Jonathan Williger, Outside Time / Smithsonian Folkways

💭 Thoughts on planting the seeds of creativity, Liz Pelly’s new book, and having an overarching vision-creation process.

Jonathan Williger is a music media & record label “professional,” collector of physical media, Deadhead, and show-goer. He is the founder of Outside Time, a record label & show series based in DC. For the past six years he’s also been the head of marketing at Smithsonian Folkways, the long-running non-profit label in Washington, DC, but before that he was a publicist at Motormouthmedia and Thrill Jockey Records in LA and Chicago, respectively, working with artists like Mount Eerie, Lightning Bolt, Diamanda Galás, Circuit des Yeux, Xiu Xiu, Terry Allen, and a couple hundred more. His proudest professional moments include executive producing the most recent Matmos album Return to Archive for Folkways and the one time Glenn Branca told him he did a “good job.” He also has written about avant-garde, traditional, and improvised music for Pitchfork, The Washington Post, Bandcamp, NPR Music, and a few other spots. Unfortunately he has a pennant in his office featuring John Mayer doing that stupid fucking guitar face.

🎯 Current focus 

I’ve recently finalized the slate of releases for next year for my label, Outside Time and I couldn’t be more excited. There will be six in total, but one that is particularly top of mind for me right now is a project that I’ve been working on with Geologist from Animal Collective, who lives here in DC, and the California-based artist Kyle Simon. In a few weeks we’re going to be doing a private re-staging of a project they debuted at the Integratron in Joshua Tree in 2018 called The Sirens, which will be recorded and released on the label. A few years ago Kyle bought and refurbished an old observatory outside Pioneertown, and during this October’s full moon the telescope will be trained in its direction. The visual signal of the moon in the telescope will be converted into audio and shaped by Geologist’s synthesizers. The effect should be one of immersion into the immensity and mystery of the universe through sound - a very humbling thing. I’ve been recruiting artists with distinct visions for unique and meaningful projects for Outside Time, and this one is emblematic of the kind of listening experiences I’m trying to facilitate. 

🪴 Planting the seeds of creativity 

The completely honest answer to the question of what’s on my mind is parenthood. I’m currently on parental leave from my day job doing full-time care for my three-month old son, Florian (who isn’t not named after Florian Schneider…) so my mind these days is mostly occupied with trying to get him to hold things in his hands and keep the rotation of bottles clean and ready to use. But part of that is playing many records for him, watching which elicit a smile or a squirm, and encouraging him to make sounds to express himself, whether that’s vocally or with toys. It's incredible to see the seeds of creativity first start to root in this kid, and it has done so much to renew my conviction in my chosen path. The joy I saw in him when I played him Reaching Fourth by McCoy Tyner yesterday is the same joy I hope listeners experience when they listen to a record I’m releasing or promoting. 

🎶 Hailstone Temple by Camilo Ángeles & Joanna Mattrey

I’ve spent the summer dipping in and out of a live album called Hailstone Temple by Camilo Ángeles and Joanna Mattrey, two improvisers from Mexico City and NYC, respectively. It was recorded in CDMX in 2022 and released earlier this year by the amazing label Notice Recordings out of Kingston, NY. Ángeles is a flute player and Mattrey is a violist, and they have mesmerizing and complimentary styles of improvisation that are moody and modal, but retain an essential grittiness. So much music that is created spontaneously in these types of settings is boring in its complete aversion to consonance or cohesive tonality, and while there’s plenty of dissonance on this recording there’s also a seeming desire to find a central meeting point. It was recorded in a contemporary art space that is a former monastery complex, and the way the sound reverberates throughout the room heightens its otherworldliness. 

📚 Liz Pelly’s new book Mood Machine

Since I’m relatively couch-bound at the moment, the thing I’m most looking forward to is reading the advance copy of my friend Liz Pelly’s book Mood Machine that she graciously sent my way. I think Liz’s work exploring the social, artistic, and financial impacts of Spotify’s dominance in the music industry has been an essential counter to the complacency that defines much of society’s attitude to streaming in general and Spotify specifically. It’s one thing to hear artists say “fuck Spotify,” but I’m really excited to see how Liz unpacks and examines that simmering rage. One of the things I really appreciate about her work is how she discusses the impact of streaming algorithms on the listener, how they guide subscribers through the infinite maze and encourage passivity. The more the public understands that it isn’t just the artists that suffer at the hands of corporate oligarchy in the music industry, but the fans too, the closer we come to building solidarity and imagining a future where we can do away with the system entirely. 

🧪 Having an overarching vision-creation process

I really look up to Seth Graham and Keith Rankin, the two folks who run Orange Milk, the label out of Dayton, OH. From their midwest HQ they have built a global network of leftfield musicians that are collectively expressing the equal parts joy and discontent that defines living in this hyper-online, information saturated environment. As musicians, visual artists, and label runners they’re incredible world-builders, and all three of those practices feed into one another. That kind of overarching vision-creation process is incredibly inspiring. Seth’s collaborative project with More Eaze, ---__--____, (yes, it’s some dashes and underscores) released an incredible album called Night of Fire this year that is terrifying and beautiful. 

📖 The special power in physical objects

I’m omnivorous when it comes to what kind of media I’m engaging with on a day to day basis, but I will always believe that there’s a special power in physical objects. I can’t do e-books, and really crave the feeling of turning a page, the sound it makes, the smell of an old paperback that reeks of the years it's existed. When I’m reading a book I carry it around with me everywhere I go. When I’m through with it it’s usually creased up, has a bit of water damage, maybe a little bit of food stuck on a few of the pages. I don’t care. It was my intimate companion for the time I was engrossed in it, and it deepens my relationship with the text when I feel like I have a close relationship with the object too. I’m much more careful with my LPs and tapes, but the same principle still stands. I spend so much of my days in the virtual realm that I really like for my leisure activities to feel separate from that. 

🍵 Ito En Oi Ocha-Koicha Bold Green Tea

I drink a massive amount of green tea. Maybe around 5-6 cups a day. Rather than blow my caffeine quota with one cup of coffee right away, I like to spread it out with a constant drip of low-level intake from the moment I wake up until around mid-afternoon. But I think the thing I like most about green tea is that it doesn’t feel like productivity fuel. More often it feels like a tool to facilitate contemplation. I read in Michael Pollan’s book This Is Your Mind On Plants that Buddhist monks started drinking green tea so they could meditate for hours on end, and even though, yes, I end up staring at a computer for most of the day, I like to believe that I imbibe more in that tradition than anything connected to the rat race or daily grind or whatever you want to call it. Recently I discovered the Oi Ocha-Koicha bold variety that Ito En makes, and the intense bitterness is so delicious to me. When I visited Japan last year they had warm bottles of the stuff waiting patiently in vending machines scattered around city centers and I felt like I’d come home. 

Follow Jonathan on Twitter & Instagram and check out his label here.

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