Holy Wave : Adult Fear

There’s a dusty, ‘road trip to nowhere good’ vibe to Holy Wave. They make the kind of grainy, 8mm-type of garage rock that feels like one of those gloomy yard sale finds. Searching through a damp cardboard box of LPs marked “.50 or best offer” you find various copies of Herb Albert & The Tiujana […]

Colored Eggs and Rising Sons

Ah, Easter. It’s that 2-day event every year where on a Friday Christians(as well as other applicable faiths) celebrate the crucifixion and slow death of their savior Jesus Christ. Then two days later they celebrate Jesus rolling the rock away from his tomb and heading back to heaven, like a kid going home on an […]

“Borrowed Nostalgia For The Unremembered Eighties”

I think if James Murphy and I hung out we’d get along great. Or at the very least I’d feel great about the conversation while James might walk away from it feeling uncomfortable and weird. Either way, I’m drawn to this bear of a guy that makes electronic disco punk music that is, essentially, about […]

“More John Hughes Than John Carpenter” : A Talk With Composer Cory Kilduff

Cory Kilduff was an 80s kid, so that means he was raised on a steady diet of Stephen Spielberg, John Williams, and synth pop. He also developed a fear of clowns(thanks, Poltergeist), a passion for skateboarding, and was changed by Nirvana’s Bleach. Kilduff grew up in Texas in the suburbs, which just outside the city limits […]

Sad Songs, Car Rides, and Man-Made Lakes

When I was little I went to my grandma’s house quite often with my mom. Mostly I remember the trips before I was in school and the ones we’d take during the summer breaks. I loved going over to my grandma Ruthie’s house. She lived on Manitou Lake in Rochester, Indiana. It was usually a […]

Graham Reznick’s “Robophasia”

So there I was, just minding my own business at work on a typically lousy Monday afternoon. Phone ringing, people barking, product piling up, and management no help like always. It seemed as if this Monday wasn’t going to be any different than the hundreds that came before it. But then, out of the blue, […]

Deep Space Meditations(The Dresden Codex)

In space they can’t hear you scream. Well who’s they, and why would they be close enough to hear you scream? In space, the desolation is overwhelming, especially on a 10-year run into an exploration program that is sure to deteriorate my muscles and re-write my DNA enough that by the time my feet can […]

A Few Words On Justin Sweatt(and the independent artist)

There’s some of us out here in the world that may have had dreams of being a full-time artist, part-time employee. You know, the kind of artist that says the hell with “getting a real job”, as your factory-working uncle tells you at the family reunion each year. Or the weird truck driver that lingers […]

Voodoo Psych : Revisiting Psicomagia

The first album I ever bought from the Danish record label El Paraiso was the debut album from skronky psych jammers Psicomagia. They were a collaboration between bands Astra and Radio Moscow, two prolific bands in their own right. With Psicomagia they combined the groovy psych escapism of Radio Moscow’s buzzing sound and Astra’s booming […]

My Lifestyle Determines My Deathstyle

When Metallica’s St. Anger came out the hoopla around it was pretty overwhelming, which once everyone had heard it reversed to underwhelming. “Trendy”, “no solos”, “that snare sound” were a just a few of the many things that were mentioned as part of the overall indictment of the long gestating, long drawn out, post-rehab, post-therapy, […]