Heavy-hearted in the Midwest since 2011
It seems that life is getting that much closer to the opening 10 minutes of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. People screaming and panicking, arguing the science of a major outbreak none of us really understand. People moving at a fast, stressed pace thinking of some kind of escape every moment they’re not escaping. […]
Read More Social Distancing : Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Being QuarantinedCole Pulice is a Minneapolis-based saxophonist who’s musicianship and instrumental prowess has accompanied artists as diverse as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Bon Iver, and Mild High Club. Pulice also plays in the lo-fi New Age band Iceblink. He’s a solid reed player with an air of eccentricity that gives whatever song he’s on its own […]
Read More Cole Pulice : GloamOne of my absolute music highlights in 2019 was discovering the amazing Lars Meijer, aka Hunter Complex. I know Lars has been putting out incredible albums under the Hunter Complex moniker for almost a decade, but I wasn’t aware of the musical world of HC until the end of 2018. Well, technically I’d seen the […]
Read More Hunter Complex : Dead Calm and Zero DegreesMusician and composer Adam Michael Kozak makes dark, poetic electronic music as Burial Grid. He’s based in Massachusetts and seems to have locked into the oldest part of this country’s Gothic and sometimes bleak origins. But hey, in order to get better we have to look our seedy, wicked past right in the face and […]
Read More “Disorienting, Terrifying, and Deeply Somber”: Adam Michael Kozak Talks Scoring Novel ‘Negative Space’The man behind the imagined soundtrack project Alone 1980 likes to keep things mysterious. It’s a one man band from Sweden that makes seedy, eerie albums that feel like music from some late 70s/early 80s sci fi/horror flick you’d find playing at 1am on USA Up All Night. I’m sort of an expert because I […]
Read More Sonic Trauma : The Music World of Alone 1980Jonas Munk is what I’d call a renaissance man. Munk moves among many musical circles; either through his label El Paraiso Records(which he co-runs with Causa Sui band mate Jakob Skott), his ambient/new age label Azure Vista Records, as well as through the countless projects he’s been involved in as collaborator, producer, or sonic wizard […]
Read More The Sound of Zen : Jonas Munk Talks ‘Minimum Resistance’ and His Quiet Act of RebellionAndrew Crawshaw is the man behind Seattle’s heavy synth project Meridian Arc. Meridian Arc is the side project of Crawshaw when he’s not making music with SOMAFREE INSTITUTE. What does Meridian Arc sound like? It’s the sound of buzzing synths, heady sci-fi vibes, and total zone out electronic music. It’s not as lingering as Tangerine […]
Read More Meridian Arc : TimelapseThe first jazz album that really re-wired my brain was McCoy Tyner’s The Real McCoy. I’d been listening to jazz here and there over the years, but it wasn’t till 2008 when I bought my turntable that I’d made a concerted effort to really dive deep into records by Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Thelonious Monk […]
Read More McCoy Tyner : 1938-2020Alone 1980 is the mysterious musical project from Sweden that gives us imagined soundtracks to horror and science fictions films that never existed. Well, except for in the mind of their creator. For the past two years a prolific amount of music has come from Alone 1980, and all of it engaging and hypnotic. You […]
Read More Alone 1980 : HumanityOnce in a while you’re surprised by an album. You’re not looking for it, but out of the blue an album drops from the ether and into your lap and sort of blows your mind. The band Reflex Condition just dropped their album Unknown Restraints last Friday and by now I’ve listened to it four […]
Read More Reflex Condition : Unknown Restraints