Go-Go in DC, ghost riding in Oakland, and La Sape in the Congo—it feels like a minor miracle that any regional subcultures still exist. Excuse the Thomas Frank digression, but corporate culture has been gobbling up “cool” for so long that it is amazing that not everything can be homogenized and packaged for mass consumption. […]
Doug Martsch was kind enough to send us some photos he took this week of of Built to Spill in the studio. They recorded at Jackpot! Studio and are mixing at Ice Cream Party, both in Portland, OR. There was clearly the requisite amount of pizza and disarray that comes with a proper recording session. […]
It was such a pleasant surprise to have new Kim Deal video show up in my inbox just now. It’s for “Biker Gone”, the fifth release from Kim’s 7″ single series, which she launched early last year. It’s a great song, with haunted melodies like only Ms. Deal can provide. The line-up this time around […]
There’s something bittersweet about Amen Dunes (aka Damon McMahon) that’s kind of hard to explain. Words weave in and out of his songs so that you can grab onto a phrase here and there, but overall lyrical structures are evasive. You can try and derive meaning this way, but I find it’s best to surrender […]
Is it too soon to talk about the best albums of 2014? Because with Manipulator, which came out at the end of the summer, Ty Segall turned in this year’s most valuable reminder that you can still get your kicks from rock’n’roll. Its high-octane distillation of MC5/Stooges-style Detroit mojo, T. Rex boogie, and Nuggets frenzy […]
Do you like tripped-out fucked-up psychedelic punk garage rock with indecipherable, highly digitized vocals? Then you have come to the right place! According to their press release, Trans Upper Egypt “broke into our realm from Eastern Rome where concurrently they run their very own DIY space/venue called Forte Fanfulla . . .” Broke into our […]
Will Giraffage‘s track “Chocolate,” to quote Tom Waits, “change your shorts, change your life, change your life, change into a nine-year-old Hindu boy, get rid of your wife?” Nope, it sure won’t, but is it adorable? Yes. It is adorable. Is it even more adorable knowing that it was written from the perspective of Giraffage’s […]
Some Fridays just call for a little bit of magic. And, on this particular Friday, LA-based Mystery Skulls are more than happy to provide the requisite supernatural flavor, in the form of a shimmering, slamming, disco-heavy track appropriately entitled “Magic.” Seemingly sprung from the 1970s but actually the brainchild of Luis Dubuc, the track features […]
Robert Wyatt belongs to the celebrated cohort of British musical savants from the late 60s and 70s, like Brian Eno and Kate Bush, who restlessly pursue a highly personal expression. In Wyatt’s case, jazz is central to that pursuit, less as genre than as license to explore a fusion of sophisticated harmonic frameworks, global musical […]
Staten Island’s reigning urban griot is back—this time in the form of a “vigilante inspired by a quest for personal retribution and bent on saving his community from the grips of crooked authority and urban decay.” At least, that’s what the press release says about Ghostface Killah’s upcoming album 36 Seasons, featuring AZ, Kool G […]