Heavy-hearted in the Midwest since 2011
Listening to Monochrome Echo’s new album Moonkeeper I’m reminded of simpler times. Times when dystopian science fiction films didn’t have to have dread-inducing scores filled with ominous synth and hellscape ambient tones. A time when touches of light and elements of electro pop could cleanse the mental palate after someone is twisted into a pretzel […]
Read More Monochrome Echo : MoonkeeperNels Cline has had quite the career, both before and after Wilco. A musical force to be reckoned with in the Avant Garde, jazz, punk, and experimental scene he’s played with everyone from Mike Watt, Medeski, Martin, and Wood, Geraldine Fibbers, Blue Man Group, Ornette Coleman, and Rickie Lee Jones to name a few. But […]
Read More The Nels Cline Singers : Share The WealthIn these tumultuous times I find music is the saving grace. A place to get lost in and a place to heal those psychic wounds. Of course it’s a temporary reprieve, but in these caustic days even a temporary locale to let your guard down is welcome. I’m finding that electronic music has been my […]
Read More Baldocaster/Traveler CS : Exodus/Solare Split EPThe musical world of Salvatore Mercatante is a mysterious and darkly brooding one. Working in the world minimalist synth, ambient, and Giallo, Mercatante locks into emotions and visceral experience when he composes. His work puts me in mind of Maine, another synth maestro that goes for feel and the musical journey over aping what’s come […]
Read More Salvatore Mercatante : The Foundations Of Eternal SinHeinrich Dressel is the German composer alter ego of Italian musician Valerio Lombardozzi. Lombardozzi records under many aliases, but with Dressel he’s all about old school “creature feature” film scores. On his first release with the excellent Spun Out Of Control, Lombardozzi gives us Heinrich Dressel’s Shapeshifting, a nod of the (severed)head to monster movies, […]
Read More Heinrich Dressel : ShapeshiftingThe collaboration between Danish musicians Martin Rude and Jakob Skøtt has proven to be most fruitful. The mixture of Rude’s open guitar tunings and double bass with Skøtt’s fluid drumming and ethereal synths and electronics gave their debut LP The Discipline of Assent an epic, galactic jazz western feel. A soundtrack to some retro-futuristic Leone film […]
Read More Martin Rude & Jakob Skøtt Duo : The Dichotomy Of ControlThe only birthdays that matter are for children and dogs. Birthdays for adults just seem like obligations. Obligations for you to accept that you’re a year older, and obligations for those around you to acknowledge that year milestone by saying “Happy birthday, you old so n so!”. Or even worse at work where the obligation, […]
Read More Birthdays are for children and dogsIt’s been a stellar year for Dream Division’s Tom McDowell. Not only has he released two new Dream Division albums, he started his own record label this past July called Library of the Occult. Releasing The Devil Rides Out on his own label, followed by Beyond The Mirror’s Image on Burning Witches Records, he also […]
Read More Dream Division : Death Walks On NitrateAlice In Chains’ Facelift was unlike any album I’d heard when I first put it in my ears of December 1990. They were a Seattle band, but they were not like Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone, Screaming Trees, or Mudhoney. They were darker and much more metal than their Pacific Northwest peers. With Jerry Cantrell’s guitar […]
Read More “Lost inside my sick head”…If ever there was a year that gave so many so little to be thankful for, it’s 2020. Illness, deaths, job losses, isolated from family and friends, and the entire election cycle of poisoned rhetoric and flat-out lies has made this a year I think we’d all like to just flush like the giant turd […]
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