Rolling Stone is the old geezer of rock magazines. Whether it’s still relevant is debatable, but it is certainly venerated on a social and, to a lesser extent, critical level. It was and is, in people’s memory, foremost among early rock magazines. Just the words “Rolling Stone” call to mind the music of the late 60s, which the magazine fetishizes to an almost myopic degree; within the top 20 albums on their “500 Greatest Albums List,” 11 are from the [...]
Archive for Category: "Articles"
DATSIK made my month
Friday September 30th was a night to remembered. Playing at New York City’s Webster Hall, Datsik made a killin’ on the dance floor. Coming on around 1am, the dance fiend crowd was waiting with heavy anticipation until the Canadian bred stepped up on stage and then to the tables. The crowd, went, nuts. That night, Datsik effortlessly stripped the energetic audience of their worries and problems facing them following the morning, and enraptured them into a two-hour set of absolute [...]
Bumbershoot 2011 Day 3
Bumbershoot 2011 Day Three (September 5th, 2011 – Seattle, Washington) ** There may not be a better way to begin a day of musical carousing than by watching Charles Bradley, otherwise known as “The Screaming Eagle of Soul,” and “The Black Swan,” take the stage for an intimate, live KEXP performance. The Gainesville, Florida born funk-star and soul-singer is a true legend, and it’s easy to see why. Draped in a royal-red, sequined blazer, and offering a reverential bow, Bradley [...]
Bumbershoot 2011 Day Two
Bumbershoot 2011 Day Two (September 4th, 2011 – Seattle, Washington) **Atari Teenage Riot Maybe it was a mistake to kick-off the second, glorious, sunny day of Bumbershoot (a fun, colloquial way of saying umbrella), Seattle’s annual international music and arts festival, by arriving at 6pm after seven hours on an airplane, and walking straight into the dark pit of the Exhibition Hall music stage. Watching Anti-Flag rage incoherently about social injustice to a group of half-interested, disaffected, fans who couldn’t [...]
Shlohmo – Bad Vibes review
Imagine a hazy, tortured Death Cab for Cutie record – let’s say for the sake of example, Transatlanticism – put through a meat grinder and subsequently strewn throughout a rainforest somewhere along the Amazon River. That is, in a nutshell, what Bad Vibes sounds like; or more appropriately, what it feels like. Bad Vibes is the sophomore full-length release from LA-based producer and artist, Shlohmo, and though baring undeniable likeness to his 2010 Debut entitled, Shlohmoshun Delux, this release takes [...]
How Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Turned Into A Religious Mess
Do you remember who Lady Gaga was in 2008? She was not “Mother Monster,” she had eyebrows, her outfits were outlandish, but she could have been someone you knew. Some eccentric fashion-obsessed friend who was into performance art, someone who frequented bars, smoked cigarettes and played piano with her hands and feet. The Lady Gaga of 2011 is not someone you could know. This is a transformed person, someone who was already a vast mutation, now mutated beyond recognition in [...]
Sasquatch Festival review Day One
The Great Wall Of Quincy Heading east along the I-90 for what seemed like an eternity was how the Sasquatch began for us and the tens of thousands of similar campers. The journey concluded at 724 Silica Road, Quincy, WA where we ended up joining a humungous car queue with signage which wasn’t far back enough. Instincts guided us into the right car lane for campers at the general campground, however many didn’t follow the same path of luck and [...]
Dengue Fever’s Sennon Williams
Dengue Fever’s Sennon Williams takes a minute to explain the fever that he’s had, and been sharing, for the last ten years. The name of the band, while it does coincidentally have a nice play on words along the lines of “disco fever” and “dance fever”, actually stems from the keyboardist, Ethan’s, “Journey through Cambodia on the back of truck stricken with dengue fever, surrounded by livestock and supplies”. While being severely affected by the illness, and exclaiming, “I think [...]
Stricken City – Losing Colour album review
When I listen to Losing Colour, the first (and last) full album from Stricken City, I can’t help but feel a wave of nostalgia; as if someone has taken hazy memories of youth and written a soundtrack for it. There’s a retro nineties feel that comes across in the jangly U2-esque guitars and raw, earnest vocals with a hint of The Cranberries. The album swells and tapers with these elements painting a rich melancholic picture. Right from the start we’re [...]
