cjam.ca

On this episode of Absent Sounds, Will Wiesenfeld (Baths) sat across from us at a coffee shop in Toronto, hours before his show at Lee's Palace. We talked about Cerulean R, his expanded reissue of the 2010 debut that launched his career, in full. What makes Cerulean R different from most reissues is its integrity to that era: every piece of it, from the unreleased tracks, the remixes, the demos, reflects the 2009–2011 window in which the original was made. A true time capsule.We talked about what it means to revisit a record you no longer feel like yourself in, the one-to-one relationship between artist and listener, learning to leave songs unnamed so they stay open, and why "the better you are at something, the harder it gets." Also: the perfect touring top, eucalyptus oil in an Uber, and closing a chapter you didn't know needed closing.

In today's episode of Absent Sounds, we sit with Alex and the world he built as Tōth. His latest record, And the Voice Said has been a compass for me these past few months- it imposes no answers on listeners, but pulls you into the space needed to hear truth behind the noise. Almost like a mirror. Also! Tucked in the episode: a live rendition of a surprise song from the record, performed by Alex and Allegra Heart. It's a small gift for those who stay until the end. We're grateful for Alex's openness and for you. As always, keep the conversation going, and be well. You can find the full episode transcript here, and more at cjam.ca

TThis week, Sara Mae joins Absent Sounds for a track-by-track dive into the deluxe edition of their debut album: The Secret Ingredient Is Even More Meat. Under The Noisy, Sara Mae Henke (they/them) makes music for closing chapters that also loudly opens a door.We talk about the pipeline between poetry and songwriting, from the volta, to queer wordplay and the love-soaked specificity of "Ballerino." Nothing feels haphazardly thrown. Above all else, the record is a beautiful capsule of love that finds new life after someone is "gone." Sara Mae is a poet, a chapbook-maker, and so much more in-between. Follow The Noisy at @veryverynoisy on Instagram and subscribe to Sara Mae's newsletter To dive into more of their world, find the music videos here!Transcript available here.

Twen are Jane Fitzsimmons and Ian Jones rock duo who have spent the better part of a decade booking their own tours out of a converted van. You can feel their fiercely independent method permeating each riff: they write, engineer, and mix everything themselves. Fate Euphoric, their 2025 album, is the one we kept returning to on our daily drives without getting tired. Sprawling across garage rock, psych, and melodic pop, the record draws on the medieval Rota Fortunae (The Wheel of Fortune) as a frame for examining fate when the world feels like it's spinning out. We spoke with Jane and Ian while the band was on an extensive North American tour. In this episode, we play the album in full and talk about intuition as survival, the logic of doing things unconventionally, and why creation might be the closest thing to feeling godlike.Find the full interview transcript, and more here!

Brendan Wright has been making music as Tiberius for the better part of a decade, quietly, in bedrooms and basements in Allston-Brighton, and then slowly, with a merry band of friends-turned-family. Troubadour is a record about love, loss, and limerence in between. About the specific shame that gets baked into you before you have the language for it, and the ways we measure ourselves against false scaled. By the time we spoke, the record already felt like it was made by someone they'd slightly outgrown. And by the time this has reached you, probably even more so. But that distance didn't make the record any less true. If anything, it made it more.Transcript available here

Hannah Frances is a composer, vocalist and guitarist, whose second album was one that has literally been spinning on repeat in our car. Spanning progressive rock, avant-folk, and jazz, the record navigates the ongoing, non-linear work of healing, with arrangements featuring contributions from Daniel Rossen of Grizzly Bear. Weajue spoke with Hannah at the tail end of her six-show tour, in Toronto at the Baby G.In this episode, we play the album in full and talk about uncovering what needed to be felt. Also airing in the second half of the program: Humanhood by the Weather Station, her seventh studio album, released January 2025 on Fat Possum.Full transcript available here!

Graham Johnson has been making music as quickly, quickly since before most people had the language for what he was doing. When we first encountered his music, I couldn’t describe to to anyone either. This conversation catches him in reflection of figuring out what comes next. I Heard That Noise is his most distilled record yet, with beats infused acoustic songs carrying production jump scares, built almost entirely in a windowless basement with red carpet and a knockdown ceiling he eventually put his fist through. We talked about the noise you surround yourself with so you don't have to be alone with your thoughts. About spending three years and one new laptop on a single song. About what it means to finish something that started as a different version of you, and learning to let it go.Transcript available here.