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Music
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40 Watt Sun
A brief note about 40 Watt Sun’s The Inside Room, one of my favorite metal albums of the year.
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Interview with Jace Clayton (aka DJ/Rupture)
My friend Alan Gilbert recently conducted a lengthy and fascinating interview with Jace Clayton (aka DJ/Rupture) for Bomb Magazine. Clayton is behind the consistently great blog mudd up!; is the creator of stunning DJ mixes that incorporate music from around the globe; is the author of insightful articles (one, two) on changes in music culture; and lives, [...]
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Black Metal Is a Shamanic Journey
From an interview with Wolves in the Throne Room drummer and organic farmer Aaron Weaver: “I think that black metal fundamentally is an attempt to reawaken an ancient spirit. It’s an attempt to touch some sort of transcendent primal knowledge…. I think that black metal is an artistic movement that is critiquing modernity on a [...]
Ryuichi Sakamoto, Playing the Piano
I am enjoying Ryuichi Sakamoto’s new box set of live solo piano music. It’s titled, simply enough, Playing the Piano, and comes out on Decca/Universal next month (according to Amazon). The version I found contains over two hours of music, much of it pastoral and beautiful. One piece, however, sounds nothing like the others. In [...]
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Two from Down Under on 12K
In recent days I’ve been listening to two albums released last spring on the venerable electronic/ambient/experimental music label 12k. Both, by coincidence, are by artists from Australia. The first is Seaworthy’s album “1897,” which was recorded in and around a century-old decommissioned ammunitions bunker. Guitarist Cameron Webb’s hesitant, wandering, layered yet clean guitar picking owes [...]
Being thorough about listening to my music collection
During the decade after I discovered punk rock music and DIY culture in the early 1990s, I consumed music voraciously. I ordered albums from record-label and distributor catalogues; attended shows, up to four nights a week, in sweat-scented basements, bowling alleys, bars, church recreation halls, and all-ages clubs; and dissected Maximum Rock’n’Roll, Punk Planet, and [...]
Interview: Lawrence English
For over a decade, Lawrence English—a Brisbane, Australia–based musician, record-label owner, installation artist, and festival organizer—has served as a nodal point in the international network of experimental musicians and sound artists. His label, Room 40, has released more than fifty records by musicians from four continents, and he is increasingly busy as a record producer. [...]
