Blog: The Tape

Welcome to The Art of the Video, our collaborative series with Sean Stout and Terroreyes. Sean will be taking you behind the scenes of videos he's directed, and once in a while we'll add in some commentary as well. For our first volume, we asked Sean to talk about his work with Zach Hill for [...]

Sometimes hype makes sense. Bombast and excitement pay dividends, as the final product is as good as the initial idea. The immediacy of the internet expedites the process, giving us as listeners less and less time to decide what’s good and what’s bad. Singles come out one week, and based on reception, albums will be [...]

• Youth Lagoon - Cannons

Please head over to Terroreyes to check out our guest mixtape. Tons of rad collaborations coming in the future, keep an eye out. Check out the mixtape here. Also, Terroreyes is the best. His videos are amazing, watch them always.

Copyright law is a tricky subject. This summer, a visual artist was threatened with legal action for turning Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue album cover to a pixelated version as the cover for the 8-bit tribute Kind of Bloop. The artist, Andy Baio, settled out of court because it's far easier than getting gouged in [...]

If Game, especially given his recent collab with Tyler the Creator, wants to call Brandon McCartney (a.k.a. Lil B) "the wackest rapper of all time," he's going to have to get a few things straight. Arthur Schechter desconstructs Odd Future, Lil B and why Game picked the wrong beef.

Elvis Presley’s rise to stardom came at the precipice of radio’s demise. In 1954, Presley walked into Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee to record a series of demos with Sam Phillips, a man in search of a very specific sound. It was there that the modern style of rock and roll was born. In a [...]

What happened to Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson? The man of many names sort of just vanished. His debut LP is a shocking confessional, heartbreaking and endearing all at once. The album's first single “Buriedfied” is a brilliant track, attacking and restraining at the perfect moments. Not only is it the highlight of his self-titled LP, [...]

Bands with distinct sounds have a sort of artistic license—they’re viewed as exceptions, not needing to expand upon their sound from record to record, for their original ideas are so creative. Nurses fall into this category, and while a change of direction would have been interesting, the 11 songs that make up their latest effort, [...]

• nurses - Fever Dreams

When I first heard the term “in the pocket,” I was thirteen. It was the summer before 8th grade and I was playing in an afrobeat band as part of my school’s summer music program. We were playing two Fela Kuti songs and our instructor kept telling our drummer to play “more pocket.” I didn’t [...]

Most conversations or analyses discussing St. Vincent’s Annie Clark tend to revolve around two things: she’s very good at guitar, and she’s extremely sexy when playing it. There aren’t very many female guitar players in independent rock music, so when one comes along who’s both very good at guitar, and looks very good while playing, [...]

Anyone who’s ever listened to Los Campesinos (particularly their more recent stuff) knows that they very rarely, if ever, write about cheery subject matter. (If you haven’t, listen to “Miserabilia” from their 2008 album We Are Beautfiul, We Are Doomed and you’ll see what I mean.) They write almost obsessively about heartbreak, romantic confusion, and [...]

Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is an exercise in the importance between fact and truth. The differences between the two may seem subtle, but the truth holds so much more than the mere tangibility that a fact can claim as its own. O’Brien displays these differences throughout the novel—scrambling chronology and never noting which [...]

I first heard Lupe Fiasco rap when he appeared on Kanye West’s “Touch The Sky” in 2005. I didn’t know what to make of the young rapper interrupting a brilliant song by one of my favorite musicians. His verse didn’t have much of an impact on me, as I was unwilling to engage with his [...]

I first heard Lupe Fiasco rap when he appeared on Kanye West’s “Touch The Sky” in 2005. I didn’t know what to make of the young rapper interrupting a brilliant song by one of my favorite musicians. His verse didn’t have much of an impact on me, as I was unwilling to engage with his [...]

Two key aspects of Christopher Laufman’s Wise Blood project are the idea of persona and an ability to capture a certain essence. Laufman’s stellar new EP, These Wings, projects the Wise Blood character as a vulnerable badass, a dude that doesn’t give a fuck—until he’s left with his own thoughts. The EP’s opening track offers [...]

• Wise Blood - These Wings

Independent videos have no monetary value. The point then, at least from a label’s perspective, alludes me. However, once in a while there’s a video that comes around and truly captures the artistic essence of what a music video should do. Youth Lagoon’s clip for “Montana” does just that. The song is addictive on its [...]

Independent videos have no monetary value. The point then, at least from a label’s perspective, alludes me. However, once in a while there’s a video that comes around and truly captures the artistic essence of what a music video should do. Youth Lagoon’s clip for “Montana” does just that. The song is addictive on its [...]

I remember before I'd heard Finally Famous in full, I remarked to a friend that it seems like Big Sean really, really has it in for women. He's a super fun and creative lyricist, but even on the most joyous of G.O.O.D. Friday posse joints it's like he was trying to win a misogyny-off. It's [...]

The news of Mehdi’s untimely and tragic death this morning was heartbreaking and shocking, to say the least. Unlike the destructive rockstar lifestyle Justice so formidably put on display, Mehdi seemed more laid back, settled with a wife and son and just intent on doing what he loved: producing and DJing. He will be sorely missed, as a producer and DJ, and, most importantly, as a husband and father.

I opened my computer this morning and checked my RSS reader. To me, it's like reading the newspaper. I glance at the headlines that don't interest me, read fully the stories that do. But today, I glanced at one headline and rather than moving on to the next, I turned away from the screen completely. [...]