MUSIC
Adam Ganderson
Tom Fischer is Dead (but still giving interviews)
04.07.08
Though he may blog now at a site called fischerisdead, Hellhammer founding member Tom (Warrior) Fischer, one of the originators of the black metal sound, is still very alive and talking. Adam Ganderson catches up with Fischer on the cusp of the launch of a book about Fischer's short lived, legendary band.
Ben Bush
Interview with Neung Phak (AKA Mono Pause etc)
08.05.05
Ben Bush catches up with Peter Conheim and Mark Gergis of the experimental semi-faux Asian pop group Neung Phak, Mono Pause, and other enigmatic musical projects
Bradford Nordeen
Kelis Has Gone All Fourth Of July On Us Mofos
07.04.10
"Nothing I'll ever say or do will be as good as loving you," croons Kelis on "4th of July (Fireworks)" from her new album. Francis Scott Key couldn't be prouder, were he not some gross ramshackle of bones. Darling diva (and should be bigger, capital D, Diva) Kelis is releasing a new album this week in the States, on the heels of America's Independence Day anniversary (been out in England a month, the LP). Bradford Nordeen looks back on a somewhat checkered career, like a bare knuckled butterfly pretending to be a moth to the fame flame…(ok blame us for that lame analogy). Nevermind…All hail Kelis! Torch the neighbors' houses with bottle rockets!
Brandon Stosuy
Interview with Carl Newman
07.21.05
From the New Pornographers to A.C. Newman, Carl Newman is one of rock's most fiery and proficient talents. Brandon Stosuy finds the Canadian in San Francisco and talks to him about everything from burritos to Borges.
Brian Howe
Ignition, Orbit & Landfall: A Liars Synopsis
10.18.07
Brian Howe writes the LP narrative thus far of one of Brooklyn's defining bands, Liars, a group defined by their undefinable music. Liars (now spread between L.A. and Berlin) are starting to make some sense. With a driving, almost pop-oriented new album that's more coherent than anything they've done prior, Liars have once again fooled us all. What's in that name anyway, Liars? Has it ever sounded so sweet?
Chelsea Martin
Josiah Wolf: Jet Lag (Anticon)
03.10.10
On the most recent WHY? album frontman Yoni Wolf sings, "I know saying all this in public oughta make me feel funny/but you gotta yell something out you'd never tell nobody." After five years as a backing multi-instrumentalist in his brother's band, Josiah Wolf, a classically trained drummer capable of some incredible riffs, is speaking his mind in his first solo album. Through a multitude of overdubs, Josiah played all of instruments on this sonic exploration of the dissolution of his 11-year marriage. Chelsea Martin, author of Everything Was Fine Until Whatever, interviewed Wolf and finds much to praise in the album but wonders whether the anxiety over the novel being supplanted by the memoir has its parallel in music.
Christian Williams
Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps): Animal Collective's Oddsac, John Zorn's Astronome, and Candian Hipster Comic Opus Ivory Tower
09.28.10
These three DVD releases have their origins with the work of musicians but each one mutates into something hard to define. Christian Williams explains about the canoeing undead, how to masturbate with a pepper mill and Gandhi's approach to the art of chess.
Christina Lee
Los Campesinos! Hello Sadness
11.14.11
Faux-Welsh rockers Los Campesinos! release their third album, Hello Sadness, and Christina Lee gives her read of a geography peppered with the gouges and striations and lacunae of their maturing consciousness. And if you want to read more, try their quarterly fanzine(!) Heat Rash.
Claire Donato
Enough, enough, enough, enough enough: Perfume Genius' Unlearning
08.28.10
Often appearing bare-chested in his homemade music videos and promo photos, 26-year-old Mike Hadreas, who performs under the name Perfume Genius, seems to have become something of an internet gay pin-up icon. At the same time, it's an appropriate image to represent his vulnerable, emotionally volatile songwriting, which has attracted praise from captivating bay area songwriter Xiu Xiu and British band Los Campesinos! Through his music, poet Claire Donato investigates how repetition — in storytelling, memory and melody — can soothe a traumatic past.
Daniel Nester
Daniel Nester Reviews His Friend Eric's External Hard Drive
09.16.10
Like Janus, the two-headed Roman god who could see the future and the past, Daniel Nester, author of How to Be Inappropriate, both eulogizes the record stores that appear in his recurring dreams and reviews his friend Eric's external music hard drive. Bands discussed include San Diego math-rockers Thingy, Terence Trent D'Arby, Gary Numan, David Pajo's Aerial M, two-tone ska, Sun Ra, Judas Priest, post-Sony Prince, Ultravox and Judy Collins. In a way this is a follow-up to Dutch cut'n'paste pop star Solex's recent review of her own Pandora station, the music is reviewed not as albums, but in the way we now most frequently experience it—as streaming sound or blocks of data.
Elisabeth Esselink
Solex vs. Pandora: Elisabeth Esselink Reviews Her Own Pandora Station
07.06.10
Dutch musician Solex a.k.a Elisabeth Esselink reviews her own Pandora radio station. Solex's sample-based albums are not to be missed. Low Kick, Hard Bop is filled with thwarted, fractured jazz, while on The Laughingstock of Indie Rock she samples and duets with recordings of a man she'd never met who sent her his accapella rendition of the entire White Album. Esselink is also a former record store owner, which made her seem an ideal person to evaluate Pandora — a company that, after years of losing money hand over fist, has recently become one of the few entities in the music industry to turn a profit. Solex also has a new album out - Amsterdam Throwdown, King Street Showdown, a collaboration with Jon Spencer of the Blues Explosion and Christina Martinez of Boss Hog, featuring this stylin' video.
Grant Weber
Dinosaur Jr. - Farm
06.27.09
While Beyond may have thrown everyone for a loop that one of the nastiest divorces in rock history was suddenly caput (it was like Burton had returned to Taylor again, and the chemistry was off the charts) - Farm, Dinosaur Jr.'s latest shows maybe there's no surprises anymore, except that Mascis and crew keep proving louder, stronger and lovelier that they are one of rock's greatest bands...ever. Take out them earplugs son, let the damage wash beautifully over you. Grant Weber reviews.
Jason McBride
Interview: Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene
09.09.05
Jason McBride talks to Kevin Drew, one of the members of Broken Social Scene about Tolkien, Goonies, first sex and heroes.
Jeff Rovinelli
Repetition with Variation: The Sound of an Electronic Summer -- Tobacco "Maniac Meat," The Books "The Way Out," Autechre "Move of Ten" and Matmos / So Percussion "Treasure State"
08.30.10
In Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, Douglas says to his 10-year-old brother Tom: "You realize that every summer we do the same thing over and over. . . like making dandelion wine, like buying new tennis shoes, like shooting off the first firecracker of the year, like making lemonade, like getting slivers in our feet, like picking wild fox grapes. Every year the same things, the same way, no change, no difference. That's one half of summer, Tom." But the other half of the summer, they soon realize, is things you do for the first time. Jeff Rovinelli of Tiny Mix Tapes takes on four of this summer's most interesting experimental electronic music albums, looking at the limitations of having an established sound and the possibilities for expanding, altering and incorporating new methods within that.
Jeff T. Johnson
As We Here: Destroyer, Kaputt (double-LP vinyl issue)
03.04.11
Jeff T. Johnson reviews the double LP release of Destroyer's Kaputt. More than a recount of Dan Bejar's usual brilliance & heavy thoughts on a record of smoother than usual vibes - with this special edition, we look inside the songster's ellipses: "If most lyric sheets disappoint because they banalize the vocals, Kaputt’s sheet is a fair representation—or recollection—of what goes on on the album," Johnson riffs alongside/through Bejar.
Luis H. Francia
When Disco Was the Soundtrack to Martial Law: David Byrne, Fatboy Slim and Imelda Marcos
05.04.10
During the 1970s, disco was wildly popular in the Philipines. Imelda Marcos had a dance floor complete with mirror ball built on the roof of the presidential palace and when visiting New York made appearances at Studio 54. Fittingly David Byrne's double album musical biography of Imelda is backed by the clubby beats of Norman Cook/Fatboy Slim. While Luis Francia finds much to like in the music, he asks whether the project called for a darker edge. Is Here Lies Love an epitaph for Imelda's tombstone or for those of the unknown numbers killed by the Marcos regime?
Mark Asch
Hallelujah and Hail Satan
04.25.08
It's not unusual for a rock musician—like Robert Johnson playing the blues—to have sympathy for the Devil. Mark Asch takes us to the crossroads, where Black Sabbath, The Mountain Goats's John Darnielle, and the Man of Wealth and Taste himself commune.
Mark Gluth
Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer
07.19.09
Quebecois maestro Spencer Krug of the indie avatars Wolf Parade and Frog Eyes also heads up the narrative minded (and now pretty much band-like) unit Sunset Rubdown, which has just released its fourth album, Dragonslayer. Mark Gluth, keeper of the blog Joyful Thing and author of the upcoming book The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis from Akashic Books' Little House on The Bowery series, reviews.
Michael Louie
The Rambler
11.17.05
This piece is coming a little late, but Mike Louie and I have been in transit, not unlike the members of the Bay Area supergroup Universe, aboard the goodship Rambler - with their utopian portable star music for the masses.
Mike Powell
John Cage's 95th
09.20.07
...birthday that is. Mike Powell attended a memorial for the legendary composer at NYC's Kitchen this September 5th. While he forgot to bring us back any of Yoko's flowers from the event, he did deliver us a nice reflection on it.
Nick Attfield
Dinosaur Jr.'s You're Living All Over Me from Continuum's 33 1/3 Series
06.13.11
In this excerpt from the latest in Continuum's 33 1/3 series, Nick Attfield reaches for the truth of Dinosaur Jr.'s 1987 album You're Living All Over Me only to learn how lyrical ambiguity can put a live rabbit in a man's mouth. Attfield is usually found at Oxford specializing in the cultural and political contexts of 19th and 20th century German and Austrian music. You can also read the opening chapter of Attfield's book on the 33 1/3 blog.
Nick Sylvester
The Braffing of Daft Punk or...
08.19.07
Editing Nick's piece, I had to ask him what "Braffed" meant. He replied in an email that "to be Braffed is a sideways reference to Garden State and Zach Braff and 'The Shins will change your life' line - any overly dramatic preordained significance given to a piece of art's power to transcend." Alas, this piece is Sylvester's response to some Braffing he read concerning a recent Daft Punk show.
Richard Henderson
Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle, an excerpt from the 33 1/3 series
10.19.10
It's hard to summarise the surreal variety of Van Dyke Parks' career. He worked as a child actor in a film starring Grace Kelly, arranged the song "Bare Necessities" for Disney's Jungle Book and perhaps most famously co-wrote and arranged The Beach Boys' long-shelved, ambitious concept album SMiLE. Along the way, he has collaborated with innumerable musicians, including The Byrds, Frank Black, Joanna Newsom, Laurie Anderson and Bob Dylan. He has also appeared in an episode of Twin Peaks and Robert Altman's film version of Popeye. His own albums have often tackled unusual, quintessentially American themes, such as Brer Rabbit and Japanese-U.S. relations. It seems likely that wittingly or unwittingly you have encountered Parks somewhere. Richard Henderson delved into his Parks' first solo album Song Cycle for Continuum's 33 1/3 series.
Richard Parks
Review: Richard Greene's: "Shufflin"
07.21.05
Richard Parks, a classic languages and bluegrass music enthusiast who often describes himself (incorrectly) as a drunk 5 year old girl, reviews the work of one of his friends and favorite artists, Richard Greene, fiddler extraordinaire.
Ross Simonini
Forget the Hits: Here is Animal Collective
01.31.08
Ross Simonini will walk a mile (or drive all the way to Utah) for an Animal Collective show. Why? Not to sing along to the hits, because the AC homies don’t play those. But they do give their all nonetheless, and always something new, on the petri dish canvass some call a stage.
Thom Donovan
Arthur Russell Revived: Hold On To Your Dreams
10.25.09
We've seen a major reexamination, recently, of the work of the late, esteemed, multifaceted musician Arthur Russell, through a biopic film, a record label dedicating to releasing unreleased, rare and reissued material, and a new biography in the bookstores; the poetic brilliance of Arthur Russell is alive and well for a new generation. Thom Donovan looks at the entire scope of the Russell revision on the heals of the biography by Tim Lawrence, Hold On To Your Dreams.
Tim Kabara
Nautical Almanac and the Baltimore Noise Scene
10.13.05
Baltimore native Tim Kabara defends his town and the music that makes it stand out.
Timothy Cushing
Only Connect: Some Modern Folk
09.12.08
There's a folkload of new folk springing forth again in America, a renaissance you might say; as it happened in 60's with Guthrie and Dylan and Baez and so on, so it is again, if however tweaked. Timothy Cushing looks at a sample of these new musicians that he, a musician himself, particularly connects with: the Avett Brothers, Ian Thomas and Langhorne Slim. Art By Danny Jock.
Trinie Dalton
The Psychedelic Bible
01.05.06
Trinie Dalton reviews Steven Krakow's obsessive psychedelic music magazine Galactic Zoo Dossier.
Zoey Mondt
The New Big In Japan: Interview with Keith Rocka
03.28.06
Zoey Mondt talks to DJ Keith Rocka of Sea Otter about the MySpace music phenomenon, Bjork by proxy and living in L.A..