Some might be surprised that my prime connection to Vincent Gallo is not established via his films, but through his music- since many don’t even know that this man makes music. Gallo’s 2001 album When is in my all-time Top 10, one of the records I always come back to. A very special, intimate and …
After flirtations with the plastic soul-funk of a surprising Young Americans (1975) and a phenomenal Station To Station (1976), David Bowie decided to move from Los Angeles to Europe. He finally settled down in West Berlin, sharing an apartment with his friend Iggy Pop. Both thought that the German city would be a good place …
Mary Lattimore is a harpist originally from Philadelphia but currently based in Los Angeles, California who played with The Valerie Project (an alternate soundtrack to the 1970 film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders), has released solo albums At the Dam (2016) and Hundreds of Days (2018), and has collaborated with Meg Baird on the …
Sharing the pure discovery of new music and sound. Can you imagine anything more important? Or have we forgotten our higher purpose? (Honestly… it can’t be a good idea to start a review with a series esoteric questions. What am I to do? Begin again?). There is something intimate, even sensual about sharing new music with …
Italian Composer Ferruccio Busoni (1866 -1924) said that “music is sonorous air”. A vibration that we experience without being seen with the human eye. John Lyndon, “Some ideas absolutely require a kind of rigid discipline, and others require absolute chaotic abandon. The form is only valid if you know how to un-form it”. The Roscoe Mitchell Sextet starts a …
Not many albums dare to open with a track so super-charged with raw “spunk” like “Blind Promise” (sonically speaking). It’s big and loud and beautiful. Wait… we can do better than that lame description- dismissing the album as merely “loud” or “beautiful” would be to miss its essence of depth and power. So let us try …
When working with certain forms of experimental music, it often seems that the artist is only partially responsible for the sound of the final output. It may still be their vision of the music, I would never dispute that. Nevertheless, so many external factors play a role in the development that is difficult to control …
Dear John. I’m sitting here listening to the playback of this copy of Outside. I can hear the tape making noise and dropout. I can hear the old Wollensak sound. I wish it were a better copy. – Tony Conrad to his friend John Cale. Some albums are just a deep dives, the type of …
The Necks‘ 2006 release Chemist is just like every other album the band has done. Then again, it’s completely original. Every release by this band is unmistakably The Necks. Each album completely improvised and organic. It just so happens that Chemist was my introduction and remains a personal favorite. The perfect safe-space to explore this …
