Ear Expansion Podcast

Ear Expansion Podcast is a multi-part series of recorded, long form conversations between host LaMont Hamilton and various artists of color working in all aspects of sound. This podcast aims to highlight artists who are invested in the idea of making art that extends the listening experience. Traditionally this has been described as “sound art” or “experimental” work. Ear Expansion Podcast; however, hopes to advocate for a new descriptive language- aural art. Aural Art is a move away from less defined terms such as ambient or experimental in order to specify art made for the hearing body- both the act of listening and its somatic extension.

Ear Expansion Podcast is a arts podcast hosted by LaMont Hamilton, with 70 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

LaMont Hamilton hosts Ear Expansion Podcast, a arts show with 70 episodes published.

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  Episode #71

  Ear Expansion with Eiliyas

  Sep 30, 20261h 44m

  In this episode of Ear Expansion, host LaMont Hamilton speaks with Eiliyas, a Macon, Georgia–born artist based in Berlin for over a decade, about his formative influences (Hendrix, Prince, A Tribe Called Quest), early experiments with mixing, sampling, instruments, and poetry, and the making of The Violet Tape and Basel No as cathartic, voice-fragmented “exorcisms” focused on energy over technical perfection. Eiliyas explains how an accident while recording saxophone led him to feedback as a self-made instrument, evolving into spiritually grounded live pedal-floor performances and 2014 releases Invocation, Encryption, and Crimson and the Indigo, later extending into 2025’s Tithes and its renewed vocal presence. He discusses his exhibition Bugging Out and Cutting the Fool (Holy Ghost Adjacent), shaped by James Baldwin’s “uses of the blues,” layered feedback compositions, visual feedback, and the joyful “Black Twitter Quilt.” He also outlines MixTape Menage’s intimate, rule-light music conversations and Black Communion Berlin’s two-night format fostering black diasporic experimental sonic community.

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  Episode #69

  Ear Expansion with JoVia Armstrong

  Jun 29, 20261h 57m

  In this episode of Ear Expansion, LaMont Hamilton converses with percussionist-composer and educator JoVia Armstrong. In this conversation, they speak about wide-ranging topics from her early sonic formation and major projects to her later immersion in global rhythms. She discusses the ensemble Musique Noire, her first solo album Fuzzy Blue Robe Chronicles, and her performance ethos of receptivity— which led to Eunoia Society and music aimed at deep audience connection. Armstrong recounts encountering the cajón through the work of Susana Baca, learning it on a South American tour, and developing her hybrid cajón kit. Also in this conversation, JoVia explains her use of drones, repetition, deep bass, time-based effects, and hybrid scoring as a way to elicit the therapeutic aspect of sound. Later, they discuss her PhD concept “Black Space,” and its central thesis: composing meditative music through a Black lens to combat unconscious bias (as reflected in her albums The Antidote Suite and Inception).

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  Episode #68

  Ear Expansion with Tongo Eisen- Martin

  May 21, 20261h 31m

  In this episode of Ear Expansion, host LaMont Hamilton speaks with Tongo Eisen-Martin about the revolutionary atmosphere that shaped his poetry and praxis. Tongo reflects on his upbringing in San Francisco within alternative community institutions, and music as a vessel for spirit and a foundation for craft. They discuss imagination made praxis, resisting bourgeois cultural subjugation, police terror and dehumanization, and a relational ethos summarized as “the humanization of others is the only thing that humanizes me,” linked to interconnected reality and craft. Tongo explains his polyvocal, trickster-inflected poetic method and discusses the We Charge Genocide, Again curriculum as a creative, flexible tool for ideological clarity about extrajudicial killings as systemic policy, writing against tyranny toward liberation, and collective survival.

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  Episode #67

  Ear Expansion with Brandon Ross

  May 3, 20262h 16m

  In this episode of Ear Expansion, LaMont Hamilton and guitarist-composer Brandon Ross dive into his expansive musical journey. Ross recounts his early experiences, including self-teaching on the guitar and absorbing his brother’s musical influence, as well as his father’s jazz and classical tastes. He also shares accounts of his first professional recording with Archie Shepp and reflects on formative collaborations with artists like Marion Brown, Leroy Jenkins, Butch Morris, and Henry Threadgill. Along the conversation, Ross speaks about collective listening, generative silence, vibrations, cymatics, chordophones, and composing as affective experiences. He cites For Living Lovers with Stomu Takeishi as an example of a telepathic duo while traversing topics such as his band Harriet Tubman, his research into blues processes in Mississippi, and his later sound-world projects (Pendulum, Phantom Station, Dark Matter Halo).

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  Episode #66

  Ear Expansion with Nour Sokhon

  Feb 8, 20261h 14m

  In this episode of Ear Expansion, host LaMont Hamilton engages in a deep and reflective conversation with sound artist Nour Sokhon. They discuss Nour's journey from visual arts to sound, driven by a desire to capture and archive fleeting moments and memories through soundscapes. Nour shares her personal experiences and the impact of growing up in ever-changing Lebanon and Dubai, which influenced her fascination with capturing vanishing moments. The conversation delves into various projects, including 'Rectification of the Wretched' and 'Louder than Words,' which focus on collective memory and preserving narratives through sound. Nour talks about the emotional and cultural weight of her work, using everyday objects and recording techniques to create immersive soundscapes. They also explore her collaborative piece 'Onion is Definitely Tears,' which uses the onion as a metaphor for layered memories and emotions. The discussion touches on themes of migration and displacement, particularly in the context of the Lebanese diaspora. Nour's work emerges as an ongoing act of witnessing, processing trauma, and maintaining a connection between those who have left Lebanon and their homeland. The episode highlights Nour's innovative approach to sound, memory, and the power of collective narratives in reshaping identities and preserving histories.

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