Tagged: sfcritcmusicblog

"Listen to What You're Missin'" takes you through four tracks of the week, giving you an updated look at what's good. This week I dug up some old gems and up and comers with: DJ Nujabes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 88-Keys, and Fever Ray. DJ Nujabes: "Flowers" Nujabes is a Japanese producer and DJ, better known as Jun Seba (his alias is anagram of his real name). As a producer he use jazz and soul [...]

Discovery Label: XL Recordings Rating: 3/5 Stars By David Johnson-Igra The overuse of auto-tune in popular music has led rap's mogul Jay-Z to say "Enough"—but that hasn't fazed these Brooklyn hipsters. Discovery, the new indie pop duo comprised of Rostam Batmanglij (producer Vampire Weekend) and Wes Miles (vocalist of Ra Ra Riot) have created an album so overdone in auto-tune that Kanye West will probably ask for credit. Maybe I'm inferring too much, but it seems that Batmanglij is strategically using proven methods for pop success. His production with Vampire Weekend was compared to Paul Simon's Graceland, considered [...]

Click the photo to be redirected, or the link below. So I get spam, and I get free music, and often the line differentiating is blurred, but Reverb Nation and Windows have teamed up to provided good ole spamless free music. The web page is divided into musical genres, with a listing of a ton of artists you probably never heard of--but hey, it's free--remember that. Take a look and enjoy: Reverb Nation and Windows

Written by David Johnson-Igra All Photos by Charlie Homo For a group whose name mocks the very fan base they're creating, Starfucker knows how to engage a crowd. Playing last Tuesday at the Bottom of the Hill, the Oregon based band brought energy, humor and talent. When this combination transfers to their record, they'll have an army of starfuckers ready and waiting. In all sincerity the crowd consisted of mainly platonic starfuckers like "I'm in love with this band," though there appeared to be some more lustful eyes in the crowd as well. [...]

Starfucker, the Oregon based group, that's rising like bundt cake with their 80s indie-rock-punk with a playfully indescribable fuse of hip hop are coming to San Francisco tomorrow at the Bottom of The Hill. That was a mouthful, but it's nothing in comparison to the unintelligible bio description at the band's Badman Recording label's website: "It's like playing an 8-bit video game where your primary objective is to overcome heartbreak and an obsession with death, your only weapon a love laser mounted on a space bike that zaps out bright red blips and neon bleeps." Really, [...]

Warp Records has become a staple of good electronic, artistic, experimental, and new wave music since the early 90s. This is not Arista, or Def Jam with pop hit, one time wonders. While some of their artists have topped charts, most of their music remains known by DJs and music collectors. Like most hustlers in the music industry, the label's first two releases by LFO (not "Summertime Girls" LFO) and Nightmares on Wax were sold out of the back their cars. Miraculously, Nightmares on Wax sold 30,000 copies [...]

The "Thought Process" is a blog about my finds while blogging through music. Read, and follow as my mind takes me from one thing to the next. This weekend I watched Kicking and Screaming" (1995), a film about post undergraduates, and well--I'm not entirely sure because I stopped it 30mins in. Clearly, I'm not here to recommend the movie, but I did find a forgotten gem. Blondie : "Heart of Glass" [...]