The Lydian Spin Lydia Lunch

There is a lot happening at the Lydian Spin! Lydia and Tim are both touring and we're recording and editing the next batch of interviews, set to debut next week. Meanwhile, Lydia, a big Melvins fan, is thrilled about the recent release of their new album, Tarantula Heart. To share her excitement, this weeks episode features a new intro combined with a rebroadcast of an interview with Melvins guitarist Buzz Osborne. This interview, conducted during the peak of Covid restrictions, also serves as an interesting snapshot of where we all were just 200 episodes ago. Enjoy!

The cover photograph for the second and final Richard Hell and the Voidoids album, Destiny Street features a woman standing in the background. For years, this woman was unfairly credited as "unknown woman." However, the truth is that the woman is Anne Militello, who would go on to become an accomplished lighting designer and professor at CalArts. Anne's journey began while working for the now infamous rapist Harvey Weinstein back when Weinstein and his brother were concert promoters in metro Buffalo. Seeking to leave The Nickel City but not yet prepared for New York City, she embarked on a five-day bus trip to San Francisco, packing a tin of pot brownies, which were completely consumed along the way.
Upon arriving on the west coast, Anne leveraged her experience working with lights in college to gain work at a music venue. The manager who hired her was Sylvester, who later became a disco legend. One night outside the Magic Theater, she encountered a man dressed like a trucker who seemed to be out of place and ignored by her cohort of punker rockers. Feeling sympathetic, she struck up a conversation with him.  The man told her he was a playwright and wanted her to read his new play, which she did and really liked. The trucker turned out to be Pulitzer Prize winner Sam Shepard and they became great friends.
With Shepard's encouragement, she relocated to New York City and immersed herself in the theater scene. Over time, Anne established herself as a world-renowned lighting designer, working with luminaries such as David Lynch, Tom Waits, The Wooster Group, and Lou Reed. Today, Anne resides in Los Angeles, where she operates Vortex Lighting.

Meredith Monk is truly an American treasure. She is a composer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist. Her unique contributions to music and experimental theater have spanned over six decades. Meredith's body of work combines elements of music, voice, movement, and visual art.  Through these mediums, she explores the myriad ways one can freely as a human express themselves. Meredith's art has made her a visionary of the avant-garde. We are thrilled and lucky to have her on the Lydian Spin. 

Jeffrey "Chairman" Couch fronts the Portland, Oregon band Nasalrod, known for their frenetic, genre-bending, manic art-punk style. Nasalrod's music attempts to look beyond punk's boundaries, all the while retaining the genre's adventurous spirit. Jeffrey and Lydia crossed paths at one of her last Portland shows, where he invited her to participate in Nasalrod's latest video. Although Lydia declined, she was impressed by the band's music and invited Jeffrey to appear on the Lydian Spin.

 

Dan Levenson is a visual artist based in Los Angeles who engages in installation, performance, video, painting, and sculpture. His artistic endeavors revolve around the concept of an imagined institution, the State Art Academy, Zürich (SKZ). Dan's paintings adhere to the formalist teachings of this fictitious academy, employing metrically sized canvases divided geometrically to produce rational and reproducible abstract compositions. Through performance, installation, and video, he further develops the narrative of this fictional institution. Each painting bears a unique title, symbolizing a student from the State Art Academy, Zürich, with no repetition of names. In 2004, Dan used a computer script to generate hundreds of millions of distinct names by combining surnames from the Zürich phone book with common Swiss first names. From this extensive list, 135,000 names were randomly selected and published in a book, with the titles of his paintings drawn from the same pool in random order.

Berlin based band Cuntroaches is composed of Claire Panthère(drums), David Hantelius(bass) and Martina Schöne-Radunski(guitar, vocals). Together they unleash a ferocious blend of hardcore-infused no wave. Their music is a cacophony of intoxicating chaos. They have a new album coming out on Skin Graft Records.