Lost And Sound

What happens when a band outlives its own legend and keeps the spark anyway? I sat down with Eric Pulido of Midlake to trace how a group known for mythic, pastoral folk found a new centre after a seismic lineup change—and why the music still lands with the same autumnal glow. Eric takes us behind new album A Bridge Too Far, from sketching twenty ideas to recording live with producer Sam Evian, capturing a decades old chemistry.We talk about stepping into the vocalist role after Tim Smith’s departure and the electric snap that shaped an album that could well have sunk lesser acts – Antiphon. Eric shares how his lyric writing moved toward clarity and truth—naming real people and moments while keeping songs timeless and open to anyone’s story. We go deep on influences too, from West Coast folk and British folk gateways to earlier loves like Björk, and how Denton, Texas, nurtured the band’s early years with a supportive arts scene and real stages to grow on.I love how he talks about touring with refreshing honesty: the fragile math of mid-level bands, why Europe can be more workable than the vast US, and how thoughtful setlists honour both new work and the gateway songs from The Trials of Van Occupanther. There’s a visual thread as well, with Eric reflecting on Midlake’s cinematic feel and recent collaboration with Ted Lasso’s James Lance.If you enjoy Lost and Sound and want to help keep it thriving, the best way to support is simple: subscribe, leave a rating, and write a quick review on your favourite podcast platform. It really helps others find the show. You can do that here on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen.Midlake on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/midlakeband/Midlake on Bandcamp:https://midlakeband.bandcamp.com/musicHuge thanks to Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear and sponsors of Lost and Sound. Check them out here: Audio-TechnicaMy book Coming To Berlin is a journey through the city’s creative underground, and is available via Velocity Press.You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.

What happens when you stop working behind a project name, a pedal chain, or a layer of reverb, and let the music speak more directly? That question runs through my conversation with Alejandra Cárdenas aka Ale Hop. On her latest album, A Body Like A Home, she releases music under her own name for the first time, marking a shift not just in authorship, but in how the work is written, recorded, and left open for interpretation.Alejandra talks through her path from Lima’s punk and experimental underground to Berlin’s music landscape. We dig into how her guitar language has changed over time — moving away from volume and posture toward texture, vulnerability, and even a return to acoustic sound as a way of colouring electronics. She also reflects on production work and imitation briefs as quiet training grounds, and the difference between craft and intention.Alejandra discusses her research and editorial work, including writing and publishing on Latin American women in electronic music, and how archives, data, and community can slowly reshape visibility and access. We also talk about Berlin itself: rising costs, disappearing small venues, and what that means for artists who need space to experiment, fail, and find a voice.If you enjoy Lost and Sound and want to help keep it thriving, the best way to support is simple: subscribe, leave a rating, and write a quick review on your favourite podcast platform. It really helps others find the show. You can do that here on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen.Alejandra Cárdenas / Ale Hop on Bandcamp:https://alehop.bandcamp.com/album/a-body-like-a-homeAlejandra Cárdenas / Ale Hop on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/ale_hophop/?hl=enHuge thanks to Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear and sponsors of Lost and Sound. Check them out here: Audio-TechnicaMy book Coming To Berlin is a journey through the city’s creative underground, and is available via Velocity Press.You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.

Kicking of 2026 on Lost and Sound with a composer who treats architecture as an instrument and refusal as a creative decision. I sat down with experimental composer Lea Bertucci to explore how spatial sound, politics, and process collide in work that feels both ancient and urgent.Lea’s most recent work, The Oracle, is a voice-led album shaped by site-specific acoustics and a climate of Trump-fuelled propaganda and fatigue. We get into the dynamics of spatial sound – how the resonances from recording in a post rainstorm cave in upper New York or in a grain silo in Buffalo can become part of the crerative process —less “reverb plugin,” more duet with geology, history, and weather.Lea also came off Spotify recently, and we go into why coming off this platform was important to her. We talk DIY survival, the role of class in curation and gatekeeping, and how to move between basements and concert halls without losing the hope and humanity that makes scenes thrive.If you enjoy Lost and Sound and want to help keep it thriving, the best way to support is simple: subscribe, leave a rating, and write a quick review on your favourite podcast platform. It really helps others find the show. You can do that here on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen.Huge thanks to Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear and sponsors of Lost and Sound. Check them out here: Audio-TechnicaLea Bertucci on Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/lilbertucci/?hl=enLea Bertucci on Bandcamp:https://leabertucci.bandcamp.com/My book Coming To Berlin is a journey through the city’s creative underground, and is available via Velocity Press.You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.

A decade after lighting up the UK post-dubstep landscape with his own brand of sadness-tinted bright-focus electronic pop, Orlando Higginbottom returns with a new shape and a sharper edge. Dropping the Totally Enourmous Extinct Dinosaurs nom de plume, now as TEED, he opens up about rebuilding a creative life, dropping that Dadaist moniker that became a barrier, and writing Always With Me as a front-to-back album designed for deep listening. We dig into the real cost of momentum, the strange mix of pride and embarrassment that comes with releasing art, and why the only way to find magic is to run through the cringe instead of hiding from it.Moving from Britain to LA, Orlando speaks honestly about confronting British attitudes to success, learning from American civil rights conversations, and the humility that comes from realising how much you don’t know until you leave home.Fans of Junior Boys, Metronomy, and New Order will hear familiar emotional colours in Always With Me: bright, economical production carrying bittersweet lyrics and synth lines that linger. Orlando shares the turning points that kept him going, from burnout after Trouble and industry targets that narrowed his world to a liberating SoundCloud drop that kickstarted a new season of work. Along the way, he offers grounded advice for artists: decide whether you’re chasing quick wins or a lasting identity, share work early, set your rules, and avoid outrage-for-clicks traps because relationships outlast algorithms.If you enjoy Lost and Sound and want to help keep it thriving, the best way to support is simple: subscribe, leave a rating, and write a quick review on your favourite podcast platform. It really helps others find the show. You can do that here on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen.Huge thanks to Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear and sponsors of Lost and Sound. Check them out here: Audio-TechnicaTEED on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/teed/?hl=enTEED on Bandcamp:https://t-e-e-d.bandcamp.com/album/always-with-meMy book Coming To Berlin is a journey through the city’s creative underground, and is available via Velocity Press.You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.

Just as everyone else is winding down for the seasonal break, Lost and Sound returns after my project sabbatical with one of UK club culture’s most vital voices: I. JORDAN.We trace a line from Doncaster fairgrounds and bassline bus journeys to festival stages — and to the 2024 debut album I Am Jordan, which places community, class, and queer belonging at the centre of contemporary dance music.It’s a fast-moving conversation about sound, craft, and care. We talk about why tempo is a feeling rather than a rule, how working at 132–136 BPM can sharpen intent, and what happens when a seven-minute club tool becomes a three-minute vocal track that completely shifts how your body responds.We get into the granular details too: the feedback loop between club and studio, testing dubs on big systems, and the patient editing that turns a drop into a collective release on the dancefloor.Class and culture cut through everything. We discuss reclaiming the much-maligned donk on Ninja Tune as a deliberate act — honouring northern working-class roots while shaping a scene that gives trans artists agency, visibility, and joy. We also talk about why some crowds are easier to guide than others, what truly separates underground from mainstream energy, and how health, sobriety, and touring habits are central to building a sustainable life in music.I.JORDAN on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/i.jordan/?hl=enI. JORDAN on Bandcamp:https://i-jordan.bandcamp.com/If you enjoy Lost and Sound and want to help keep it thriving, the best way to support is simple: subscribe, leave a rating, and write a quick review on your favourite podcast platform. It really helps others find the show. You can do that here on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen.Huge thanks to Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear and sponsors of Lost and Sound. Check them out here: Audio-TechnicaBig news time: If you’re wondering where LoI made a radio documentary with my partner Rosalie Delaney for BBC Radio 3. It’s called Wolf Biermann: The German Bob Bylan exiled by the GDR and it’s on the radio on December 28th at 19:15 UK time: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002npsfMy book Coming To Berlin is a journey through the city’s creative underground, and is available via Velocity Press.You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.

Gwenno definitely lives through her art. I sat down with the musician and producer to trace a decade-long arc from home-built studios to a Mercury-nominated breakthrough, and into Utopia—an album that weaves Welsh, Cornish, and English into vivid, human pop. The conversation opens with a simple idea that grows larger as we go: language changes what music can say. Welsh brings political sharpness; Cornish opens a deep, interior cave of comfort and myth; English, returned to with intent, becomes a map of places, people, and time. Along the way, we talk about recording at home with Rhys Edwards, the porous line between family and work, and why songs feel more vital as the world gets more digital.I found it really refreshing how Gwenno doesn’t hold back when it comes to talking taste, technology, and the future of culture. She pushes back on AI’s promise not with fear but with a clearer definition of progress: if a tool only accelerates the past, it can’t point to new worlds. We unpack Adam Curtis, Mark Fisher, and the feeling of living in a loop, then rediscover hope by looking at how scenes are actually made—people in spaces, collaging references into something surprising. That’s where psychedelia lives for her: in the crack where a wildflower appears, in non-linear time, in the human mistake that turns into the moment you remember.Follow Gwenno on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/gwennosaundersBuy / Listen to Utopia on Bandcamphttps://gwenno.bandcamp.com/album/utopiaIf you enjoy Lost and Sound and want to help keep it thriving, the best way to support is simple: subscribe, leave a rating, and write a quick review on your favourite podcast platform. It really helps others find the show. You can do that here on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen.Huge thanks to Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear and sponsors of Lost and Sound. Check them out here: Audio-TechnicaWant to go deeper? Grab a copy of my book Coming To Berlin, a journey through the city’s creative underground, via Velocity Press.And if you’re curious about Cold War-era subversion, check out my BBC documentary The Man Who Smuggled Punk Rock Across The Berlin Wall on the BBC World Service.You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.

What does it mean to make music that faces the harshest truths while still holding beauty and hope? Peter Silberman of The Antlers seems to have made contemplating this question a major theme of his life's work, crafting albums that dive deep into emotional and existential territories without losing sight of sonic beauty.On the eve of releasing The Antlers' seventh album "Blights," Silberman spoke with me about how environmental concerns and our accelerating consumption have shaped his newest work. Rather than creating music that points fingers, Silberman examines his own complicity in environmental harm. "I hadn't yet heard music that acknowledges this unwilling participation in these problems and the guilt around it," he shares, noting how our modern world makes it "almost impossible not to be part of the problem.”We spoke about The Antlers' twenty-year history, from Silberman's early days navigating Brooklyn's music scene to the creation of "Hospice," often described as one of the saddest albums ever made. There’s something method-like about how he maintains emotional authenticity when performing older material, likening it to "inhabiting a character or persona... playing myself at a different age." Throughout, Silberman's thoughtful approach to music-making shines through, particularly in his deliberate use of quietness and space as counterpoints to our increasingly noisy, distracted world.Follow The Antlers on Instagram: 👉 The Antlers InstagramBuy / Listen to Blight on Bandcamp: 👉 Blight on BandcampIf you enjoy Lost and Sound and want to help keep it thriving, the best way to support is simple: subscribe, leave a rating, and write a quick review on your favourite podcast platform. It really helps others find the show. You can do that here on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen.Huge thanks to Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear and sponsors of Lost and Sound. Check them out here: Audio-TechnicaWant to go deeper? Grab a copy of my book Coming To Berlin, a journey through the city’s creative underground, via Velocity Press.And if you’re curious about Cold War-era subversion, check out my BBC documentary The Man Who Smuggled Punk Rock Across The Berlin Wall on the BBC World Service.You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.

DJ, producer and multidisciplinery artist Silvia Jiménez Alvarez, better known as JASSS, makes work that spans raw industrial intensity, fragile emotional depth, and immersive audiovisual collaborations.Her debut album Weightless (iDEAL, 2017) marked her as one of the most exciting new voices in electronic music, blending noise, dancefloor frequencies and experimental atmospheres. With her follow-up A World Of Service on Ostgut Ton, she expanded her vision into a full sensory world, working with visual artist Ben Kreukniet to create a touring AV show that didn’t hold back.As her new album Eager Buyers emerges, I joined her for a chat about her beginnings in Spain, discovering metal through Soulseek, her journey through Berlin’s underground scene, how discomfort in art can provide a place of joy and the Mark Fisheresque anti-nostalgia that not only pervades her new work but feels kind of zeitgeist in these uncertain times.Listen to JASSS – Eager Buyers  BandcampFollow JASSS on Instagram  @jasss_incIf you enjoy Lost and Sound and want to help keep it thriving, the best way to support is simple: subscribe, leave a rating, and write a quick review on your favourite podcast platform. It really helps others find the show. You can do that here on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen.Huge thanks to Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear and sponsors of Lost and Sound. Check them out here: Audio-TechnicaWant to go deeper? Grab a copy of my book Coming To Berlin, a journey through the city’s creative underground, via Velocity Press.And if you’re curious about Cold War-era subversion, check out my BBC documentary The Man Who Smuggled Punk Rock Across The Berlin Wall on the BBC World Service.You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.

Alexander Tucker sits down with me to explore the twists and turns of his sound on his new MICROCORPS album "Clear Vortex Chambers." Our conversation takes us through a creative rebirth, sparked by crucial production advice from Regis (Karl O'Connor) that transformed his approach to electronic music and helped him to scrap a years work and start again.Like Sudan Archives last week, Tucker is fundamentally a visual thinker – "I feel like I'm a painter and probably never should have got into music" – yet this visual sensibility is precisely what gives his soundscapes such distinctive character. He describes creating music as "digging up a modem or electronic equipment that's all rusted and covered in earth," where "nature has somehow moved in and mutated it." You can feel this fusion of organic and technological elements seep across his work, creating something both familiar and otherworldly.Growing up in Kent surrounded by ancient forests and sandstone formations, Tucker absorbed the layered history of his environment. This sense of "peeling back the past" continues to be an influence, whether working with an acoustic guitar and a 4-track or modular synthesis. We delve into his creative partnerships with Stephen O'Malley, Nick Colk Void and others, with Tucker beautifully describing collaboration as "giving each other these chunks of your life."Whether you're familiar with Tucker's extensive catalog or discovering him for the first time, this conversation offers remarkable insight into an artist who refuses to be confined by genre boundaries or conventional thinking. Listen now and journey through the clear vortex chambers of Alexander Tucker's musical universe.Listen to MICROCORPS:🎧 Bandcamp | Macrocorpse – 2021–2024 | XMITFollow Alexander Tucker on Instagram: 📸 @alexandertucker_oldfogIf you enjoy Lost and Sound and want to help keep it thriving, the best way to support is simple: subscribe, leave a rating, and write a quick review on your favourite podcast platform. It really helps others find the show. You can do that here on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen.Huge thanks to Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear and sponsors of Lost and Sound. Check them out here: Audio-TechnicaWant to go deeper? Grab a copy of my book Coming To Berlin, a journey through the city’s creative underground, via Velocity Press.And if you’re curious about Cold War-era subversion, check out my BBC documentary The Man Who Smuggled Punk Rock Across The Berlin Wall on the BBC World Service.You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.

Sudan Archives aka LA-based composer, producer, performer and violinist Brittney Parks burst out of LA’s experimental electronic scene in 2017 with a distinctly visual approach to music making and a deep love of violin. One of the things that makes Sudan Archives' sound so captivating is her revolutionary approach to this instrument. Learning by ear in church rather than through classical training, Parks developed unconventional techniques through pure experimentation. Discovering that an amplified electric violin produces percussive sounds when struck, collecting "stone age violins" that connect her to the instrument's global heritage, and playing upside down on a stripper pole – these unorthodox approaches have yielded a sound that has moved through breakout moments like Come Meh Way to the upfront party energy of her new album, The BPM.The name Sudan Archives itself tells a fascinating story. Originally a nickname suggested by her mother during Parks' journey of cultural self-discovery, it took on deeper significance when she found striking parallels between Sudanese folk music and other global violin traditions. This cross-cultural connection resonated with her own experience seeking representation as a Black violinist. Though sometimes misunderstood, the name reflects what I really feel is a genuine passion for violin cultures worldwide and her own musical journey.When I caught up with Brittney, she discussed her evolution from bedroom producer to innovative artist, her experience with imposter syndrome at Stones Throw Records, and how her latest work embraces a more playful, sometimes "silly" aesthetic that might surprise longtime fans. "The BPM" drops October 17th on Stones Throw – prepare for a boundary-pushing journey that honors the house and techno traditions of Detroit and Chicago while remaining unmistakably, uniquely Sudan Archives.Pre-order and preview tracks fromSudan Archives’ The BPM hereFollow Sudan Archives on Instagram: @sudanarchivesIf you enjoy Lost and Sound and want to help keep it thriving, the best way to support is simple: subscribe, leave a rating, and write a quick review on your favourite podcast platform. It really helps others find the show. You can do that here on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen.Huge thanks to Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear and sponsors of Lost and Sound. Check them out here: Audio-TechnicaWant to go deeper? Grab a copy of my book Coming To Berlin, a journey through the city’s creative underground, via Velocity Press.And if you’re curious about Cold War-era subversion, check out my BBC documentary The Man Who Smuggled Punk Rock Across The Berlin Wall on the BBC World Service.You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.