This week I speak to Stanlæy, an artist and musician who combines glitchy, experimental production with intricate compositions, belying a background in classical viola. They love sonic world-building - within songs, and in their physical sound Installations. Their track Fragility, (from their EP “p=arallel u=niverse”) uses digital, broken sounds with fragile vocals and lyrics. A song can also reflect a temporal landscape, tied to a specific period of time, which we can re-enter on later...

This week I speak to singer, songwriter and cellist Ayanna Witter-Johnson, whose music combines classical music with alternative R&B. We discuss her track “Rise Up”, which is both a dance track inspired by Missy Elliot, and a powerful anthem to enact change, which found it’s place in the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. She describes her journey exploring her Jamaican heritage through it’s folk music - how composing and performing are an outward expression of her spiritual condition -...

This week I speak to xyzelle., a soulful alt-RnB singer/songwriter who moved from the Philippines as a child, and we discuss our shared experiences of growing up as an Asian person in a predominately white area. She brings her track “Remedy”, which celebrates finding self-confidence as a teenage girl and a person of colour. We discuss how music can tie you to the place you came from learning to trust your creative instincts and how these lessons bleed over into the rest of our lives.

“What an inspiring conversation!” Those are the last words of this week’s episode, and I’m sure you will be inspired too by Abi Flynn’s ’s extraordinary story and music. Abi is a soul, jazz and R&B singer, with an amazing story. Diagnosed with cancer, and given a terminal diagnosis, she healed, miraculously, after a profound spiritual experience. It’s very similar to my own story, and we explore our shared insights on death, inner transformation. Her song “Courage” was recorded whilst “on...

I chat to Jasmine Crowe, a pop artist, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist from Los Angeles, who uses music to speak about mental health and addiction awareness, which she explores in her first album, “Symptoms”. She brings her track “Sky Is Falling”, a powerful tribute to the death of her father, an astrophysicist, philosopher and musician. We too bring together these paradigms, and contemplate how music fits in. She describes how collaborating on songwriting has evolved her...

This week, I chat to Anusha, whose pop/R&B sound combines her classical training, and her poetry (strongly paralleling my own songwriting background). She brings her track “Someone I Never Wanted”, written about her experience of sexual harassment at university. She describes her struggle to break free of the limits imposed on her by her classical mindset, excessive music theory & the perception of her as a black artist. We also discuss the value of play in a society obsessed with...

This week, I share a fascinating conversation with Grove, a producer and vocalist who combines dancehall, punk, jungle & pop. Their track is “Black”, written about the toppling of the Edward Colston statue, which comes from their “Queer + Black” EP. We discuss what being queer means to them, and how it intersects with their discovery of black culture & history. Our discussion begins with identity, fluidity and self-exploration, through introspection and outward expression - before...

RIZIK is an instrumentalist from LA, whose work spans electronic music and neo-classical piano. Today’s track, “Alone Together (Panorama)” is a solo piano piece. In this fascinating conversation, RIZIK describes feeling pressured into a conventional path by his Palestinian parents - before taking the leap of faith from music marketer to musician. We find a strong parallel here with my own experience, coming from a Chinese background, then leaving Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford...

In this episode we meet Andy Cato, one half of Groove Armada, and discuss his first experience of dance music, the formation of Groove Armada and his transition into regenerative farming. Groove Armada, has been at the heart of electronic music scene for over two decades - touring internationally, playing the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury and founding Lovebox. In this episode, he tells the story of how Groove Armada wrote their first hit “At The River”. It involves a country cottage, a record...

Alt-folk singer-songwriter and old friend Sam Brookes joins me to discuss his track '18 & Sleeping', taken from his latest album 'Black Feathers' (a "meditation on grief") written after the death of his father and a close friend. We discuss depression, healing through songwriting, the magic of live music, the future of the music industry and finding peace in the middle of it all.

Singer/songwriter, speaker, poet, performer (and now podcast host!), this episode focuses on me, Thomas Kam. Beginning as a classical and jazz pianist, I first started songwriting when I began to set my poems to music. After school, I briefly studied at Oxford before leaving to become a musician. In 2017, I was diagnosed with leukaemia and spent 6 months in isolation, during which songwriting became essential to survival. These experiences made me realise the capacity of music to give...

Eli Carvajal writes “connection songs” which he shares in intimate performances, woven with engaging storytelling. In this episode, we look at his track “Mom Song”, about his mom’s story - her transition from being a dancer to being a lawyer, her move across the Atlantic, and her recent heart attack. It was this incident that inspired Eli to write this first song on his new album “Incubabies”, an extraordinary autobiographical exploration of his family history. We also discuss Chinese...

Kathryn Williams is a fiercely independent singer/songwriter who has attracted great praise for her beguiling contemporary folk songs. She rose from relative obscurity in 2000 when her self-released album Little Black Numbers was nominated for a Mercury Prize. In this episode we listen to her track "Heart Shaped Stone", which she wrote whilst on tour, taking her son with her for the first time. We talk about how her songwriting has evolved over her career, writing collaboratively and...

Poet, producer and rapper Dizraeli's work defies classification, straddling hip-hop, bassline, and folk.  In this episode we discuss his track “Everybody Here’s Golden”, about the moment of breaking out of a period of darkness and the feeling of sudden liberation and love for everyone around him. The track belongs to “The Unmaster” (nominated for Worldwide Music Awards’ Album Of The Year 2020) which is based on his experience of a mental breakdown in 2017 and which he describes as a “sonic...

This is the second trailer. Coming soon!

Making Tracks is an upcoming podcast about personal and musical journeys. My name is Thomas Kam Meadley, and I'll be interview musicians about the story behind one of their songs and the role music has played in their lives. I'm really excited to get started and I hope you'll be able to join me!