A Truer Top 40
Tapes ’n Tapes; Destroyer; Ignatz; Eat Skull; forbidden gang funk from Rio de Janeiro
Llewellyn Hinkes
Ulterior Music
Relatively Clean Rivers, “Hello Sunshine” I’m not sure how many people recognized the reference to Relatively Clean Rivers in the stories a few months back about Adam Gadahn, the American who joined al Qaeda. Gadahn’s father, Philip, was the lead singer of the amazing, obscure psychedelic folk outfit
The Great Angry White Hope, or the New Loud Sounds From Way Out
Right now there are thousands—nay, millions—of disaffected youths out there yearning for a music that speaks to the anger welling up inside—but without devolving into something that’s just loud, screamy, and stupid. What I’m saying is that hardcore, that originally American Art Brut, like jazz
South by Southwests of Yore
South by Southwest, that bastion of independent music, Web 2.0 crowdsourcing folksonomy panels, and drunken mid-level industry types, hasn’t always been such an established tradition. It took a good 20 years for that magnificent phoenix to rise out of the ashes of the late ’80s underground, through
Going Steady With the Singles
Richard Ayoade said it best on an episode of Time Trumpet as to why, every day, he was compelled to watch an ape being savagely raped on television because “he had to take the pulse of the nation.” Truer words have never been spoken. And right now the pulse of
Holes in the Year-End Best-of Lists
While everybody else was fighting for attention to get their year-end lists in by the 31st, I was lying in wait, culling the extremes, the ins and outs, to strain through the finest opinionated cheesecloth, so what’s left is only the purest top-10 filtrate possible before snorting
Video Digest: December 21, 2007
Llew Hinkes digs through this holiday season’s hottest dances: The Consumption, the Candiru, the Ian Svenonius Double-Foot Kick, and the Drunken Nazi.
Those for Whom What’s Laudable Is All That’s Audible
Throughout the history of the written word and the recorded sound, there’s been a large discrepancy between what people listen to and what actually gets written about. Critics need something to write—there are columns to fill and ink to use, and two-word reviews are hard to write
Long Live the File-Sharers
As the recent loss of OiNK sits heavy in our hearts, I’d like to take some time out to think about the other file-sharing applications that have come before us and made the world a better place. Not the cold and utilitarian Napsters or the sleazy-yet-reliable
What’s in a Band Name?
What’s in a band name? A meaningless handle dreamt up after throwing enough random adjectives together, or some obscure drug reference/street name/sexual maneuver that will only mean something to the other band members? Or could it in fact be part and parcel of the overall pathos conveyed