Music writer Piotr Orlov shares 10 episodes of his podcast Dada Strain Radio of music and interviews about rhythm, improvisation and community. Orlov points out that he wants to want to makes work "that creates musical *and* social connections, in historical *and* contemporary contexts". Also, he wants to "establish the underlying points that 1) free jazz is actually community dance music, 2) great DJ sets are actually improvised performances, and 3) the intentions of many of its most beloved practitioners transcend simple musical 'entertainment'". Episode 2 features the Irreversible Entanglements/Blacks’ Myths bassist Luke Stewart on the anti-capitalist and DIY aspects of punk and jazz cultures which have a lot in common.

"An entire history of innovations in recorded music could be told through the lens of so-called musical mistakes. Do they even exist? At the level of intention, are errors ever actually errors?" - Piotr Orlov writes in a beautiful essay about 'Dilla Time', the new biography of legendary Detroit hip-hop producer James Dewitt Yancey, Jr. (aka J Dilla or Jay Dee) by journalist and NYU professor Dan Charnas. "What might the musical future look like when its supposed mistakes and proficiencies are based primarily on sets of data? ... Aren’t what previous generations’ power brokers dictated as errors turning out to be some pretty decent guides to a mindful development of th

Last weekend British jazz pianist and composer Keith Tippett has died, with Raspberry Fields' Piotr Orlov writing a lovely short text about the musician. Orlov sees him as "an indispensable connector between the post-psychedelic jazz-rock folks, the free-form players, the South African expats who were completely turning the sound of improvisation upside down, and the chaotic big-bands that were striking many different kinds of fancies". Tippet collaborated a lot - with Stan Tracey, Julie Tippetts (his wife, née Driscoll, King Crimson - "his career encompasses many many records and musical turns that are beyond dope, and have seemingly little to do with one another, except that the players on them strangely overlap, and Tippett is often near the center".

"If anyone’s ever made this hard land great in the past, it’s been Black Americans" freelance journalist Piotr Orlov writes in a great essay about Black music - "the first musical art-form original to the United States". It was born of "a desire to express oneself within a society that did not want to hear any of what you had to say. A society that, in many cases, did not regard you as fully human". Black culture, on the other hand, is characterized by - "creation of culture, the strength of moral character, the depth of communal compassion". Black blues and jazz, Orlov argues, is "the basis of all great new music of the last 100 years—paving the way for the post-modern Black electronic music (hip-hop, house and techno and electro) which is the core of pretty much all popular sounds of the 21st century", but "we don’t get to have this music without the burden that preceded it".