Despite Paul Banks' active promotion of his impressive solo debut, Julian Plenti is...Skyscraper , the fourth Interpol album is still on track for release in early 2010. Drummer Sam Fogarino has even alluded to its close relationship to Interpol's darkly expansive 2002 debut, Turn on the Bright Lights , telling Paste Magazine, "In trying to move forward, there was an unspoken realization that you can't let go of your sonic-defining tag." An intriguing sentiment. While The Strokes argue over whether their new songs veer too far from the band's core sound, Interpol is retreating back [...]
Story by Adam Daniels Photography by Dorothy Hong "Do you need a drink?"
"Yes, I need four double whiskeys and four PBRs." It was Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson's record release show at Williamsburg's Union Pool, and while he was among a roomful of friends, he was not at ease. Robinson's former fiancé obliged the request, assuming it was on behalf of the entire band. This was not the case. Robinson wasn't a household name in indie rock at the time. But he had a lot of the pieces in place [...]
Mailbox just exploded! When I was picking up the pieces and rummaging through the debris I found a few jems I'd like to share with you. [South Central] These producers caught my ear when they remixed a Wombats track way back when. Their mixes are composed of pure adrenaline, testing the output of your sweat glands with every hyper active dance killer they put out. Look for their debut LP. "The Owl of Minerva" in 2010. [Dada Life] By now you should know a little something about Dada Life. They are getting huge support form various [...]
Modern Radio is one of the finest local record labels the Twin Cities has ever seen. Congrats on 10 years guys, it sounds like a helluva way to celebrate! Friday, January 22nd at the Turf Club FT (The Shadow Government) Daughters of the Sun The Chambermaids Double Bird Sheridan Fox (His Mischief) 21+, doors at 9PM - $7 Saturday, January 23rd at the Cedar Cultural Center The Plastic Constellations Skoal Kodiak Vampire Hands STNNNG and more! [...]
[Photos by Michael Piantigini] It would be easy to go on for a thousand words about drivin n cryin (in fact, when I started this review it was starting to look like I would), because theirs has been a long and complex story since singer-sonwriter Kevn Kinney and bassist/mandolinist Tim Nielsen released the first album with the band's first lineup, 1986's Scarred But Smarter . So let's boil it down. Here's what you need to know: drivin n cryin are a part southern rock, part country rock, part folk rock, and [...]
By Tom Huizenga Conductor Marin Alsop ( Tracey Brown ) Let's face it, the world of classical music is fairly far off the radar screen for most people in this country. Still, [...]
Last week, I had the opportunity to chat -- and, by chat, I mean "chat via the Internet" -- with a handful of independent record labels' owners and managers. I wanted to discuss the role of the label in a time when fewer people seem to know or care what labels their favorite musicians or bands are on. Furthermore, and perhaps this has always been true, we may not even know what exactly a label does . At the beginning of this decade, record labels were still a way of indexing artists; of positioning them [...]
Kirk Degiorgio's name is not synonymous with minimal techno. Over the course of his 18-year career you could count on your hands the number of releases that would even qualify as club-approved tackle. Degiorgio made his name with multi-hued Detroit-inspired techno and went on to produce soulful music in a variety of genres, but rarely touched on straightforward dance floor-ready tracks. Today we see Degiorgio taking a new path that embraces this side of techno, both in terms of production and DJing. Degiorgio rebooted his Applied Rhythm Technology (ART) label this year and is focused on creating full sounding techno [...]
This statement about Bono by Brian Eno from a Pitchfork interview that ran earlier this month caught my eye, and I never got around to posting it: Well, [Bono] has an enormous ego, but so do most of the people I like. [laughs] And also a big ego isn't necessarily a bad thing. A big ego means that you have some confidence in your abilities, really, and that you're prepared to take the risk of trying them out. I really don't think he's arrogant. That's a different thing. In fact, he's absolutely, to me, [...]
We're back with another installment of improvisations and songs from bassooncore legends Chotchke , active in San Francisco from 1993 to 1998 (not counting a later reunion gig). As it happened, last time, I presented a rather bassoon-light batch of pieces (as pointed out readily by my exacting listeners and a band member or two) and so THIS time I strove to pick songs that ALL had a lot of Carrie Barclay's bassoon work on them. The lineup heard this week features members: Jon Arnold : guitar,drums and vocals, Carrie Barclay : bassoon [...]
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phoenix - armistice (yacht remix) cool kids x hey champ - (we are) champions notorious b.i.g. - party and bullshit (in the usa remix) othello & dj vajra - active balanced (feat. mayer hawthorne & now on)(terry cole remix) speech debelle - better days (revox feat. wiley)
The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground (1969) Glenn: Let's clear one thing up: "The Murder Mystery" is awesome. Anybody who disagrees hasn't caught onto the Velvet's project, which is to use drones, pulse, and deadpan-specific lyrics to create a trance that contains an entire world. Anything else the Velvets do - sing, change chords, play feedback, take speed, let Nico do her thing - is extra. While "The Murder Mystery" isn't a typical Velvets song, it does have the elements I've just identified, plus a wild bouncy-piano-with-vocals outro. [...]
There's a new Fingertips Commentary essay on the main site, called "Farewell to the Casual Fan." Subtitle: "Too many 'future of music' schemes overlook the importance of listeners who don't worship you." As always, it's a somewhat lengthy discussion, so I'm breaking it into two parts for the blog. I'll post the second part on Wednesday. The weekly MP3 selections should be up tomorrow. The essay is the same here as on the main site, except there are a handful of footnotes accompanying the piece on the Fingertips site, which flesh out the subject [...]
There are few words that fully describe the Texas-bred Paper Chase, and even fewer that lead singer/guitarist/songwriter John Congleton would like to hear. Granted, the band's trademark is an uneasy yet confident mess of found sound, haunting piano, a dirty, thunderous rhythm section and Congleton's sprawling, squealing guitar attacks. Yet it's the 32-year-old's writing and delivery -- tense, sometimes comically fervent warnings of murder, guilt and the rapture -- that have spawned thousands of critics to wrongly deem the group as humorless, art-house horror junkies. In truth, the band's version of the dramatic owes as much to Queen as it [...]
Growth & Patience. These are the two themes that DJ Trackstar selected to title his Royce Da 5'9" compilation . Appropriate choices as well, as these are two themes that an MC in Royce's shoes must have to survive in this industry. The man has been through his fair share of industry politics: highly publicized drama, a jail bid, and on top of all that, the struggle to maintain relevancy in the most fickle of environments. 11 years active without a certified breakout album might kill most careers, but as I sit down with Royce to [...]
Last week, SFCritic made a post concerning the continuing debate between dancehall performer, Buju Banton and the LGTBQ community that is protesting his music. The debate concerns the LGBTQ's proposed boycott of Buju Banton's performances in the US as a result of a statements, and particularly a song Banton made in the past, which has lyrics describing how to kill gay people. After posting this article, SFCritic received a reply from a reader named "Optimistic Spirit." Through a detailed correspondence, SFCritic and Optimistic Spirit, debated the issues concerning the boycott, Buju Banton and the freedom of [...]
We know what you're thinking: " Alec Empire doesn't really seem like the kind of thing Thrash Hits usually covers". But you know what? If you think that, then you've clearly failed to take some very serious points into account. Yes, we know if you slap on his last album, The Golden Foretaste of Heaven , you'll get an earful of electro, rather than the extreme white-noise inferno he made his name with. But that doesn't change the fact that A) Alec Empire is more punk rock than anything you can think [...]
Bagheera is a trio consisting of Tom Cowcher, Sam Twidale and Jacob Silkin and are a product of the always active Liverpool music scene. This is a young, as yet unsigned, band with only the self-produced Hollow Home EP under their belts but they have been getting a fair amount of positive attention from fellow bloggers and the BBC Radio 6's Tom Robinson. They haven't been courting labels as of yet, hoping to build their repertoire before approaching them. Smart thing to do since they are all still students at the University of Liverpool. [...]
For Terre Thaemlitz, audio is never "innocent." From Thaemlitz's earliest ambient recordings, through a series of incredible electro-acoustic projects for the Mille Plateaux label, to a current triple-life as producer of astringently political "radio shows," deep house auteur as DJ Sprinkles and K-SHE, and writer/polemicist, Thaemlitz's project has always been to unsettle any putative audience's assumptions of what constitutes knowledge and politics. Thaemlitz is also possibly dance music's finest socio-political commentator. Not to mention her continual "queering of the pitch." With DJ Sprinkles's Midtown 120 Blues somehow managing to be one of the best dance music albums of [...]
new music from vampire weekend – cousins + music video
Friday Five: Surf Songs
No Curve Allowed (Grading This Week's New Tracks)
HOT CHIP TAKE another crack at IT and I’m IN
