Randall Roberts

Your occasional notice that each week I build TWO HOURS of brilliant music brick by brick in the hot hot sun and then, once finished, slingshot that construct into the “cloud” via @crstl.fm where it levitates for eternity. Once floating, you can access these things FOREVER via @mixcloud . MAGIC! Links in bio. #MAGIC #sovereignglory #bestmusic #topmusic #forever

Some recent records that are bringing the joy. #vinyl #records #joy

Springtime in the middle lands. #midwest #columbiamo

Your time is precious. Still, give me some of it. Link to the new radio show in bio. #sovereignglory #precioustime #crstlfm

First set of Big Ears: Dither plays Laurie Spiegel. #bigears2026

tomorrow morning's episode of Sovereign Glory on crstl.fm will feature music by Céu, Shane Parish, Autechre, Nubya Garcia, Arvo Pärt, Perfume Genius + Alan Sparhawk, Bill Orcutt, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and more. Mixcloud goes live early morning CST.

𝘑𝘌𝘍𝘍 𝘉𝘙𝘜𝘕𝘌𝘙: Jeff Bruner didn’t arrive at composition through a single lineage so much as a series of converging paths. Raised in Santa Barbara in a household where 78s, classical records and inherited folk instruments coexisted, he moved early between worlds: garage-band bass player, student of music theory, theater composer, experimenter with tape and pattern. By the time he entered UC Santa Barbara in the early 1970s, the academy was still gripped by serialism, but Bruner found his way toward a different current, one shaped by the example of his mentor Daniel Lentz and kindred figures like Harold Budd, where beauty, repetition and atmosphere carried a quiet but decisive force. That sensibility threads through Four Corners, a new compilation on @em_records_japan that gathers work spanning more than four decades, from the late 1970s to the present. The collection moves easily across Bruner’s range: the interlocking, tape-driven patterns of “Magic Mbira,” with echoes of Terry Riley’s cyclical logic; the warped, dub-adjacent “Reggae Foes,” born from a low-budget science-fiction score; the stark, tactile reworking of an American folk melody in “Cold Rain and Snow”; and the spare piano meditation “Remembrance in a Pale Room,” written in tribute to Lentz. What emerges is less a retrospective than a set of coordinates, four points tracing a practice grounded in repetition, timbre and a persistent desire to take music out of the concert hall and into lived space. Read @liledit ’s interview with Jeff Bruner and pre-order the record from our webshop ~ link in bio ~ Record stores can reach out to [email protected] for wholesale pricing!

𝘐𝘕 𝘊𝘖𝘕𝘝𝘌𝘙𝘚𝘈𝘛𝘐𝘖𝘕: @green_house1976 emerged at the start of the decade as the quietly radiant project of Los Angeles composer Olive Ardizoni, developed in close collaboration with Michael Flanagan. Early recordings for Leaving Records established a distinctive strain of melodic ambient music: bright synthesizer figures unfolding in gentle loops, music that seems designed to coexist with daily life rather than dominate it. Over successive releases the project widened in scope, evolving from intimate sketches toward richer arrangements and a stronger sense of narrative movement while preserving its characteristic warmth and clarity. Today the project occupies a quietly distinctive corner of contemporary ambient music. With Hinterlands, released by @ghostly , that sonic landscape widens further. The music still moves with the same attentiveness to texture and atmosphere, but the air around it feels larger, the arrangements opening to new colors and influences. In Sheep’s Clothing’s @liledit spoke to Ardizoni and Cammarata on how Hinterlands took shape, the subtle give and take of writing together and the listening habits that informed it, from the warm swing of Jamaican instrumental ska to the luminous modular jazz of Nala Sinephro. Don’t miss Green-House March 29th for a @livingearth.la session at the Geoponika Greenhouse. Read the interview ~ link in bio ~

𝘉𝘐𝘎 𝘌𝘈𝘙𝘚 𝘐𝘕𝘛𝘌𝘙𝘝𝘐𝘌𝘞: Ashley Capps has spent most of his career building unlikely listening spaces in places people didn’t expect them. In the late ’80s he opened Ella Guru’s in Knoxville, a 200-cap club where Derek Bailey, Steve Lacy or Mal Waldron might appear one night and John Prine or Uncle Tupelo the next. Long before festivals became corporate megastructures, Capps was already thinking about how different audiences could share the same musical space. That instinct carried into the ’90s as he promoted outdoor shows across Knoxville, then onto a farm in Manchester, Tennessee, where he co-founded Bonnaroo in 2002 and helped redefine what a modern music festival could look like. Two decades later his most distinctive creation might be Big Ears, which occurs March 26-29 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Launched in 2009, the festival moves easily between jazz, experimental music, folk, minimalism, noise and whatever else catches Capps’ curiosity that year. Over a long weekend the city fills with musicians and listeners who treat concerts less like events to check off and more like rooms to inhabit. For Capps, who grew up listening to everything from James Brown to Miles Davis to classical records spinning in his mother’s house, the premise is simple: good music deserves the right space, and a curious audience. In Sheep’s Clothing’s @liledit spoke with Capps to learn more about those early Knoxville shows, the strange art of programming Big Ears and why the best listening sometimes happens when you stop trying to see everything. Read the interview ~ link in bio ~

Three honest images and one bit of marketing. #sovereignglory

Sovereign Glory #665 arrives early Sunday morning at crstl.fm and Mixcloud. This week I’m focused on Los Angeles jazz and jazz adjacent music of the 21st-century. Sam Gendel, Jeff Parker, Nate Mercereau, Sam Wilkes, Kamasi, Total Blue, Mary Lattimore and more. Archived on Mixcloud.

New Sovereign Glory radio show live on Mixcloud now. Link in bio. #thehustle #sovereignglory