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=en

I. 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-Technica

Big 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/m002npsf

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.

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/gwennosaunders

Buy / Listen to Utopia on Bandcamp

https://gwenno.bandcamp.com/album/utopia

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, 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-Technica

Want 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.

Emerald has built a name as a leading voice representing UK underground club culture, we spoke as she steps into a new chapter as label owner and producer. From growing up as "the laptop DJ" on the outskirts of London to becoming a champion of underground sounds on Rinse FM and beyond.

Standing six feet tall, mixed-race, and bisexual, she describes feeling like "a clumsy giraffe on roller skates" yet transforms this feeling of otherness into her greatest strength. The origins of her new label Precious Stones—named after herself and sisters Sapphire and Ruby—reflect both personal heritage and her vision for music that transcends conventional boundaries.

Throughout our conversation, Emerald dismantles industry myths with a refreshing and down to earth honesty. She questions the often contradictory definitions of "underground" culture, challenges networking norms that feel forced, and advocates for spaces where revolutionism and anti-establishmentarianism can flourish. 

Listen to Emerald’s music on Bandcamp

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, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen.

Huge thanks to Lost and Sound’s sponsor Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear. Check them out here: Audio-Technica

Want 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.

Baxter Dury - Musician, world class exponent of sprechtgasung, debonaire racontuer, immently an alternative English national treasure and a man whose travelled a long creative and life path since appearing on the cover of his Dad, Ian Dury’s New Boots And Panties album. 

“You’ve got to go through your owl turmoil to get somewhere, you can’t be lent turmoil,” he tells Paul at some point of a conversation on a Monday morning where Paul totally lost his questions, veered off from asking him about his new album and it’s distinctive balance of grit and swoon and instead just went with a flow that only a Monday morning could deliver - philosophical, profane and humble all at once. 

Baxter Dury’s new album, I Thought I Was Better Than You is out on June 2nd on Heavenly Recordings. Pre-order here. 

Lost and Sound is proudly sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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Gina Birch is a true trailblazer. Co-founder of the all girl post punk band The Raincoats, the music herself and Ana de Silva headed up, which so often hit the soft spot between experimental, choaotic and melodic in the truest Velvets sense, paved the way for decades of music to come and did so much for female visibility in bands. Along the way, the group picked up fans like Kurt Cobain, who invited them on tour. Now, balancing a life of creativity between music, painting and film, Gina talks with Paul about her debut solo LP I Play My Bass Loud and reflects on everything from seeing The Slits to stilletoes to Zoom ettiquette to creativity.

Gina Birch’s album I Play My Bass Loud is out now on Third Man Records.

Lost and Sound is proudly sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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When Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones make music together as Sunroof,  they sit either side of a table, adjusting the dials of modular synths and they look like two veteran chess players locked into a very long, perhaps even decades long game. Yet instead of being in competition, it’s like they raise each other’s vibration: one making a sound, the other responding. 

Both men have changed the way we hear electronic music in the last 40 years. Miller founded Mute Records initially to release his single Warm Leatherette. He met Gareth when they worked on Depeche Mode’s Berlin-connected ‘80s records. The Depeche Mode records we all like. Gareth has produced songs we’ve all danced to many times: Erasure, Wire, Grizzly Bear, Clinic, Interpol. For decades, they’ve been getting together and making these modular improvisations and have finally gotten round to releasing some of the stuff and it’s really good. 

Paul caught up with the pair to talk about how they work, how they met and what they think. 

Sunroof’s new album, Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 2 – out now on limited edition white vinyl and digitally, via the Parallel Series of Mute

Lost and Sound is proudly sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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Andrew Fearn’s stripped down, austere electro-punk productions and Jason Williamson’s biting yet absurdly humourous lyrics and delivery have been exploring austerity-era Britain, culture, and working class life for over a decade. Collectively as Sleaford Mods, they’ve always done exactly their own thing in their own way but their last album Spare Ribs connected with a wider audience, maybe they’ve even become generational spokespeople in the process too. Add to this, the new album’s title, UK Grim, couldn’t be more apt. Jason and Andrew talk with Paul about their status as spokespeople, humour as a form of resilience, the debilitating effect of the tory government on people and the band's creative process.

UK Grim by Sleaford Mods is out now on Rough Trade.

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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South London-based singer/songwriter, producer, and composer Lucinda Chua joins Paul for a conversation on the eve of the release of her debut long player, YIAN, on 4AD Records. In the past better known for her collaborations with artists such as FKA twigs and for her time in the post-rock duo Felix, her solo work mixes deep introspection with stunning atmosphere. Her NTS show is ace too. She chats with Paul about the scariness of putting yourself out there, authenticity and output and more. 

Lucinda Chua’s LP YIAN is available on 4AD Records from March 24th.

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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Suzanne Ciani is a true pioneer. One of the world’s first synth heroes.  “The diva of the diode.”  Ciani began experimenting with electronic music in 1960s California, at a time when to do so wasn’t just about a new style of music, but about creating a whole new language: a new form of music with this new technology. Like Delia Derbyshire and Cosey Fanni Tutti and many other female pioneers, it’s taken time for the world to catch up and for Ciani to be recognised for quite how significant her cultural contribution runs across how we hear what we hear. 

Now in her mid seventies, she shows no signs of slowing down, she speaks with Paul about some of the key musical moments in her life: California of the 60s, New York of the 70s, the importance of putting emotion into music and her work in spatial sound. 

Suzanne Ciani is touring from march to September this year, check out her tourdates here

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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This week, Paul meets New York-based, Korean-American musician Margaret Sohn aka Miss Grit. Their upcoming debut LP, Follow The Cyborg finds a personal connection between cyborg theory and her identity.  As a mixed-race, non-binary artist, Sohn has always rejected the limits of identity thrust upon them by the outside world, in favour of embracing a more fluid and complex understanding of the self. The conversation touches on Donna Haraway’s 1986 essay A Cyborg Manifesto, which uses the figure of the cyborg to urge an understanding beyond the limitations of traditional gender, feminism, and politics. Margaret and Paul talk about her work, which blends a sonic mixture of machine detail and human emotion, New York living and more. 

Miss Grit’s LP Follow The Cyborg is out Feb 24th on Mute

The single Lain (Phone Clone) is available now

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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The Waeve is the coming together of two unique musical voices - Graham Coxon & Rose Elinor Dougall who've just come together to make a rather deep and magical record together as The Waeve.

Rose - started out in the Spector-eque girl group The Pipettes in the early millennium, has recorded since with Mark Ronson amongst others and her solo music, like on her most recent solo album A New Illusion, taps into a dreamy yet darkly tinged sound with elements like psychedelia, krautrock and folk in the mix. Graham is, what we call in England, somewhat of a national treasure. As guitarist from Blur, he’s been a major creative driving force behind some of the most iconic music of the last thirty years and like Thurston Moore or Jonny Marr, created a real alternative version of a guitar hero, one with vulnerability, angularity and curiosity in place of machismo and pomposity.  They spoke with Paul about how they came together and made a dark, richly layered album, along the way becoming a couple and they reflect on the difficult subject of Englishness, their creative processes and more.

The Waeve’s debut LP is out Feb 5th on Transgressive

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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Lost and Sound is back after a seasonal break, and trying something new: Paul’s first guest of the year is actually a film maker. Isn’t this a music podcast? You might say, but Mark Jenkin’s hands-on approach and unique style, particularly when it comes to sound design, make him, for a podcast that meets outliers, innovators and outsiders, a spot on guest. 
 
Following on from his 2019 black and white Cornish-set Bait: a film nodody could have predicted would have become the hit it was, we spoke about his new offering, the 70s-set folk horror, Enys Men. It’s hauntology on screen: eerie and dream-like. The soundtrack, composed by Jenkin, is stand-alone good - particularly if you’re a fan of disintegrating drones and analogue loops that feel warped into some lost memory. 

Mark Jenkin’s original score for Enys Men is out now digitally on Invada Records. The film is released in the UK on 13 Jan. 

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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Nastia  aka - Anastasia Topolskaia is a true techno outlier, the Ukrainian DJ is one of the most in-demand techno DJs travelling internationally yet keeps it real: her sets are hard, deep and come from an intrinsic sense of movement that is tied to her roots as a dancer. Unlike so many DJs, she has for most part not become a producer, rather concentrating on the dancefloor. She is also known for actively choosing to be selective where she plays, picking good venues with good sound systems over maximum exposure.

Uncompromising and without filter, Nastia talks with Paul about the effects of the Russian invasion, about why she spoke out on social media about Nina Kravitz,  why (connected to this) being honest and being true to yourself are essential to being an artist and more.

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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Kiana Li, the electronic producer and sound artist known as Gyrofield, creates music that steadfastly refuses simple categorization. Growing up in Hong Kong before relocating to Bristol and eventually Utrecht, she began making music in isolation – alone in her bedroom and sharing tracks online. When their parody track “Out Of My Mind” unexpectedly caught fire in 2019, it marked the beginning of a fascinating artistic evolution that continues to unfold in surprising ways.

Our conversation reveals how deeply intertwined Kiana's artistic and personal identities have become. As a self-described "cat-spirited interdisciplinary artist," she discusses how exploring gender fluidity has influenced her approach to creating music that exists beyond conventional boundaries. "What happens when we make identity fluid?" she asks, suggesting that both transness and artistic expression allow people to "possess otherness and turn it into something beautiful."

What emerges most powerfully from our discussion is how music has functioned as both survival mechanism and connection point for Gyrofield. Growing up neurodivergent and socially isolated, creating electronic music offered an essential lifeline. Now, as a respected artist with releases on labels like Metalheadz and XL, she's using her platform to explore complex emotions while still creating moments of joy.

Follow Gyrofield on Instagram:

 @gyrofield

Listen to Gyrofield’s music:

 Suspension of Belief – Bandcamp

 Akin / Mother – Bandcamp

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, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen.

Huge thanks to Lost and Sound’s sponsor –  Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear. Check them out here: Audio-Technica

Bored on the beach? 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.

Lost and Sound is about sharing conversations with the innovators, the outsiders, the mavericks, artists that do their own unique thing and this week’s guest is certainly all of those. Anton Newcombe. 

His musical project, the psychedelic trailblazers The Brian Jonestown Massacre, began in San Francisco in the early nineties. Outspoken and often misunderstood, he is in fact a clever, tenacious and conscientious artist whose carved out a unique DIY ecosystem. Acerbic, unfiltered, honest and funny - he talks with Paul about how he started out, creating musical ecosystems, the importance of being civic minded as the world turns more fascist and the math in his sound.

The 20th Brian Jonestown Massacre studio album - The Future Is Your Past is release date 10th February 2023 and the band are touring in Europe in Jan and Feb, tour dates and album info here.

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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Lafawndah’s The Dawn Of Everything is a song that she says was born between unlearning the past and watching the future unfold and is dedicated to the people of Iran and their bravery in rising up after the murder of Masha Amini. Paul talks with the pan-global, pan-genre artist, herself with Iranian roots, about why it’s important for music to offer solidarity and protest, as she puts it “We have music for when we’re born, we have music for when we die and we have music for when we say no!”

The Dawn Of Everything is available only via Bandcamp for now and all proceeds from sales will be donated to the organisation Human Rights In Iran - persian.iranhumanrights.org

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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Alison Cotton is like a musical painter: using voice, harmonium and viola to create textures that, on her most recent album, The Portrait You Painted Of Me, often hauntingly invoke the landscape of North East England. Paul had a chat with her about how she uses sound and her voice to express herself.

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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To support this show, head on over to Paul’s Patreon at:

www.patreon.com/paulhanford

Ambient maestro Gigi Masin describes living in Venice and always being surrounded by water as making you like a sailor. His seminal 1986 LP Wind was almost entirely lost in a flood in this city, but over the years, his music has continued to find new fans, Gigi’s been sampled by everyone from Bjork to Post Malone and counts Oneohtrix Point Never, Devendra Bahanart and Caroline Polachek as supporters.

A philosphical, deeply empathic human in conversation, he talks to Paul about transforming grief into celebration, and how he did this through paying tribute to his late wife on his new album Vahinè. And when someone whose nearly 70 years old looks and sounds barely 50 - then its worth listening as they’re obviously doing something right. 

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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To support this show, head on over to Paul’s Patreon at:

www.patreon.com/paulhanford

It’s the 75th episode of Lost and Sound, and to celebrate Oliver Ackermann of Brooklyn trio A Place To Bury Strangers gets into a conversation with Paul about the transgressive beauty of night-time and noise, of playing the long game and delivering his own custom made guitar effects boxes across the landscape of early noughties NY. 

The group’s seminal 2009 Exploding Head LP has been deluxe reissued on Mute/BMG along with a Death By Audio custom made effects pedal.

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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To support this show, head on over to Paul’s Patreon at:

www.patreon.com/paulhanford

On the dancefloor and beyond, Steffi is like a swan gliding to her own tune, avoiding superstar DJ trappings, going for quality over quantity. 

In this week’s Lost and Sound, the Dutch selector and producer has a flowy conversation with Paul where she talks openly about the intuition and creativity that has been a hallmark of her style from her early days DJing in The Netherlands of the 90s to being one of the only DJs equally at home in both Panaroma Bar and Berghain.

She’s just released her fourth studio album, The Red Hunter, released on her own Candy Mountain label, her most personal and intricate record yet.

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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To support this show, head on over to Paul’s Patreon at:

www.patreon.com/paulhanford

I’m so tall, I’m so tall. This episode is all about the comeback and consistency. It’s incredible to think that since they reactivated, Neil Arthur has recorded 10 albums as Blancmange in just over a decade. Beginning as a duo (with Stephan Luscombe)  at the dawn of the eighties, their lo-fi experiment electronic pop inspired Mute Records’ Daniel Miller to call them “The Maiden Aunts of Techno”.  Those timeless mega anthems, synonymous with that era like Living On The Ceiling followed, before they called it a day. Then, all of a sudden, 11 years ago, the project materialised again. Paul caught up with Neil, a true eighties survivor on something of a creative roll now.

Blancmange’s new album Private Life is available on London Records.

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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To support this show, head on over to Paul’s Patreon at:

www.patreon.com/paulhanford

Montreal based producer and electronic musician Marie Davidson chats with Paul about her creative processes. Her caustic, often spoken vocals, sung in both English and French, provide a droll, razor sharp counterpoint to the club energy of tunes like Work It and albums Working Class Women and Adieux Au Dancefloor, and recently, her artistic evolution has been leading her music, led by feel, into unexpected sonics. Marie and Paul chat about energy, attitude and instinct in music. 

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

Lost and Sound title music by E.S.O

To support this show, head on over to Paul’s Patreon at:

www.patreon.com/paulhanford

No other DJ epitomises the love of music as music in quite the same way as this week’s guest. JD Twitch aka Keith McIvor  began the legendary club night (and more recently label) Optimo (Espacio) in Glasgow ’97 with Johnny Wilkes to play the kind of music that they never heard out. Now, recently having celebrated their 25th Anniversary, JD has a bouncy chat with Paul about his free and joyful approaches to selecting music, which often hit a unique sweet spot between cratedigging and classics.

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

JD Twitch’s Cease & Desist 002 - Polyphonic Cosmos: Sonic Innovations In Japan (1980 - 86) should be out now!

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To support this show, head on over to Paul’s Patreon at:

www.patreon.com/paulhanford

This week, Cosey Fanni Tutti:  musician, performance artist, writer, an absolute icon and inspiration, not just with music and art but for anyone who just wasn't born to follow the herd. Her work, from Throbbing Gristle and COUM,  to being half of Chris and Cosey, as one third of CarterTuttiVoid and her bestselling memoir Art Sex Music transcend and transgress boundaries. 

Once a cultural pariah described in the Houses of Parliament as a wrecker of civilisation,

she shares reflections with Paul about her new book Re-Sisters, which looks at the lives of three trailblazing women - Delia Derbyshire, Margery Kemp and herself and her new album Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes, about the nature of art and communication and so much more. 

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

Lost and Sound title music by E.S.O

To support this show, head on over to Paul’s Patreon at:

www.patreon.com/paulhanford

Eli Keszler joins me this week to talk about rethinking sound, space, and what it means to create music in an uncertain world. A lifelong percussionist, Eli’s work has often explored the edges of rhythm and texture—dismantling traditional approaches and rebuilding them into something uniquely his own. 

Eli isn’t just a percussionist who produces great albums though. A visual arist and a creative mentor who has collaborated with everyone from Oneohtrix Point Never to Laurel Halo to Skrillex. We talk about how his relationship with the studio has shifted over time, how working in film has expanded his compositional approach, and how speed and density in performance can create a strange kind of stillness. His new self-titled album on LuckyMe marks his eleventh solo release and reflects years of process, reflection, and experimentation.

The conversation also opens out into something I‘m currently really interested in asking artists‘ opinions on: how the function of music itself is changing. As digital culture reshapes how we interact, consume, and listen, Eli reflects on the possibility that music might be returning to something more spiritual, more tactile—more connected to personal and communal practice than product. We talk about the idea of a “humanist retreat” from the frictionlessness of tech, and how creative work might serve as a space to resist or reimagine that drift.

Listen to Eli Keszler’s music:

Bandcamp

Listen to Eli Keszler (2024):

Bandcamp

Follow Eli Keszler on Instagram:

 @eli_keszler

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.

Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear. Check them out here: Audio-Technica

Want 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.

Trailblazing indie icon and now author Miki Berenyi joins Paul for a frank and open chat on the eve of the release of her memoir Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success.

In the nineties, her band, Lush, makers of ethereal, jangly yet citrus-sharp pop music signed to 4AD and their albums Gala and Spooky inadvertently perhaps helped define what was just becoming termed by the music press as shoegaze. Their 1996 album, Lovelife, recorded during the height of Britpop moved the band higher into the charts with the caustic hit Ladykillers - a song which basically pre-dates the notion of the softboi by a good twenty years.

Miki was the cool as flame-haired frontperson of the sharpest indie gang: a little bolshy, cig in hand, spinning dreampop, yet, as her memoir goes into, music was a way of finding her voice and connecting with people through an eventful, unorthodox upbringing. Miki and Paul chat about finding spaces of social connection within scenes, the perils of music press and so much more.

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success

By Miki Berenyi 

Published by Nine Eight Books on 29 September in hardback, audio and eBook

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To support this show, head on over to Paul’s Patreon at:

www.patreon.com/paulhanford

Electronic musician Clark is always redefining his own sonic boundries, from signing with Warp Records at a young age, producing over thirteen albums,  collaborations, remixing the likes of Depeche Mode and Thom Yorke to recently making his contemporary classical crossover with last year’s Playground In A Lake. 

Chris and Paul had an early morning, very flowy, frank and caffeinated conversation springboarded from the reissue of the album Body Riddle - initially released to little fanfare 16 years ago and now regarded as something of a classic and cited by producers including Arca, Rustie and Hudson Mohawke. Chris talks about creativity, validation and rushing your face off to 78bpm music. 

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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To support this show and receive extra stuff, head on over to Paul’s Patreon at:

www.patreon.com/paulhanford

Having Mercury nominated, platinum selling indie rockers Editors on Lost And Sound might seem somewhat a curveball, but then so to is the band asking Benjamin John Power, aka electronic composer and Ivor Novello winning Blanck Mass to join as a full time member. Round about the time Editors were setting indie dancefloors alight with their mid noughties anthems, Munich and Blood, Benjamin was setting volumes alight as half of drone-rockers Fuck Buttons. It’s such an usunual pairing and Paul caught up with Benjamin alongside synth player Elliot Williams to talk about how an epic alt band and an experimentally leaning electronic producer came together on their new album, EBM, about 80s pop and industrial and lots more. 

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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Composer, synthesist, producer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith makes music that blends synthesizers with melodies and connects to external processes in her life like yoga, self learning, science and nature. Her 9th studio album Let’s Turn It Into Sound (released on Ghostly) follows on from acclaimed albums like Ears and The Kid, and her collaboration with electronic music pioner Suzanne Ciani. During the record of it, she dubbed it her sentimental robot drama. She spoke with Paul via the Pacific Northwest to talk about her approaches to music and life.

This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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To support this show and recieve extra stuff, head on over to Paul’s Patreon at:

www.patreon.com/paulhanford

Techno for punks, or punk for techno heads… DJ, artist, label owner Louisahhh makes music that hits the sweet spot between Boiler Room and CBGBs. A native New Yorker now living in France for almost a decade, she chats with your host Paul Hanford about cultural identity, diversity and performative success, the route of her album The Practice Of Freedom, playing great parties and playing not so great parties, and so much more. 

To support this show and recieve extra stuff, head on over to Paul’s Patreon at:

www.patreon.com/paulhanford

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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This episode is sponsored by Audio-Technica 

How does a rising selector with diverse tastes and a busy busy busy schedule keep sounding so fresh?  And what has changed since clubs have reopened? These are just two things your host Paul Hanford gets into with rising DJ Tash LC in the new Lost and Sound. Fresh and revitalised after a summer break and online now.

DJ, label owner, promoter, all round force of musical energy - from her residency on NTS, past residencies on Kiss FM, BBC Radio 1Xtra and long standing show on Worldwide FM, Tash LC lives up to her Insta handle “always listenin / dancin / chattin.”  She’s one of the UK’s most exciting DJs, connecting styles and sounds in a way that unites and melts differences. 

To support this show and recieve extra stuff, head on over to Paul’s Patreon at:

www.patreon.com/paulhanford

A massive thanks to Audio-Technica for  sponsoring this episode.

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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This week on Lost and Sound, Hannah Peel, Mercury 2021 shortlisted artist, composer, producer and late night broadcaster chats with Paul about creativity, inspiration, the importance of finding a balance, Delia Derbyshire, the theramin ban on her score for the new TV adaptation of The Midwich Cuckoos and so much more. 

The Midwich Cuckoos score is out now via Invada Records. Catch Hannah presenting Night Tracks on BBC Radio 3 .

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press

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www.lostandsoundpodcast.com

The sublime sound alchemists Nik Colk Void (Factory Floor, Carter Tutti Void) and Alexander Tucker (Microcorps, Grumbling Fur) talk with Paul about collaboration and improvisation and how both these came together on their new project together, the pulsating, electronic BROOD X CYCLES. This chat goes deep and humanises what might often be considered mysterious arts, revealing in a surpisingly warm way processes that have helped them create such deep music.

Their collaborative album BROOD X CYCLES - Sleep Nameless Fear is out June 1st on The State 51 Conspiracy.

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press

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www.lostandsoundpodcast.com

Barry Adamson chats with Paul about his memoir, Up Above The City, Down Beneath The Stars, which begins before his birth, hearing Peggy Lee's Fever from inside his mother's womb, before going on to chronicle the first thirty years of his life growing up in 60s and 70s Manchester. Barry and Paul chat about this, the three absolutely seminal groups he joined: Magazine, The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds, his solo work, which has been both Mercury nominated and has involved scoring David Lynch's Lost Highway and more.

Barry's 1996 LP Oedipus Schmeudipus (which features Jarvis Cocker and Nick Cave) is getting the reissue treatment on Mute on July 29th.

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press

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www.lostandsoundpodcast.com

This week on Lost and Sound, the very great Lucrecia Dalt. Musician, sound artist and now  composer for moving image. 

She speaks with Paul about her creative processes,  growing up in Colombia,  inhabiting the characters of her beguiling, sometimes otherwordly, sometimes darkly sensual music and how she approached composing  for horror the upcoming film The Seed and TV show The Baby.

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press

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Donate to the show’s production costs the price of a coffee here.

www.lostandsoundpodcast.com

What began with nothing more than a four-track recorder, a couple of "crappy mics," and a friendship forged over Erik Satie records at university parties led to the quietly seminal influence Stars Of The Lid have had over ambient, modern composition and drone music over the past four decades. I spoke with Adam Wiltzie – one half of the project (the other, Brian McBride sadly passed away in 2023).

Against the backdrop of 1990s Austin – a city dominated by rock and country music – Stars of the Lid emerged with something radically different. Their debut album "Music for Nitrous Oxide" quietly initiated a revolution, pushing against what Adam describes as the prevailing white boy funk and laying groundwork for what would become a seminal force in ambient and modern composition. Now celebrating its 30th anniversary with a remastered release, Wiltzie reflects on those early creative days with the late Brian McBride and the unexpected longevity of their collaborative vision.

Wiltzie is so disarmingly unpretentious I almost gulped at one point. "I am definitely my own worst critic and I still love getting bad reviews," he confesses with surprising candor. This willingness to embrace imperfection has fueled a four-decade career spent continually moving forward rather than getting stuck in pursuit of perfection – a lesson valuable for creators in any medium.

Most poignantly, Wiltzie shares how Brian McBride's passing inspired this anniversary project, bringing memories of their formative creative partnership back to the surface. The reissue serves not as nostalgic celebration but as a "time capsule" documenting how two university students with minimal equipment created atmospheric soundscapes that seaped their way into the water influencing generations of musicians working at the intersection of ambient, drone, and modern classical composition.

Listen to Stars of the Lid’s music:

Bandcamp

Listen to Music for Nitrous Oxide (30-Year Anniversary Remastered):

 Bandcamp

Follow Adam Wiltzie on Instagram:

 @adamwiltzie

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, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen.

Thanks to Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear and sponsors of Lost and Sound. Check them out here: Audio-Technica

If you’re looking for summer read and you’ve not read it yet, check out my book Coming To Berlin, a journey through the city’s creative underground, via Velocity Press.

And if you like tales of punks outwitting the establishment, 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.

Rosa Anschütz, artist , composer, vocalist, talks with Paul about rituals, transmedia art and the hypnotically great debut album, Votive, inwhich her voice combines with synthesizers to create something otherworldly and transcendental and, yes, ritual-like. 

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press

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Donate to the show’s production costs the price of a coffee here.

www.lostandsoundpodcast.com

Lost and Sound is back and Paul chats with Matthew Herbert, visionary producer, DJ, writer, all round innovator of sound, innovator of what can be done with samples. Be it making a brass band album about Brexit featuring over 100 musicians from across Europe or working with Bjork and Róisín Murphy, Matthew talks about ethical uses of sound and how stories can be told from the most unlikely of surroundings.

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out May 5th on Velocity Press

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Donate to the show’s production costs the price of a coffee here.

www.lostandsoundpodcast.com

Nightmares On Wax, George Evelyn that is, thirty years into his musical journey, had a mortality scare,  forced into questioning his existence, and what freedom means to different people, has made the deepest NOW album yet, Shout Out! To Freedom. He spoke with me from his home in Ibiza to talk about being present in the moment, about gratitude, and about his early days at the height of warehouse rave, which included having someonce called Sven Vath as your tour driver. 

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The new Nightmares On Wax album, Shout Out! To Freedom, is available on Warp Records from October 29th here.

If you’d like to help fund Lost and Sound for the price of a coffee, head on over to the show’s Ko-Fi crowdsouce. 

Lauren Flax, boundary-shifting New York artist joins me this week for a conversation that really sums up the virtues of sticking to your guns.

Over a long multi-faceted career, starting in the parties of Detroit in the 90s, moving to New York, at one point being half of the project CREƎP with her friend Lauren Dillard, in which they collaborated with singers including Sia and Romy XX, through to making really deep, underground techno, being part of New York’s Bunker crew and her recent transcendentally good Out of Reality project. It feels like she’s reached some kind of crescendo of owning her appoaching to making art.

I loved chatting with Lauren about her journey, connecting on issues around belief and the emotional connection to music.

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Lauren Flax on Bandcamp 

If you’d like to help fund Lost and Sound for the price of a coffee, head on over to the show’s Ko-Fi crowdsouce. 

Marshall Vincent joined me for an in-person conversation to discuss how he uses his sublime alt-R&B to channel confidence, growing up in Chicago, adapting to German mannerisms, the virtues of collaboration and the power of singing in the toilet. His music is so intimate and so sonically expressive at the same time, and in person, he’s suave and witty company, and an inspiringly confident artist. In his own words: “I think when someone’s talking shit, it’s better to embarress them with my talent than in another way, if I can fight my battles on a stage rather than a message board, I’d totally rather do that.”

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Marshall Vincent’s new EP, In No Particular Order, is releases October 15, 2021 on SA Recordings. Here’s the Bandcamp.

If you’d like to help fund Lost and Sound for the price of a coffee, head on over to the show’s Ko-Fi crowdsouce. 

This week, I have an in-person conversation with the visionary Yann Tiersen. 

We talk about his new album, Kerber, which draws on the geography and atmosphere of the remote island Ushant, where he lives. Plus, he shares reflections on the deeper context of where his music comes from, how a life or death situation gave him an artistic epiphany and also, to be warned, what happens if you expect him to play songs from Amelie. It was lovely to have this conversation, and it took place amongst the synth-fest in a forest that is Berlin’s Superbooth Festival.

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The new Yann Tiersen album, Kerber, is available on Mute here.

If you’d like to help fund Lost and Sound for the price of a coffee, head on over to the show’s Ko-Fi crowdsouce. 

This week, J. Willgoose, Esq, from Public Service Broadcasting joins me. On the eve of the release of the band’s new LP, Bright Magic, an impressionistic journey through Berlin. So obviously we had to have a chat, right?

Enigmatic, immersive, atmospheric, each time PBS emerge, they take on a subject and to me, its like falling into a deep book. From exploring the cold war space race so well that Jodie Whitaker would listen to their LP, The Race For Space, to help her get into the zone to play Doctor Who, to tackling the British coal industry. 

Now, J. has made an album about Berlin. It’s got Blixa Bargeld on it, singer EERA the ace German actress Nina Hoss and they recorded it at Hansa, where Bowie recorded Low. J. Turns out to be a charming self-depracating chap and he opens up about the loneliness of being in a new city, talks frankly about finding creative sparks and there’s even a bit of politics too on contemporary Britain.

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The new Public Service Broadcasting album, Bright Magic, is available from September 12th here.

This week, DJ Fuckoff took a break from whipping up storms across parties in Berlin to have a raw, cute and frank in person chat with me. 

Propulsively mixing techno with juke, psy-trance and warehouse rave so potent you can practically smell the heat from the generator, all with sexually empowering lyrics. We met up for a coffee in Neukölln where she opened up about battling incels, the lingering misogyny in club culture and how she nurtures her own energy. In her own words: “I like to make people get out of their comfort zone and I think its important to be pushing this instead of how society is telling women how they should act. I want to fucking break this, I want to push this, I want to test this and by doing what I do and seeing how people react, I see that that’s happening.”

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Check out DJ Fuckoff’s recent streams and releases through her Linktree here.

If you’d like to help fund Lost and Sound for the price of a coffee, head on over to the show’s Ko-Fi crowdsouce. 

This week, I had a chat with Bob Stanley, musician, journalist, author, film producer and one third of the seminal Saint Etienne (the other two thirds being Sarah Cracknell and Pete Wiggs).  

Saint Etienne’s tenth studio album, I’ve Been Trying To Tell You, is out this Friday and we spoke about how it questions nostalgia and asks were the ‘90s as optimistic as we now think of them as being? Their sampladelic debut Foxbase Alpha, up front classics like Only Love Will Break Your Heart and Join Our Club arrived like a melancholic dream years before the hazy electronic beats of hypnogogic pop became a thing. We spoke over a Transeuropean cuppa about the appeal of melancholy, ask if nostalgia is an illusion and  we even share a couple of Carry On style double entendres.

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The new Saint Etienne album, I’ve Been Trying To Tell You, is available from September 10th here.

If you’d like to help fund Lost and Sound for the price of a coffee, head on over to the show’s Ko-Fi crowdsouce. 

This week, I spoke with the awesome Daniel Avery. Producer and DJ, author of the transcendetally good Drone Logic and the now equally amazing Together In Static LP. Coincidentally, although we’ve never met, we both grew up as indie noise kids in the same town and we chatted about this, about his early break as a Fabric resident, his friendship with Andrew Weatherall, how phones maybe aren’t the worst thing in clubs and getting lost, or rather, connecting with every person and every atom,  in the shared clubspace.

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The new Daniel Avery album, Together In static, is available now on Phantasy Sound, listen here.

If you’d like to help fund Lost and Sound for the price of a coffee, head on over to the show’s Ko-Fi crowdsouce. 

How do you make an album through personal upheaval? I spoke with rRoxymore about the process of making her third album "Juggling Dualities" – a work born from the ashes of emotional upheaval and creative block. When we sat down together, the genre-blurring producer opened up with remarkable candour about finding her way back to music through surrender rather than force.

"I couldn't produce any track of music that was satisfying for my standards," rRoxymore aka Hermione Frank confessed, describing the frustration that preceded her creative breakthrough. The turning point came when she abandoned expectations entirely – no planned album, no pressure to deliver a product, just pure exploration. What emerged was something she considers her most honest work, created in a surprisingly short timeframe with an authenticity that surprised even herself.

The conversation ventured beyond the album into rRoxymore‘s journey as an artist – from her early days in France feeling constrained by rigid genre expectations, to finding freedom in Berlin's electronic music scene, to her recent move to a smaller city where she's embracing a slower rhythm of life. Throughout it all, she's maintained a fluid relationship with genre, using it as "a reference point that you'll avoid to go to" rather than a rigid framework to follow.

Perhaps most striking was her deliberate disconnection from digital noise during this period of creation. "I deleted all the socials for a while," she shared, emphasizing the importance of asking fundamental questions: "What do I want? Who am I?" This return to essentials allowed her to follow her natural rhythm – a practice she describes as "maybe financially not as rewarding, but it's so satisfying."

Listen to rRoxymore’s music:

 Bandcamp Artist Page – rRoxymore 

Listen to Juggling Dualities (pre-order available):

Bandcamp – Juggling Dualities 

Follow rRoxymore on Instagram:

 @rroxymore 

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, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen.

Thanks also to this episode’s sponsor, Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear. Check them out here: Audio-Technica

Want 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.

This week, Ramona Gonzales, aka. Nite Jewel. Producer, singer, musicologist. We spoke about how her transcendentally good new album, No Sun, uses Moog and voice and is a break-up album, made largely whilst living on a friend's couch,  but is also part of an investigation into the agency of the female voice through history. As well as this, she reflects on her emergence through the LA scene during the MySpace era and the power of sound making off grid.

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The new Nite Jewel album, No Sun, is available from August 27th, listen here.

If you’d like to help fund Lost and Sound for the price of a coffee, head on over to the show’s Ko-Fi crowdsource 

After a summer hiatus, we’re back. I spoke with Angus Andrew, who for over 20 years and now 10 albums, has been Liars. Always utterly fresh, idiosynchratic, intense and channelling something that seems to come from a realm beyond reinvention. We got into a chat about where this comes from, along the way taking in letting go of musical inhibitions, pcibocylin, drums, the Brooklyn scene, living remotely and way more.

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Liars Website

The new Liars album, The Apple Drops, is out now on Mute.

If you’d like to donate to the production costs of making the show for the price of a coffee, head on over to the show’s Ko-Fi crowdsource 

This week, we zap over to Norway to catch a conversation with producer Stian Balducci and pianist Kjetil Jerve about collaboration, jazz’s origins as a dancing music and their desire to make an “Improvised music of our age”.  Their joint LP, Tokyo Tapes mixes drone, jazz and frequency-pushing sonics and I think its a stunning listen, and before you think that maybe these are some serious dudes, prepare for some surprising music confessions. 

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