Lost And Sound
Lost and Sound is a podcast exploring the most exciting and innovative voices in underground, electronic, and leftfield music worldwide. Hosted by Berlin-based writer Paul Hanford, each episode features in-depth, free-flowing conversations with artists, producers, and pioneers who push music forward in their own unique way.
From legendary innovators to emerging mavericks, Paul dives into the intersection of music, creativity, and life, uncovering deep insights into the artistic process. His relaxed, open-ended approach allows guests to express themselves fully, offering an intimate perspective on the minds shaping contemporary sound.
Originally launched with support from Arts Council England, Lost and Sound has featured groundbreaking artists including Suzanne Ciani, Peaches, Laurent Garnier, Chilly Gonzales, Sleaford Mods, Nightmares On Wax, Graham Coxon, Saint Etienne, Ellen Allien, A Guy Called Gerald, Jean Michel Jarre, Liars, Blixa Bargeld, Hania Rani, Roman Flügel, Róisín Murphy, Jim O’Rourke, Yann Tiersen, Thurston Moore, Lias Saoudi (Fat White Family), Caterina Barbieri, Rudy Tambala (A.R. Kane), more eaze, Tesfa Williams, Slikback, NikNak, and Alva Noto.
Paul Hanford is a writer, broadcaster, and storyteller whose work bridges music, culture, and human connection. His debut book, Coming to Berlin, is available in all good bookshops.
Lost and Sound is for listeners passionate about electronic music, experimental sound, and the people redefining what music can be.
Lost And Sound
Kali Malone
What happens when music becomes so deeply personal that it reshapes the course of your life? Kali Malone joins me to explore this through the lens of The Sacrificial Code, the album that transformed her from an underground experimentalist into one of contemporary composition’s most vital voices.
Malone’s approach to the organ exists in a liminal space—both ancient and futuristic. She explains how recording on a 16th-century instrument for the album’s reissue created radically new interpretations despite the composition remaining unchanged: “The music is strictly composed, but the registration and delivery change its identity so much.” You could read it as a poetic parallel to human evolution—our core essence intact, yet constantly shifting.
We dive into the tension between intuition and discipline, a defining force in her work. In an era of relentless digital noise, Malone advocates for silence as a creative act: “Remove all the layers and all the noise, and you’ll slowly start to hear what you feel, what you want, what you believe in.” It’s a philosophy that resonates far beyond music, speaking to anyone searching for artistic clarity.
From Colorado’s DIY punk scenes to Stockholm’s experimental avant-garde, Malone’s journey reveals the role of artistic communities in shaping sound. Her deep collaborations with Caterina Barbieri and Maria W Horn (both previous guests on Lost and Sound) highlight how musical friendships create “secret languages” that transcend time, breaking down artificial boundaries between traditions.
And when asked what she’d tell her younger self? Without hesitation: “You’re not crazy.” A simple but powerful affirmation for anyone carving their own path—where instinct often feels irrational but, in the end, is the most honest route forward.
If you’re enjoying Lost and Sound, please do subscribe and leave a rating or review on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you listen. It really helps to spread the word and support Lost and Sound.
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The Sacrificial Code pre-order on Bandcamp
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Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica
My BBC World Service radio documentary “The man who smuggled punk rock across the Berlin Wall” is available now on BBC Sounds. Click here to listen.
My book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culturet Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more.
Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins
Intuition, silence, limitations, repetition and very, very, very old pipe organs. These are just some of the things I discussed with my guest on the show today, callie Malone. Hey, it's Paul, and this is Lost in Sound, the podcast where we get deep into the minds of innovative artists shaping music today. But before we get going going, just a little shout to my sponsor, audio technica, the global but family-run company that make the headphones that I'm wearing right now, as I'm speaking to you right now, and whose mic you hear me do every interview through. They make studio quality yeah, affordable products, because they believe that high quality audio should be accessible to all. So so, wherever you are in the world, head on over to AudioTechnicacom to check out all of their range of stuff. Okay, let's do the show. Thank you, hello, and welcome to episode 162 of Lost in Sound. I'm Paul Amford, I'm your host, I'm an author, a broadcaster and a lecturer, and Lost in Sound is the weekly podcast where I chat with an artist who works outside the box, from global icons to trailblazing outsiders and emerging innovators. We talk music, creativity and perhaps that most daunting part of being an artist the praxis of life. Previous guests on the show have included Peaches, suzanne Chiani, jim O'Rourke, cozy Fanny Tootie, mickey Blanco and first and more, and so sometimes arranging conversations with guests if they're up for speaking with me, that is can happen really, really, really quickly. It can all come together really quickly, and other times it takes time because it's about waiting for the right moment in an artist's schedule, in an artist's life that they're up for talking about what they do. The conversation I had a couple of years back with Cozy Funny Tutti was an example of that. The conversation I had a couple of years back with Cozy Fanny Tutti was an example of that. Now, that took a couple of years for that to happen, and what you're about to hear today is another example of that. I've been really keen to talk with Callie Malone for a long time, ever since I first started hearing her music, and finally the schedule came together for this conversation to happen. So I'm really excited to share this chat with you Now.
Speaker 1:Callie Malone has, in the last few years, emerged right at the forefront of modern composition. Her album, the Sacrificial Code, wasn't her first album, but it was a total game changer, this kind of deep, slow-moving organ music that somehow feels both ancient and totally futuristic at the same time and it's just about to get a reissue, a modified reissue too. In the time since it came out originally, in 2019, she's continued to evolve, releasing work like Living Torch and Does Spring. Hide Its Joy. Exploring new sonic dimensions. Hide its joy, exploring new sonic dimensions. Callie doesn't just compose music. She crafts entire environments, often playing live on historic organs, in church environments, taking full advantage of the immersive qualities of space, repetition, resonance and tuning, making you listen in a completely different way. And in this conversation we really get into it how she approaches her work, the, the role of intuition and discipline within that, and how music itself can evolve over time. But before we get into it, as always, lost in sound is a one-person operation.
Speaker 1:I'm super lucky to have audio technica sponsor in the show, giving me a little bit of dough to go and make these episodes for you. But I do all of the research, I do all of the interviewing, I do the editing and the releasing all myself and it's a real labor of love. And if you'd like to show your appreciation for what I do, if you enjoy what I do, please do give it a review, give it on a on your platform of choice, whether you're listening on apple, amazon, spotify, wherever you're listening to it, uh, follow the show if you're not following it already. And if and if you and if you really think like this episode really will appeal to a friend of yours, give, send them. Send them a link of it. It's all super, super appreciated. Anyway, back to cali malone. Um, so yeah, I was really excited to have this conversation and we had this on Friday, the 7th of March 2025. And this is what happened when I met Callie Malone. Thanks so much for joining me on Lost and Sound.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:It's great to have you here and so it seems like you're gearing up for a busy period. You know there's the tour. Sacrificial Code is being re-released. Since it originally came out in 2019, it's had quite a considerable impact and it's put you like at the forefront, like a kind of a vanguard of composers, and I was wondering what kind of impact it's had on you personally. Is that record had a particular impact compared to other things that you've done?
Speaker 2:yeah, of course it's changed my life.
Speaker 2:That record, like in a really profound way and I think you hear this with any work that's really personal, that somebody does, that it's it really, uh, set the course for me and helped me through lots of things and also held a lot of premonitions for what was to come, I think.
Speaker 2:And of course it changed my life with my work, where I could, know, quit my day job and start touring all the time and really do music 100% of the time. And I still perform those pieces all the time as well. They're still living and active. They're not confined to that specific time period. They become alive and different every time I perform them on a new organ and there's new reinterpretations of them all the time. So it felt it just felt respectful to the whole process to give it another life and another chance of being out there in the world. And I know it was also really difficult for people to get the record before and it kind of fell into this horrible uh discogs loop of people overpaying for things and I just I just want it to be available for everybody. So that's why we're doing it now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's nice that there's these kinds of motivations for doing it and, um, there's a few things I wanted to dig into there. But firstly, you mentioned about, like, when a piece of work is personal, and you sort of mentioned, like the impacts something has when it's personal. I mean, is that something for you? That, like I mean because there's a bit of a threshold with being able, as an artist, to be able to communicate something personally. Do you feel, like for you, this was an album where you made a bit of a breakthrough yourself in terms of that kind of personal expression?
Speaker 2:I'm not sure if it was necessarily a breakthrough, because I feel like I've been making that same music my whole life. It's like that. That sort of communication and that intention is always there.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I feel really lucky that I feel like there's been some people who have always listened closely and have heard that communication. The sacrificial code just kind of became amplified with how many people that reached Um cause beforehand. If I, if it was just 30 people buying my small tapes, tape additions, I still felt that they heard that communication as well. Um, so I don't know if it a breakthrough is the right word for me, but I'm also have such a strange perspective as being inside of myself that everything feels, you know, continuous yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:It's weird. There's a sort of a weird paradox between things being continuous, because I guess my most recent experience of it was when when my book came out a couple of years ago of something that is continuous, but then also people hear it as, or people read it, in my case, as a book, as a. That's what they see. It's like a finished thing to them, like a part of it I've let go of and sent off into the world, like it's like having a child that's gone off to university or gone on a gap year, and and then the other part of it is like you're saying, you're still developing the work, it's still living with you and I think, for the reissues, well, you've reworked some of the music, including using a 16th century organ for this. Could you tell me a little bit about what prompted this particular reworking?
Speaker 2:Well, on the original version there's a live recording of the sacrificial code and then one that I made on a studio and a very different type of organ and I thought that it was interesting that some people couldn't tell that they were the same piece.
Speaker 2:I thought that it was interesting that some people couldn't tell that they were the same piece and that naturally, whenever you play any piece on an organ it's going to sound so different because of the acoustics, the instrument and how you register the organ and also how fast or slow you play the piece and the piece.
Speaker 2:I gradually started to perform that music differently in the last couple of years and I started to play the sacrificial code with this different sort of registration where I was using blends of fits, so on the organ you can have, like the fundamental pitch and then you can also add different harmonics to that pitch, and so I started to add fits to that and I also started to play it much higher and because usually and it just had this really light feeling to it that brought me such a good feeling and, uh, it was so different than this sort of dirging heaviness that I had played it before and I also play it.
Speaker 2:It's very quiet in the in the room when I play it. Um, the, the stops that I use aren't so loud, so people really have to lean in and sense all of the delicacies of the sound and I just really like to identify with the piece in this way. Now it teaches me something new about it. Like the, the music is so strictly composed but the registration and the delivery and the expression changes its identity so much, and I thought that it's just a. It's very poetic to think about that our identity and expression can change so much, even if the DNA of ourselves or of the music is constantly the same, that there's so much potential for evolution.
Speaker 1:What kind of role did this particular organ play? Was there anything particular about using something so old that gave it something for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this organ is one of my favorite organs. Actually, I was there to play a concert and I had a little residency and I was recording one piece for All Life Long on that organ the version no Sun to Burn for organ. The version uh, no sun to burn for organ. And I was also recording a bunch of music for another record that, um well, it was originally for a retrospective of louise bouchoir artwork at a at a museum in australia, and then I I just thought it was kind of the perfect time to record this new version of the Sacrificial Code, because I hadn't I actually had never recorded the live, the new live version, and I also love that now on the record there's three very different organs from three different time periods and three different tuning systems and I, um, it just very clearly shows the evidence of how much tuning affects the music. And this can be, of course, very abstract for most people who aren't in the whole tuning world. And, uh, and it's just better to show than to try to tell yeah yeah, I understand.
Speaker 1:I mean because there's been other interviews I've read of yours where journalists have gone. I don't know what you're talking about in terms of the tuning and I'm not the biggest expert on tuning in the world. So this idea of showing and not telling, is that something that you found frustrating in the past? Or having this language and understanding of this language?
Speaker 2:I mean, I definitely have been very frustrated when I spend most of an interview trying to talk about it and then the person doesn't mention anything and they pick out weird little things that I said on the side. That's the most frustrating thing is because, you know it, it does. Uh, it takes a lot of work for me to try to um communicate these ideas, and I'm I'm trying not to talk about it too heavy either Like I'm I'm not an not an expert. I I've studied a lot, but I'm I'm definitely not an expert and I think that it's not only technical, it's also it's poetic, it's creative, it it shares. Uh, I think that I've had such a great time talking about tuning with people who aren't involved in music at all people, but they can relate to this idea and other mediums can you give us an example of, like a different medium where you've had a conversation where you found a connection with that?
Speaker 2:oh always. Um well, talking with a lot of visual artists or people involved with architecture, or even just talking with people about it in a way of standardization, is something that has occurred throughout modernity. That has really affected our ways of living and communicating and affected our psychological and emotional makeup as a society, and certainly our harmonic worlds have had a place in that too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so then people can. If they don't understand that and I'm not an expert in it we can pick up on, like through I for you showing, we can pick up on the results of that, just on hearing how differently something is with these factors changed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's funny. When you asked for an example, I immediately thought of I was at this. There's this great punk band in the States called Warthog and I was. I was at their LA show. This was before the pandemic and I was at the after party. And there's this, this like kind of like intense like drug dealer guy who came up to me and I just started explaining just intonation to him and the harmonic series and ratios and he was like so perplexed and so into it and like this is what I mean, like it doesn't really have to be like with like another artist or another musician, it's just like with a curious person yeah, yeah and I remember like everyone just everyone there was so confused like why were you just talking at him for an hour?
Speaker 2:and I'm like, oh, but we were talking about my favorite thing ever. So it's it's a good party trick actually talk about tuning. I recommend that to anybody who has a hard time at parties.
Speaker 1:Just like corner somebody and talk to them about the harmonic series I'm gonna give that a go and actually it does make a lot of sense that a drug dealer might pick up on that, because they're someone who is involved with like ratios and and particular sizes and measuring things out the expansion of consciousness totally that's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, your resident local drug dealer will understand yeah I, I think so I mean and and you mentioned about architecture as well and um, your performances often take place in unique venues, um, quite often churches. I mean, how does like particular, like actual spaces, uh like, impact your music in terms of, I guess more in terms of like feel for you, you know, moving into something, that you know you're transporting your music between different places and each place you know you can control, perhaps, like the resonances of the instruments you're using, but perhaps not so much the acoustic space of where you're going to be. You know, I mean, how much does that play into it for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a really big part of it. It's a huge part of losing control. Like that, playing my organ music involves just showing up with my hands and a notebook and I can't really control anything else. I can control the registration, but I can't really control anything else. I can control the registration, but I can't control actually how the organ sounds. I can't force it to sound a certain way and I can't change the acoustics.
Speaker 2:I can't change the sonography of the church, the sort of etiquette, the I don't know whatever signage is in the area, and it's challenging. But it's also really exciting because I feel like there's always this, this process of remembering why I'm there and like what is the absolute core purpose of this, and it's to get access to the organ and to play my music, and my music might sound totally different. Or it might take me five hours to start to hear my music after trying to play my music, and my music might sound totally different, or it might take me five hours to start to hear my music after trying to play it. I have to discover my music every time and then at one point I find it and it's like oh, there you are, and then I play it and it feels great and I can't really control anything else.
Speaker 2:I know a lot of people are staring at a cross or staring at some really intense religious iconography and I'm not, I'm just looking at my hands. So I don't know what they're, I don't really know what's going through them and I think a lot of people maybe get a bit confused about how to um interpret the environment or they think that it's maybe a really big part of the um art, but actually it's not it's.
Speaker 2:It's that's just where the organ is and the biggest part is, like even before the concert happens, of getting the access and all the diplomacy that goes into being able to even set up a concert, and there's a lot of layers to it. And the same goes in concert halls as well. The acoustic environment is totally different. The visual environment, the etiquette, the yeah, all of the culture surrounding the concert hall is almost as intense as a church, I think, and I'm a total outsider in both of those places.
Speaker 1:So for me and I think a lot of my audience might be or like maybe half of them feel like outsiders in those places too, and so I feel like this sort of silent camaraderie that goes on, like when, when my audience is there and I'm there, I'm like I know we're outside of our element right now, but like, let's just do this and see if we can do it yeah, I mean, I was having a similar like a line of fred uh speaking last year with sarah davachi and I I think I kind of asked her about, like you know, was there a sense of transcendence in being in in like a church environment?
Speaker 1:And she was very much like not in a religious way, not not not whatsoever, but like maybe in terms of, like you know, mentioning some of the things that you're mentioning now about like the kind of like the tuning and and the kind of the space between the notes and the acoustic resonances, and I was wondering what that's like for you. Is there like an external, uh transcendence that can come out of playing in a situation like that that has like nothing to do with religion or you know, but maybe is kind of connected to like a feeling that you have?
Speaker 2:I wouldn't.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't limit that to just being in a church, though I feel like there's a transcendence that happens every time I get to play my music and but that transcendence is not dependent on the environment. It's dependent on my state of mind and my concentration. Because if, if my psychology is working in a certain way and I'm breathing in a certain way and I'm very concentrated and the music is working, then yeah, there's a complete flow state and there's no thoughts for that whole 80 minutes that I'm playing and it's just like purely in the present and doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a thread that connects the music that you make to like so other, so many other kinds of of like like when I, when I speak with like techno DJs, there's a sort of real commonality there in in like achieving that flow state when everything just kind of falls into place and, um, I think that's quite interesting because, again, that's sort of connected with transcendence and something about maybe there's something with like drone and repetitiveness with that. Do you think?
Speaker 2:I don't. I don't know if I can speak to the specific equation that it takes. It takes to that because it's kind of different for every person and, um, yeah, I mean, for me having sustained sound definitely helps as a as a like guiding the attention and kind of creating this continuous feeling of time. So I use it in that way and the repetitive element helps me to kind of overcome my lack of patience as well, where I mean, I'm a pretty patient person but I'm just human and like anybody. You know, if you're doing a repetitive thing, the first few minutes are really the most difficult, um, but then, but then after four minutes it starts to become new again and you discover all these other impressions and details that start to blossom and kind of magnify every time the repetition happens yeah, yeah, I think that's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's definitely a point, like some people do that with meditation, some people do that with. I think you're very lucky if you do that with your work, and I mean, I wanted to talk to us as well, but like, uh, going back right to the beginning, so you, you grew up in colorado yeah yeah, and like how did music come into your life? Did you have a musical family?
Speaker 2:my dad's side of the family are all singers and choir people and I have been, yeah, playing music since I can remember. Um, I remember just like sitting at the piano and playing the black keys when I was really young and feeling so many feelings.
Speaker 2:It's kind of the same. I grew up singing in state choirs and eventually I went to an art school and majored in vocal music and and, uh, yeah, that was always the main part of my life was guitar lessons, singing, playing in bands, going to shows. My parents were not musical, they were um huge athletes actually.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, they really wanted me to be like super athletic and I was just not gonna have it I just wanted to stay at home play guitar, sing were they empathetic to to you taking a musical path yeah, they. I think they understood that there was no other way. They they were like really supportive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do they listen to your music now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they do. Yeah, my dad, I usually send him all of my like mixes years before they come out. He's, he, he's a paraplegic, so he can't travel, so he's never seen me play, yeah, um, and but he's always like, been really attentive and really listening.
Speaker 2:And, uh, during the pandemic I set him up with, uh, sonos station all around his room and there's like a big subwoofer under his bed and and so, yeah, he's listening a lot of the time to the work and it's great, and he's like he became a little bit of an audiophile through it and he's always wanting to talk about sample rates. And my mom, she's been coming to shows the last couple of years, which has just been really wonderful. I, yeah, I was just with her a few days ago and I was telling her about, yeah, for my birthday I'm going to go see my bloody valentine in dublin and I'm so excited. And I was telling her about them, like they're my favorite band, and she's like, oh, let's listen to them. And so I put them on and we just listened to them for like I don't know 40 minutes super loud, and and I was like, do you like it? And she's like, uh, yeah, I don't know what. But then when I turned it off, she's like, where did the music go? What?
Speaker 1:where is it? So?
Speaker 2:I I feel like she, she has the right she's almost there she's open she's open to it, but it's it's so new for her the sort of sounds I think that she doesn't have like the guidebook for, like how to listen or how to approach music without verse, chorus, bridge and more traditional sounds, but she's super open to it still.
Speaker 1:Was that Loveless you were playing.
Speaker 2:I started with Loveless, but then just I went back to isn't anything, I'm on, I'm on an. Isn't anything, pick right now right, fair enough.
Speaker 1:I always end up going back to loveless. I think that is actually like such a melodic record as well oh, oh.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's an incredibly melodic band. There's melodies everywhere everywhere.
Speaker 1:Totally. I feel like to me it sounds like someone's got the, got the, the carpenters and thrown them in a bathtub Not not the actual the people, but like the, the sound. It's just like I hear carpenters level melodies somewhere in that. But you know. So I mean, but yeah, it does take a little bit of unraveling. I remember when I first got into them there was a little bit of like that's what, what are people playing, you know. And then, and then you, just you become accustomed to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what I love about their music is it feels like you are discovering the music, that it's not put on a platter for you but, like with repeated listens, you find the melodies and it's like archeology, like you're, you're, you're digging it up and it's a this discovery that feels really private, like you're the first one to hear it.
Speaker 2:you're the first one to like, realize the, the different, like epiphanies that happen in the, in the music, and there's a little bit of like authorship, I think, in that I love it when you listen to music and you feel like just your discovery and your interpretation contributes to the authorship of it was there a point where you can remember, like the sounds that you, you know you've been the course that you've been on with the sound.
Speaker 1:Was there a point where you felt that things kind of focused into like you as the composer that you are now like, where you found, like okay, this is the sound that I really resonate with, like was there a period before where you were trying lots of different things out and then that sort of fell away?
Speaker 2:in a way, yes, but also not really Like.
Speaker 2:If I listen to music that I made a long time ago when I was really young, I still feel really authentically me in it and I hear little gifts that I gave to myself for me to unpack later in the future and I really feel this with music, that it's kind of been this, this really wise part in me that is helping me navigate, but is it's not my consciousness, it's another part that is sort of giving me everything that I need at the moment and then later down, several years later, I can listen and say, oh, wow, the music knew a lot more than I did at the time and I've always felt that like it's like this little, this little powerful guidance that I've always felt in music, even, you know, as a small kid and as a teenager, when I was, you know, making music and garage band, and I actually a lot of those pieces kind of resurfaced with all lifelong, whether it's the lyrics or just sort of this feeling of um, kind of like time, like there's no linear time in the music, like that artistic and creative expression isn't really about age, it's really just about tapping into and it is always there and it is kind of like all knowing in a sense right a little bit like I can relate to that, like just purely in my own subjective way, in terms of going back to what we're talking about with loveless, my bloody valentine, that you know that it's all there, it's just hidden and it can emerge at different times depending on, like, where we're at with our lives.
Speaker 1:I think, and what prompted the move to stockholm was this, deliberately, because you knew you were going to the royal college of music, or or was there like a a thing to go to stockholm anyway? What? What was the attraction of that?
Speaker 2:oh, there was no thing I did not know about. I I well, I first. I couldn't go to stockholm anyway. What? What was the attraction of that? Oh, there was no thing I did not know about. I I well, I first. I couldn't go to the royal college of music without first becoming a resident. So, oh okay, I, um, I just needed to get out, and I I mean, I moved to another country when I was barely 18. I just like I needed to have my own space fair enough.
Speaker 1:What was the biggest kind of culture shocks for you in, you know, suddenly being on a different continent?
Speaker 2:um, well, first, like the, the best culture shocks was in the music scene in stockholm. I don't know you probably know this. It's like kind of basically written in my bio now but I met Ellen Arkbro when I was at a house show in New York and she invited me to visit her and we ended up living together for like a year and I became really close with her friends and she was part of this amazing free jazz, electroacoustic music scene in stockholm. That was just super vibrant and with such incredible musicians and and people were just really focused and listening so deeply and so sensitive to each other when they were playing.
Speaker 2:And I had come from like the denver underground scene and it was so much about partying and just loud, crazy music and and like obscure shit, but it was, I feel like there was always kind of like a clouded consciousness around it because there was just always this element of um the party going on and I guess it was also uh, it was a very different type of music too, and when I got to Sweden and I just there was kind of this like sobriety and attentiveness and it was like people were.
Speaker 2:Even though I didn't speak Swedish at that time, I felt like people understood me and I understood them way more than I ever knew was possible before, um, and that was through playing music and um, and I just knew I couldn't leave. After I I felt that I just felt like there was this like really like this really strong gravitational pull of fate that I had to go there and stay there and um, I guess that leads into intuition, which is really closely linked to music for me as well um, being able to feel where the music needs to go and and kind of like, find the hunches and take risks, make strong, bold decisions, like. All of that is about like hearing that inner voice and that intuition, which also, of course, goes into life decisions, as well, yeah, I mean, I think intuition is one thing, but knowing what our intuition is, is another thing entirely.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you were giving advice to someone like sort of a younger musician just starting up, or a younger artist like who's trying to figure out what their intuition is telling, or what is their intuition, for example, if I'm making a decision, other things can cloud what my intuition is. Maybe it's like money issues, you know, that make me kind of think, okay, that's the right decision. You know, maybe my intuition is misguiding me sometimes. You know, are there ways that you've divined in your life to sort of know how to channel into what is the intuition for you?
Speaker 2:yeah, I guess the intuition oh, to go into your example, like something like money issues or there's there's kind of uh, limited if we go into limitations, like there's always limitations in life, there's always limitations in every creative practice my, my creative practice I have lots of limitations, but then you see where you can move within those limitations and so first, that's that's okay if you have limitations, and it can even be creative, but the being able to hear your intuition, that's that's really hard, and I think it's harder now than ever with, um, how like people are always talking to each other.
Speaker 2:There's so many impressions online on social media. There's always like a podcast that you can listen to, uh, to not be alone with yourself, and I think, ultimately it's like be inside of your head and talk less to other people about everything you're going through, and and kind of like, remove all the layers and all the noise and then you'll slowly start to hear what what you feel like, what you want, what you believe in, and not constantly get the reflections from society and the reflections from everybody around you about what they think and what they think you should think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you kind of mentioned earlier on about repetition and about getting beyond the initial boredom threshold of that, and I think it may be what you're saying, that there's a similarity in going beyond the threshold of silence. We're societally trained out of doing that. So in a way it's quite weird when you think about it. We're perhaps societally being trained out of our intuition. I don't want to make this like a sort of weird woo-woo podcast, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:no, I I, I agree it takes a lot of uh, and then that's where discipline comes in uh so it's like you have to have discipline to really do anything and nothing comes easy. It's a lot of work and like I feel like even if there is failure, um, from following like your intuition, or if something doesn't work out, it's like at least it was, I followed my intuition, I didn't follow the advice of somebody else that then didn't work out yeah, yeah yeah, it's like a fail, a fail that, if that was to me, happens to me.
Speaker 1:Or when it does happen to me, I can say well, that's a fail that I owned. You know like I'm, yeah, yeah yeah and like because you mentioned a little bit ben about, like you know, in in stockholm um, there was this amazing group of people Some of them might be lucky enough to have had on this podcast, like Katerina Barbieri and Maria W Horn, and with Maria, you know, you formed Ex-Cathedral. I'm sorry about my pronunciation, bad English, you're fine.
Speaker 1:English in 2016. And later on, you know you've collaborated. You know collaboration has been a very, very important part of what you do, and I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about, like, what collaboration means for you. You know, and it obviously seems to be something that has had very important parts in your, your career and progress yeah, the, my, my Stockholm family is amazing and I've been reflecting on it a lot.
Speaker 2:This because now I will XK. We started in 2015. So it's 10 years.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So we're doing, we're planning some events, and it's just so amazing to think about like it's been over 10 years since I've been there but having friends since I was in my late teens, like Ellen and Katerina and Maria, and just that we're still all so close, it's like we're really family and everyone's like taken such different paths and it's so I'm just like so proud of where we're all going and and that we can still just really be supportive of each other and still collaborate.
Speaker 2:Katarina and I just did this huge project for the Venice Biennale last year and we hadn't collaborated since the 2017. But it was just like jumping back into this language that we developed and it was so, so fun to uh, to go into that collaboration again, because I I think, like those those years when we were collaborating 2016 and 17 and 15 too, I guess, or maybe even before that, I have no idea but those were such formative years for us we were like discovering so much music and and creating all of these structures and and uh and we and it was so playful too. Remember we were both really obsessed with uh and probably still are obsessed with kalela and we would sing her. We would sing her songs to each other, but in additive and subtractive versions what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2:so we would take like one line of her song and like each syllable we would sing in additive and subtract, like grow the piece. Yeah, it's like super nerdy stuff, but that was when we were writing glory, this, and then this is this additive and subtractive guitar canon that we made and and we kind of just turned everything into that. Like just becoming obsessed with compositional forms and trying to turn everything around us into that was so magical. And then when we now got to do this project at the Biennale for the Italian Pavilion, we just totally picked up where we left off on and it was so fun.
Speaker 1:I love that about like really long-term friends. You know the secret languages that you have with each other and how they do travel through time.
Speaker 1:Yeah they do yeah, and, and it's interesting, someone says you said about like kalayla and you mentioned about like um. You know about punk bands as well and you, you know there was a time once upon a time where someone that did the music that you do would have been expected to have had a lot more. I guess like sort of like a kind of Western, academic kind of approach and attitude to things. On one hand, you're making music that is taken into the sort of serious, lofty realms of modern composition, but on the other hand, it comes through the lens of someone that lives in contemporary society and you know it experiences life and pop music and experimental culture. You know, have you ever encountered like issues that you felt with in terms of like gatekeeping with, with in terms of, I think, particularly like? You know that there's certain camps and certain camps have particular values, you know, and it is. Has there ever been times where you've encountered, like you've brushed up against things?
Speaker 2:my whole life right okay, I, I grew up in punk music. That's the most gatekept, that and the Catholic. Church is the most exclusive gatekept coded scenes I find a lot of correlation between them.
Speaker 2:So would you say there's been more rules in terms of like the punk scene than there has been in like the more kind of compos kind of compositional scene no, same same amount of rules and I I always uh, yeah, I mean even at school, I because when I was going to school at the royal college of music, my friends that a lot of my friends went to that school too, like maria and katerina and ellen, but we never went at the same time, we were never all there at the same time.
Speaker 2:So when I was there I just I didn't really have any peers that I felt like understood me and there was kind of I still felt I don't know how it is now, but I still felt that the predominant ideas were really stemming from like modern classical music and like post-war serialism and this sort of idea of like the composer creates this arbitrary genius system that they only understand and there's like lots of like gestural sounds that we don't really understand why they have meaning, but the composer does, and if they make a score with enough Italian words on it, then it's legitimate and I just never felt that way.
Speaker 2:I never. I just didn't feel like it actually. It didn't feel honest to me and even in that realm I definitely felt like an outsider, and I still do. I mean, it's, it's amazing. I like being able to play in these concert halls and churches now, but it's it still feels like the beginning, like playing in the lincoln center a couple months ago, a huge, amazing, successful show, but like we're rehearsing in juilliard, and I was like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm doing this, I'm allowed in here Imposter syndrome for sure, but I but I did go through. I did go through the school Like I I did, as you said earlier that a lot of my references are are not from the like Western composition world, but they are.
Speaker 2:That's just not the first ones on the top of my head. Like I did. I have studied classical music since I was a kid, um, but it's not the first it's not culturally where I was like with my friends and where I was spending my, my free time, but of course that music is, um pretty like deeply in me as well.
Speaker 1:And I just sort of, finally, I, finally, I wanted to ask, like if you could go back and speak to your younger self, just as you were about to sort of step into, like maybe a key early point, but before you moved to Stockholm, like before you really sort of perhaps like released anything like what would you? What advice would you give to yourself? You're not crazy very quickly decided on.
Speaker 2:That's good, yeah, yeah I mean, I've questioned my sanity a lot, but I now just really know, lately I've had a lot of things have come into place in my, in my family life, and all of this to be like, oh no, every you're, uh, you're not crazy. This all made sense in a way. There was a lot of risks and a lot of chances and, um, pretty bold decisions, but uh, it was all to survive and uh, yeah, and and like, follow best intuition.
Speaker 1:So yeah, callie, thank you so much for chatting with me, thank you thanks for having me okay, so that was me, paul hamford, talking with callie malone for the lost and sound podcast, and we had that chat on march, the 7th 2025. Thank you so much, callie, for your time and thoughts there. Um, the sacrificial code is reissued on april, the 11th, and callie is on tour at the moment in various places across europe and north America. Check our website out for where and when those concerts are going to be or are happening right now, and if you like the show and you haven't already, please do give it a subscribe. Give the show a rating and a review on your platform of choice. It really, really really does help. It really makes me feel really good as well when a review pops up.
Speaker 1:If you want to check out some of my other stuff, you can listen to my radio documentary the man who smuggled punk rock across the berlin wall by heading on over to the bbc sounds app or on the bbc world service home page, and my book coming to berlin is still available in all good bookshops or via the publisher's website. Velocity press audio technica are the sponsors of in Sound, the global but family-run company that make headphones, turntables, cartridges, microphones, studio quality yet affordable products. I use their products for making this show. So if you like really good and affordable products, head on over to Audio-Technicacom to check out all of their range of stuff. The music that you hear at the beginning and the end of every episode of Lost in Sound is done by Thomas Giddens, hyperlink in the podcast description. And so yeah, that's it. Hope you enjoyed listening today. Thank you so much for listening and I'll chat to you soon. Thank you.