Revol Press present a conversation and metal and the left. They will publish a compendium entitled What's Left of Metal? in late 2025.Editors: David Burke, Mike WatsonAuthors: Ben Burgis, Thomas Cardwell, Tee Coles, Chris DeMarcus, Holly Royle, Lars Lindemann, Daniel Lukes, Evan Martin-Casler, Ignacio Moreno Fluxà, Jason Myles, Alessandro Rolandi, …

Matt McManus talks to Bram E. Gieben on liberal Socialism in illiberal times.Matt's The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism is out now: https://www.routledge.com/The-Political-Theory-of-Liberal-Socialism/McManus/p/book/9781032647234Support Revol Press at: https://www.revolpress.com/And: https://www.patreon.com/c/revolpress…

Mike Watson talks to Eliot Rosenstock about Addiction and Capitalism. Hosted by Bram E. Gieben.Buy Mike's book here: https://www.revolpress.com/hungry-ghosts-in-the-machineTheorize and be Damned is a Podcast of Revol Press.Revol Press Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/revolpress

Brandon died February 21, 2024, nearly 3 years after this interview. He was a composer of experimental music, and a very good friend of mine. This interview touches on topics like: attention (inside & outside of concert settings), processing trauma through music, mental illness, drug usage, the psychology of repetition, the harmonic properties of m…

Mike Watson and Bram E. Gieben talk to Rob Faure Walker, author of Love and the Market: How to Recover from the Enlightenment and Survive the Current Crisis.Buy Love and the Market from Bristol University Press here: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/love-and-the-marketPre-order Bram and Mike's books here: https://www.revolpress.com/Follow Revol…

Mike Watson and Bram Gieben interview Adam Turl, writer of the forthcoming Gothic Futurism: And the Working Class (2025, from Revol Press).See details on that book here: https://www.revolpress.com/gothic-futurismSee Locus Review here: https://www.locustreview.comSupport Revol Press at our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/revolpressAdam Turl is an a…

We spoke to Matt McManus about the dangers of the Radical right wing, covering Trumpianism, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, and much more along the way.We also asked Matt about his writing process, gaining valuable insights into his approach.You can find his book The Political Right and Equality (Routledge) here:https://www.routledge.com/The-Political-Righ…

We talk to Emma Stamm about Mark Fisher, the Limit Experience, Digital Capitalism, internet culture and more. Here are the links to the articles discussed: https://reallifemag.com/who-can-it-be-now/ https://social-epistemology.com/2022/04/18/curiosity-and-anti-economy-a-response-to-florian-jaton-emma-stamm/ http://www.ladeleuziana.org/wp-content/up…

Revol Books launch their Theorize and be Damned podcast with a chat with Bram E. Gieben about his forthcoming book The Darkest Timeline.Preorder Bram's book here: https://linktr.ee/thedarkesttimelineSubscribe to the Revol Press Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/revolpressRevol's Instagram: revol_pressPortrait of Bram E. Gieben in thumbnail by L…

Interview originally recorded March, 2021. Eleven trips to the Mayan region and an investigation of some 35 years into Precolumbian thought have indelibly marked and changed the work of this U.S.-born composer. Haladyna’s Mayan Cycle now stretches to thirty-five highly distinctive pieces, including such titles as Zaquico’xol, El Llanto de Izamal, T…

Interview originally aired July 5, 2021. Joel Feigin is an internationally performed composer, whose operas, chamber, orchestra, and piano works have been widely praised for their “very strong impact, as logical in musical design as they are charged with emotion and drama.” (Opera Magazine). Feigin’s opera, Twelfth Night, based on Shakespeare’s com…

Peruvian immigrant Anaís Azul (they/them) is a California based singer-songwriter, composer, and teaching artist. Described as “stunningly honest and vulnerable,” their artistry engages with music as a tool for community building, cross-genre collaboration, and collective healing. Azul writes music that is in conversation with looped vocal harmonie…

Moths, Clownfisher, Dylan Marx, The Sandman, Oracle of Light, Purveyor of Goods, Great Overtaker, Stopping by for Soup, Standing on the Corner with a Glass of Water, Dumping it out on the Sidewalk, missed the plants, missed the plant, went back, wrote a postcard, postmarked it, forgot to address it, sitting in a big mail room waiting to be sorted, …

We talk with Adam and Tish Turl from the Locust Review quarterly. We discuss the founding and purpose of Locust Review, the theory of Critical Irrealism, and their ever-growing installation in The Born Again Labor Museum. Adam and Tish are longtime friends of the acid left so this is a fun episode filled with laughs. We also speculate what a left w…

In the third in this series Mike Watson talks to Max Ryynänen asking if the Frankfurt School are too Bourgeois. Max is a tenured Professor at Aalto University in Helsinki and theorist of Aesthetics, where he focuses on excluded and outsider practices. He published On the Philosophy of Central European Art (2020), in which he proposes Nobrow art pro…

In the fourth in this series Mike Watson talks to Matt McManus asking if Adorno's criticism of Existentialism in the 'Jargon of Authenticity' was fair. Matt McManus is a Professor of Law and Society at The University of Calgary. He is also the author of... The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism (Palgrave), AND co author of What Is Post-Modern Conserv…

The Acid Left talk to Marshall Roderick, son of Rick Roderick. As well as following up our campaign to get Roderick republished, we ask what the man was like, what he would have made of Biden and Trump, Lefttube and much more ! You can read Max Roderick's text on Rick Roderick here: http://rickroderick.org/max-roderick/ Subscribe to the Acid Left's…

The Los Angeles Electroacoustic Ensemble (LAEE) was founded in 2018 by its core members Zaq Kenefick, Christina Lord, Marcus Carline, and Glen Grey. In this episode, the group discusses how they first came together, their aesthetic goals for the ensemble, their process for writing and developing new compositions, and their debut album LAEE, which r…

In the second in this series Mike Watson talks to Douglas Kellner, author of several books on Critical Theory including Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism, Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond, and American Nightmare Donald Trump, Media Spectacle, and Authoritarian Populism. Martin Jay is George Kneller Chair in the Phi…

In this new series Mike Watson talks to Martin Jay, Historian of philosophy and author of several books on the Frankfurt School including the Dialectical Imagination and the recent essay collection Splinters in your Eye. Martin Jay is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Books and Essays Discussed: Martin Jay, Splinters in You Eye…

We talk to Graham Jones about his podcast Red Enlightenment hosted on Repeater Radio. Red Enlightenment is an 8 part series about science, socialism, and spirituality that draws influence from Spinoza and Marx to Michael Brooks and Mark Fisher while asking questions of metaphysics, ethics, and embodiment in order to move into a Materialist Spiritua…

The Acid Left talk to artist and meme maker Teenage Stepdad about his new show on Means TV called Seizing the Memes, his working process, politics, art school and the media... and boaner jokes! Teenage Stepdad is the person behind the hugely popular insta meme account @teenagestepdad featuring among the best produced memes on the internet most of w…

Daniel Newman-Lessler is a composer, conductor, pianist, singer, educator, and dabbler in watercolor and pastels. His compositions have been performed by players and ensembles across the country, and impressively he has also found repeated success as a conductor and performer. We met at the California Institute of the Arts, where he is currently a …

Andrew Kaluzynski is a composer, improviser, and multimedia artist living in Oakland, CA. Andrew's music endeavors to explore relationships between gesture and feedback, and the effects of aleatoric input on improvisations and compositions. Andrew often employs the use of obsolete and/or idiosyncratic technology as a means of restraint, inspiration…

Alex Hawthorn is an Artist, Composer, and Technologist based in Los Angeles and Brooklyn. His work interrogates notions of archive and memory, bringing together aspects of traditional composition and experimental sound design with elements of photography, videography, and other forms of digital media. In his solo work, he combines elements of old a…

The Acid Left talk to Admin1 of the theory collective Clandestine Unit for Imaginary Research and curated meme page @cu_media_funhouse.exe. We discuss the ongoing protest in Colombia against tax hikes, state violence, and the government's handling of the worsening health crisis. We also discuss the disturbing conspiracy theory put forward by the ri…

Adam Ray Adkins talks to musician and YouTuber Artin Salimi on Mark Fisher, Marxism, Hip Hop, and Islamic Philosophy Sub to Artin Salimi: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpxTegQA3NUq9scE-XQJzww Support the Acid Left on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidleft facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theacidleft/ insta: @theacidleft Twitch: twitch.tv/th…

The Acid Left's Mike Watson and Adam Ray Adkins speak to Art House Politics, artist and 'content' creator about memes, art, content, breatdube, politics online and much more.

Andrew Jamieson: composer, improviser, & bandleader of the Avant-Gospel Trouble Ensemble. We talk about dialogues in music and community, race relations in American music, cultural appropriation, and musical accountability. Andrew even does a live improvisation near the end of the interview! Music Featured, in order heard: Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Tu…

Scott Perry earned his PhD in music composition from UCSB in 2019. He holds a BA from UCSB (CCS), an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, and a MA from UC Davis. His teachers include Beverly Grigsby, Jeremy Haladyna, Kurt Rohde, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Ulrich Krieger, Pablo Ortiz, Mika Pelo, David Rosenboom, Curtis Roads and Clarence Barlow.…

The Acid Left's Mike Watson speaks to Valentina Tanni, author of Memestetica, a book on meme culture and contemporary art and society, published in Italian by Nero Editions. https://www.neroeditions.com/product/memestetica/ Support the Acid Left on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidleft facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theacidleft/ insta: @the…

Jeremy Rosenstock is a composer, pianist, and installation artist in California. In this episode, originally aired 11/30/2020 on KCIA, we talk about his compositional outlook, Simone Weil, socialism, listening to sound on its own terms, a piano department, and many other things. You can also hear some selections of his great music! Pieces featured,…

We speak to author Matt McManus and Tuomas Kuusniemi on Nordic and Western welfare models, 'dignity', agency, gaming and art!Matt McManus a Professor of Politics, from Canada, is a Professor of Politics at Whitman College in the USA and has written several books including The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism (Palgrave), What Is Postmodern Conservat…

Today's episode features Alison Niedbalski and the band she leads "qualia." Alison's music is tagged on bandcamp as: experimental, jazz, progressive death soul, torch gospel, great American songbook, and new wave old fashioned. Some of the things we talked about: covering Captain Beefheart songs, the legacy of Carla Bley & Annette Peacock, the effe…

Tim Rowe is a drummer, painter, video maker. His video series "How to Play the Drums by Tim Rowe" uses all those mediums and others to touch upon subjects from the silly to the historical to the philosophical to the purely musical. We talk about his careers as a drummer & painter, how he makes his videos, why he makes the artistic decisions he make…

Cheryl E. Leonard is a San Francisco-based composer, performer, field recordist, and instrument builder whose works investigate sounds, structures, and objects from the natural world. Her projects cultivate stones, wood, water, ice, sand, shells, feathers, and bones as musical instruments, and often feature one-of-a-kind sculptural instruments and …

We speak to author Ben Burgis on the importance of narratives from medicare for all, to Q Anon, to Vaush's so called 'Super Capitalism', and the Capitol protest.Ben Burgis is a philosophy professor at Georgia State University Perimeter College and the author of the best-selling "Give Them An Argument: Logic for the Left." MAY 2019 He's a weekly con…

Nathan Corder is an Oakland-based composer of works for electronics, objects, and arrays of people. Our chat covered topics like performer agency & control in composition, fixed media composition vs. composing for people and/or objects, and nontraditional ways of conceiving rhythm and musical time. Pieces featured, in order heard: Untitled (for str…

Christoffer Schunk is an artist based in Los Angeles. His portfolio vacillates between audio and theater, resulting in intricately staged productions, films, and sound art. His audio compositions incorporate almost everything: theatricality, humor, strange instrumentation (farts, hunting calls, dolls, to name a few), noise, and many other things. W…

Pander Sera is a noise-pop artist from the LA area. Our conversation touches on topics like practical uses of magic, equipment which grants a view on infinity, gender transition, pop punk as a modern folk music, and many other interesting things. https://pandersera.bandcamp.com/ https://pandersera.com/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd8uxKf6JYUIR…

Memory Leaks Onto The Rug is secretive and anonymous artist who has been recording tapes onto tapes since 2014, these days out of Santa Cruz, California. In this interview, originally aired 10/5/2020, we talk about some of their recent and older music releases, how they make music, names, and about birds and plants and places. Check out their bandc…

Composer/sound artist Dr. Ron K. Sedgwick received his PhD in music from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His acoustic and electro-acoustic works have received numerous awards and have been performed and broadcast throughout the world. He has studied composition with Professors Joel Feigin, Karen Tanaka, Kurt Rohde, Samuel Adler, and el…

Post election special with David Blacker, Professor of Philosophy of Education and Legal Studies at the University of Delaware and author of 'What’s Left of the World' AND 'The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame' and YouTuber Big Bread Brain, who is a Cultural theorist, multimedia artist, and writer.David Blacker: https://www.johnh…

Patrick Talesfore, Jr. is a drum set artist from Sunnyvale, CA. His playing has been described by master drummer Kenwood Dennard as '...cognizant, deliberate, musical...like facing a life or death moment. Passion personified.' Since 2011, Patrick has performed solo and with Cerce, Space Devil Rest in Peace, infant, Nishad George, Dylan Ewen, Sam Mo…

In this episode we are joined by John Duncan to discuss the anti-woke brigade in particular the UK actor turned right wing politician and bad singer Laurence Fox, whether it’s possible to address one’s own white privilege, celebrity politicians, human rights and neoliberalism, and the role of Scotland in the age of European Empire.John Duncan is st…

Mike Watson and Adam Ray Adkins talk to Conrad Hamilton about Tankies, the online left, Marx, Speculative Realism, and consent.Hamilton is co author of the books Myth and Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Petserson and What is PostModern Conservatism. He recently finished writing his PhD thesis entitled Marx Contra Subjectivity under the supervi…

Mike Watson and Adam Ray Adkins host Brian Francis Culkin. Brian is a writer and film director. He has written over 10 books and directed three films. His books include “On Heroin,” “Postscript on Boxing,” and “The Ayahuasca Dialogues”.He lives and works in the city of Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon where he is involved in plant based diet healing …

In this episode of The Acid Left podcast hosts Mike Watson and Adam Ray Adkins talk to artist, meme producer and twitch streamer Joshua Citarella about memes, Cardi B's WAP, Ben Shapiro, Doomer Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.You can read more about Joshua Citarella here:http://joshuacitarella.com/ He streams here: https://www.twitch.tv/joshuacitarella…

Adam Ray Adkins and Mike Watson host Eliot Rosenstock, author of ''Zizek in the Clinic' for the first 'The Acid Left' Podcast.They speak about Zizek, LSD, Lacanian and Freudian analysis, Mark Fisher, mental health, and sobriety.Support the Acid Left on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidleft facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theacidleft/insta: @…

Mike Watson and Adam Ray Adkins host Dr. James Cooke, Neuroscientist, writer & speaker, who focuses on consciousness, meditation, psychedelic states, science and spirituality.You can see more about Dr. James Cooke's work here: https://www.drjamescooke.com/Support the Acid Left on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidleft facebook: https://www.faceb…