My music taste lately has been skewing old. Lot’s of New Orleans blues, 60’s live rock recordings, and of course Cambodian surf rock from the Vietnam era. Friends and family, who constantly ask me for new music, have been disappointed of late when I weakly shrug. So thank goodness for my favorite radio DJs spinning […]
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Calling Alaska in Winter, the musical project fronted by Brandon Bethancourt, elusive would be selling it short. I probably found “Berlin” when it bubbled to the top of early Hype Machine for a day. And though Bethancourt’s debut album, “Dance Party in the Balkans,” is a brilliant mélange of pop sensibility, anguish and bloggy-electo, the […]
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Trance music isn’t just for ravers. The past two decades have seen that term attached to a specific type of electronic music, but you can’t deny that other types of music serve the same purpose. I recently saw Omar Souleyman perform, and damn, the entire crowd was undeniably in a trance – eyes rolling back, […]
Sunday, September 14, 2014
He’s been hot for a minute already, but if you haven’t yet booked your ticket on the overnight bus to the netherworld that is the Kaytranada bandwagon, step right up. It isn’t that the songs are downers – in fact, they all feature an inignorable positivity – but rather that they are down. They don’t […]
The wonders of the Internet mean you’re reading this even though I’m far away, deep in the woods with no connection. It’s about fucking time. I really wish someone would have told me as a kid that vacation isn’t a right. There’s a difference between a vacation and a trip. On a trip, you’re waking […]
Having your feet set squarely on the ground is underrated. After schooling ends, our toes lift, hover, preparing for the rapid zig zags and about faces that are inherent in the lives of twenty-somethings (and thirty-somethings lets be real). The flexibility is imperative; it takes time to figure out who you are and what you […]
Vive l’été! Quand je suis sur la planche, tout est bon. Et quand nous sommes sur la planche ensemble, alors…c’est comme nous sommes le monde, et rien d’autre existe. La Femme – Sur La Planche
Another brushfire belches acrid smoke into our lungs. The city stained with ash, gray as the sky. Last time fourteen young men were swept up in the blaze and killed in an instant. The town held a candle light vigil. Oxygen, in the end. Red sun setting, mirrored in flames that creep up, floor by […]
Law enforcement has existed for thousands of years. From the Prefects of ancient China, Athenian public slaves, and Roman vigils, to today’s beat cops, highway patrol and paramilitary police, these bodies have occupied a cultural niche unlike any other. Both required and reviled, the law is ever present across the world. In the USA and […]
I used to be up on all the new shit. By the time you were saying “OMG have you heard of XYZ band?” I’d have downloaded their discography, played you their best songs (though at the time you couldn’t be bothered and clearly don’t remember) and moved on to the next hot sound. I can’t […]
