Latest Cheff Podcast Episodes
Tuareg Guitar Shredder Mdou Moctar Brings the Joy, In-Studio
Soundcheck - June 17, 2024 16:00 - 37 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsThe Tuareg singer and guitarist Mdou Moctar is from Niger, and his music career began with his songs being shared across mobile phone trading networks in West Africa. Now, as an ambassador of the Agadez sound, he plays his songs on the world’s biggest music stages, including Coachella, and, comi...
Electronic Cinematic Pop From the Duo Ringdown, In-Studio
Soundcheck - June 13, 2024 10:44 - 35 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsThe duo called Ringdown makes what they refer to as electronic cinematic pop from Portland, Oregon. But there are also elements of folk and classical music in their songs, which makes sense given who they are. Ringdown is Caroline Shaw, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and musician, and Danni Lee...
Brooklyn-Via-Peru Combo Tipa Tipo Brings the Yacht Rock With Cowbells
Soundcheck - June 10, 2024 16:00 - 30 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsThe band called Tipa Tipo comes from Brooklyn via Peru. The trio plays an unexpectedly danceable mix of tropical Latin funk, cumbia, disco, and yacht rock. With their synthesizers, guitar, and tight vocal harmonies, they offer a kind of retro 70s sound, but with a modern, feminist sensibility an...
Julia Holter's Artful Minimalism and Fluidity, In-Studio
Soundcheck - June 06, 2024 16:00 - 37 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsJulia Holter’s could be in the realm of contemporary classical music, experimental pop, and ambient music. Often dreamy and elusive, her songs defy easy description. As likely to work with adventurous rockers as with contemporary classical musicians, Holter has an unusually keen ear for unexpect...
Guster Slings Hooks and Harmonies, With Bongos, In-Studio
Soundcheck - June 03, 2024 13:43 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsThe alternative rock band Guster, formed over bongos and acoustic guitars at Tufts University in 1991, has built its reputation on their striking vocal harmonies, their close connection to their fans, and their sense of humor. So in the wake of Taylor Swift’s bank-busting Eras tour, Guster embar...
Grace Cummings Channels Emotion Into Powerful Vocal Poetry
Soundcheck - May 30, 2024 15:26 - 32 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsGrace Cummings, the Australian singer and songwriter from Melbourne, has a strikingly rich and commanding voice, the kind that can cut through a big production. Which is good because Cummings has become known for her love of big, dramatic productions and gothic atmospheres. Her new album, Ramona...
Composer and Cornetist Graham Haynes Confounds Expectation
Soundcheck - May 27, 2024 16:00 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsGraham Haynes, the Bahia, Brazil-based composer, cornetist, and bandleader, “expands and confounds what we understand as jazz and electronic music.” His work grows out of a keen sense of New York’s many histories of music and musical movement, (Graham Haynes’ Instagram.) Haynes has played with j...
The Jazz Passengers Cover Themselves, In-Studio
Soundcheck - May 23, 2024 14:58 - 46 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsNew York’s The Jazz Passengers – despite the name – don’t just play jazz. Founded in 1987 by sax player Roy Nathanson and trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, the band has worked with spoken word artists, rock stars like Elvis Costello and Deborah Harry, and theatrical elements that have an almost moderni...
Storyteller and Songwriter Alice Merton Plays In-Studio
Soundcheck - May 20, 2024 15:55 - 30 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsAlice Merton burst out of the starting gate with her 2016 single "No Roots", a song that celebrated her nomadic upbringing in four different countries. Since then, the British-based German-Irish-Canadian singer-songwriter has released two albums of songs with somewhat introspective, perhaps broo...
Kiran Ahluwalia's Songs of Protest and Hope
Soundcheck - May 16, 2024 14:56 - 38 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsSinger Kiran Ahluwalia was born in India, grew up in Canada, and is largely based here in New York. Her music reflects her transcontinental upbringing, as she mixes the sounds of traditional South Asian song forms with Western rock and jazz. A two-time JUNO (Canadian Grammy) winner, Ahluwalia’s ...
Shabaka's Latest Adventure: Connecting to Nature and Breath With Flutes
Soundcheck - May 13, 2024 18:47 - 41 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsShabaka Hutchings, now Shabaka, has been a crucial and connected London-based musician for years, leading arena dance-jazz band Sons of Kemet, cosmic psych-dub-funk trio The Comet Is Coming, and the collaborative band Shabaka & the Ancestors. He began incorporating layered flutes on the last Son...
José James Threads the Past Into Message-Music With Soul
Soundcheck - May 09, 2024 16:00 - 38 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsJosé James has often been called a “jazz singer for the hip hop generation,” having come to jazz through tracing hip hop samples and over the course of twelve records, he’s also incorporated R&B, soul, rock, funk, and Latin music into his songs. While he’s mostly sung his own music over the year...
Community-Fueled Chamber-Pop By San Fermin
Soundcheck - May 06, 2024 16:00 - 33 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsAmerican indie rock-chamber collective, San Fermin, has been making lush, wide-angled Baroque-pop songs for more than a decade. The band was founded by Brooklyn-based keyboardist Ellis Ludwig Leone, who has multiple creative outlets as a songwriter, classical composer, and founding partner (with...
Cameroonian Composer Blick Bassy's Folk, Soul and Electro Songscapes
Soundcheck - May 02, 2024 21:01 - 36 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsFrance-based Cameroonian musician and composer Blick Bassy’s quiet and beautiful songs fall somewhere on the spectrum of R & B, pop, and folk, while the sounds of West and Central Africa have continued to resonate. His Bandcamp calls it "Africanity at the crossroads of soul, folk, and electro". ...
Lizz Wright Transforms the Beauty of the Visual Into Song
Soundcheck - April 29, 2024 16:14 - 39 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsVocalist and songwriter Lizz Wright is usually referred to as a jazz or gospel singer, and she certainly does sing both of those styles. But she’s also comfortable with blues and R&B and the Great American Songbook. Her latest album is called Shadow, and it features striking versions of songs by...
Reyna Tropical's Spiritual Survival Songs
Soundcheck - April 25, 2024 17:55 - 34 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsReyna Tropical is led by guitarist, singer, songwriter and co-producer Fabi Reyna, who is the founder of She Shreds Media, dedicated to women and non-binary guitarists. Investigating landscapes of the tropical diaspora - from Cartagena, Colombia to Fajardo, Puerto Rico and Cuaji (la costa chica ...
Producer and Rapper Erick the Architect Smiles Through It
Soundcheck - April 22, 2024 13:56 - 32 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsBrooklyn-born rapper, producer & founding member of Flatbush Zombies, Erick the Architect released his debut solo LP, I’ve Never Been Here Before, in February. While it’s full of trenchant social commentary, it’s also focused on dealing with loss and finding freedom in vulnerability. The tracks ...
Indie Fuzz-Rock Duo Deerlady's Shoegaze With Bite
Soundcheck - April 18, 2024 22:12 - 33 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsDeerlady is the name of the band led by singer and bassist Mali Obomsawin and guitarist and singer Magdalena Abrego. Mali was part of the folk rock trio called Lula Wiles; then she released her album of Indigenous jazz called Sweet Tooth in 2022, drawing heavily on her Abenaki heritage. Magdalen...
London-Based Naturalist Cosmo Sheldrake's Marvelous Sound World
Soundcheck - April 15, 2024 16:00 - 35 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsLondon vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and producer Cosmo Sheldrake creates songs and sound worlds out of people, places, creatures, plants, fungi, and collected sounds. With his combination of traditional instrumentation and electronic production, field recordings, and both human and more-than-...
Empress Of Explores Yin/Yang of Romance and Plays Intimate Songs, In-Studio
Soundcheck - April 11, 2024 17:55 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsHonduran-American artist Lorely Rodriguez, known professionally as Empress Of, is a singer, songwriter, musician and record producer based in Los Angeles, California. Her albums are full of bright, indie pop that mixes dance music, electronica, trap, and on her most recent album, Latin music. Em...
Welsh Musician and Songwriter Gruff Rhys Coexists and Persists
Soundcheck - April 08, 2024 15:06 - 30 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsWelsh musician and songwriter Gruff Rhys (of Super Furry Animals, the pop outfit known for their catchy songs and weird videos) poetically harnesses both the gritty and the trippy in his own music. But he’s also a composer, producer, filmmaker and author. His latest release, the 25th album of hi...
Genre-Less British Rock Band Bombay Bicycle Club, In-Studio
Soundcheck - April 04, 2024 22:46 - 29 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsFormed in North London, Bombay Bicycle Club is the sound of four best friends finding joy and savoring the connection in making music together and experimenting. They think of themselves as a genre-less band (The Independent), “not bound down by genre in a way that a lot of our contemporaries we...
Singer and Producer Hatis Noit Connects Worlds With Her Voice
Soundcheck - April 01, 2024 20:00 - 44 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsThe Japanese singer/composer/producer Hatis Noit, is originally from the northernmost island of Hokkaido. Her name, hatis noit ハチスノイト, means the stem of the lotus flower and is intended to serve as a connection between the living world (represented by the lotus flower) and the spirit world (the ...
Spanish Singer María José Llergo's Flamenco Has Roots And Wings
Soundcheck - March 28, 2024 15:55 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsSpanish singer and songwriter Maria José Llergo grew up in the region of Andalucia, the home of flamenco music, where she learned violin, and listened to her grandfather sing. From these roots, she grows her own flamenco - and it has "wings" - the sounds of contemporary pop, R&B, and electronica...
The Slow Pastoral Beauty of Roger Eno's Shifting Chords
Soundcheck - March 25, 2024 21:28 - 39 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsThe “distinctive style” of British composer and musician Roger Eno’s slowly unfolding sonic landscapes has “attracted a cult following” (Eno’s bio). As well as first collaborating with his brother Brian and Daniel Lanois in 1983 on Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, he has made over a dozen so...
The Songs and Prayers of Tibetan Singer Yungchen Lhamo
Soundcheck - March 21, 2024 15:24 - 34 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsThe Tibetan singer Yungchen Lhamo was given the name Lhamo at birth by a Buddhist monk. The name means Goddess Of Melody, and Yungchen has spent her adult life living up to that title. After fleeing Tibet by walking over the Himalayas, in 1989, she established herself as a leading voice for Tibe...
Daymé Arocena Infuses Spirituality and Pan-Caribbean Pop Into Afro-Cuban Jazz
Soundcheck - March 18, 2024 15:01 - 32 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsDaymé Arocena, an Afro-Cuban singer from Havana now based in Puerto Rico, has been performing semi-professionally since she was 8 years old. She was trained as a composer, arranger, choir director, and band leader (Wikipedia) at conservatory, in addition to being “a practitioner of the Santeria ...
Sheherazaad's Insightful Blend of Poetry and Music, In-Studio
Soundcheck - March 14, 2024 16:00 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsThe singer and songwriter Sheherazaad blends the rich tradition of poetry and music from South Asia with Western instruments and production techniques. Her new album, Qasr, was produced by Grammy-winning Pakistani-American singer Arooj Aftab, and it offers a subtly colored, moody collection of s...
Composer and Flutist Nathalie Joachim Explores Family and Identity in Song
Soundcheck - March 11, 2024 16:00 - 36 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsHaitian-American composer, flutist, vocalist, and educator Nathalie Joachim is half of the duo Flutronix, whose music blends classical flute playing with electronic sounds. She also played for a spell in the Grammy-winning contemporary classical music ensemble Eighth Blackbird. But in 2019 Natha...
Composer, Songwriter, Flutist Nathalie Joachim Explores the Depths of Family and Identity
Soundcheck - March 11, 2024 15:48 - 36 minutes ★★★★★ - 128 ratingsHaitian-American composer, flutist, vocalist, and educator Nathalie Joachim is half of the duo Flutronix, whose music blends classical flute playing with electronic sounds. She also played for a spell in the Grammy-winning contemporary classical music ensemble Eighth Blackbird. But in 2019 Natha...
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