February 2012
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Producer Machinedrum unleashed snippets of 23 new...
December 2011
4 posts
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On Tycho's subtle and fluid 'Dive'
Scott “Tycho” Hansen has been making wordless electronic music for years, building each piece with organic accompaniment that’s often treated to make it sound both warm and worn. The acoustic guitars that roll through Dive, his debut LP for Ghostly International, mimic the temperate folk progressions on the early Simon and Garfunkel LP Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. Sea-spray sonics...
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November 2011
2 posts
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WatchGreat stuff from my friend Ben Smith — check fam’ and friends Krista Umile on cello and Matt Magarahan on drums!
bensmithsongs:
XPN’s Studio Session arrived today! It’s a 5-minute video with performance clips and an interview from a recent visit down at their studio. Hope you enjoy it. They also managed to play my “Love Potion #10” directly after The Searchers’ “Love Potion #9” this...
September 2011
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“As Obama and Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. have admitted, waterboarding is...”
– Obama: A disaster for civil liberties (Los Angeles Times)
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Ernest Hemingway and Journalism
In his book about Ernest Hemingway’s early years as a reporter, Charles Fenton wrote that the author grew to value newspaper writing for its “opportunity to write constantly, for publication, in a medium which required narrative that was interesting and forceful.” I’ve long been familiar with Hemingway’s short stories and a couple of his novels, and now, in finally...
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Just an Ordinary Day of Death in Mexico's War on... →
Excellent work at the Wall Street Journal:
Mr. López is the first victim of July 29, a hot summer day much like any other in Mexico’s battle against powerful drug-trafficking gangs. Over the next 24 hours, at least 25 people die across Mexico in murders carrying the hallmarks of drug-gang hits.
August 2011
18 posts
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Infinitirock and library music
Brooklyn-based teenager Chester “Infinitirock” Anand’s beat music is jolting and scatterbrained — he follows audacious experiments in Asthmatic Kitty’s Library Catalog Music Series well with Music for Primordial Recollection. It’s one of the strongest chapters yet — a rich and divergent compendium of psychedelic, wordless grooves, and weighty sound collages....
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'Criminal' and noir comics
Writer Tim Callahan discusses Criminal at length: “Comics like Will Eisner’s The Spirit, Arnold Drake’s original graphic novel from 1950 — It Rhymes with Lust, the infamous Crime SuspenStories from EC, Alex Toth’s early contributions to Torpedo, Frank Miller’s Sin City, David Lapham’s Stray Bullets, and even Jason Aaron and R. M. Guera’s Scalped all have strong noir aspects, whether they are...
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“Or perhaps, like so many politicians who come to Washington, he has already been...”
– “What Happened to Obama?” - Drew Westen, NY Times Opinion
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Belong's "Never Came Close"
Never Came Close by Belong
An often downcast outing in the vein of Joy Division or OMD, Belong’s Common Era is hazy and dark. For years, the New Orleans act worked primarily with manipulated guitar tracks, but as a result of adding more elements to their process, Common Era very much showcases a full band’s sound. The rushing guitar noise is still there, but now there are vocals...
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The Comics Journal on Harvey Pekar →
“Late in his life, Pekar became popular simply for being himself: a representation of the struggling everyman who nonetheless has dreams and aspirations. Far from being the curmudgeonly novelty act of Late Night with David Letterman, Pekar became a DIY inspiration.”
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Downliner Sekt's masterful sound design
Barcelona’s Downliners Sekt told Fact Magazine that they see music as a “language,” with “the capacity to translate a wide range of feelings, to create imaginary worlds.” They’re steadily developing a busy brand of romantic and dub-influenced electronic music similar to that which is explored on Machinedrum’s Room(s) or on Mount Kimbie’s Crooks &...
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Yelpification and "replacing actual experience" →
“A funny thing has quietly accompanied our era’s eye-gouging proliferation of information, and by funny I mean not very funny. For every ocean of new data we generate each hour—videos, blog posts, VRBO listings, MP3s, ebooks, tweets—an attendant ocean’s worth of reviewage follows. The Internet-begotten abundance of absolutely everything has given rise to a parallel universe of stars,...
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PopMatters review: Kate Simko's 'Lights Out'
The only prominently available full-length that bears Kate Simko’s name is Music from the Atom Smashers, a hypnotic and specifically not dancefloor-oriented 2009 film score built on trailing ambient forms with crackling electronics. However, the Chicago producer has been active within the dance music community for years, having issued well-received house and techno singles and EPs for a handful of...
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Signs of the Times →
Pentagram design has a fascinating post about the unusual interior signage they developed for the New York Times building.
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In the headphones: Machinedrum, 'Rooms'
Room(s) is rife with crackling vinyl grooves and tumbling garage beats — a gauzy and melodic electronic record coated with warbled vocal samples and fast-dissolving synth lines. While producer Travis “Machinedrum” Stewart might object to this characterization, Room(s) is the full-length I’ve been waiting to hear from Sepalcure, the project that he shares with Praveen...
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Writing update, scoring commutes
Over at The Whisper Council, I try to occasionally post what’s in my headphones in a series called ‘Scoring Commutes’. I’ve got a subway commute that lasts anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour during the week, and I try to add a post here and there about what records I’m digging into on the way to work. It’s meant to be a rundown of stuff that I’m listening...
June 2011
2 posts
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Beats Working #2: Zavala, Tokimonsta, more
The second installment of Beats Working, my new column/blog at Blurt Magazine was published this week. I discuss Alex Zavala’s mesmerizing beats, Comma, TOKiMONSTA, and Paul White. Check it out — streams, downloads, and lots of words. Thanks for reading.
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May 2011
2 posts
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PopMatters Ranks the Best Stanley Kubrick Films →
The Shining at #7. What?!
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WatchI wrote about Dominik Eulberg’s elaborate Diorama for PopMatters.
April 2011
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“Supreme” - Exclusive J. Rocc mix for LA Weekly’s West Coast Sound by rebeccahaithcoat
J-Rocc’s long-anticipated debut album doesn’t sound like turntablism’s flashy moments, such as the scratch exercises that underpin the debut from NYC’s the X-Ecutioners or Q-Bert’s Demolition Pumpkin Squeeze Musik. Instead, J’s record is artful in a different fashion, with mere nods at the...
March 2011
2 posts
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Ray Bradbury and the Italian Piazza
I wrote about Italy’s wealth of open space for PopMatters, as well as what Ray Bradbury thinks of how sandwiches taste outside. READ NOW.
February 2011
5 posts
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WatchMuch of the complexity of a.d.l.r.’s Foam on the Waves of Space-Time.… is suggested in its fantastical title, although the words on the digital sleeve convey serenity that plays a mere secondary role here.
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Pyragony by Com Truise
It takes some convincing to fully understand that Com Truise’s Cyanide Sisters isn’t a patchwork of film score music circa 1987.
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Al Horner: How Radiohead's 'The King of Limbs' is... →
Writer Al Horner nailed this, but I’m unsure if people realize that instant opinionating isn’t a phenomenon reserved for Radiohead, and that esteemed Internet “critics” post one-sheet copy masked as “reviews” in an immediate fashion whenever [insert indie superstar label here] decides to fire an email blast to its mail list because something has...
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WatchOn Sepalcure and their lush, widescreen bass music.
January 2011
5 posts
the bigger lovers: The Bigger Lovers reunite for... →
These guys are pretty much unbelievable (they’re friends of mine). Don’t let their catalog or forthcoming single pass you by.
biggerlovers:
Five seasons and change after closing up shop, The Bigger Lovers are reuniting to celebrate the 10th anniversary of our instantly out-of-print 2001 debut, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying” (originally issued on Black Dog Records on March 13,...
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Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga! offers a wealth of the...
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WatchI was pretty blown away by Solar Bears’ Inner Sunshine EP, which Planet Mu released early in 2010. Split into two red LPs (with no digital download card, WHAT?), She Was Coloured In followed — it’s the Irish act’s debut album. Packaged like a campy sci-fi movie, some of the film score-type compositions on this warm, psychedelic opus more than fit the bill. Washes of synths...
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2010 Favorites: "Besides..."
“Besides…” is Diego Bernal’s second full-length LP. I wrote about it for Blurt Magazine earlier in 2010 (when it was free, incidentally). Bernal swipes a few notes from the Shadow/Cut Chemist/Madlib playbooks, but he’s his own producer, and these beats sound closer to mid-’90s NYC hip hop than any of the breaks records this Texas artist discovered in his...
December 2010
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2010 Favorites: Music for Savage Tropical Imagery
I posted about Yuuki Matthews’ Music for Savage Tropical Imagery when it came out — his hypnotic contribution to Asthmatic Kitty’s library music series (an overall gutsy, interesting experiment on the part of the label and its musicians) has him utilizing old drum machines and a good deal of distortion and delay to shape hazy organic/electro hybrids into something tangible and...
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2010 Favorites: Disconnect From Desire
School of Seven Bells - Windstorm by VagrantRecords
I wrote about School of Seven Bells’ Disconnect From Desire for PopMatters’ end-year best albums list. Read here. I thought a lot about 1990s era BritPop when I first heard it, as I mentioned at The Whisper Council.