Wasted Years : Charles Burns’ ‘Black Hole’

I think it’s safe to say that the teenage years can be some of the most exciting and horrific years of our lives. You’re discovering music, books, films, the opposite sex, and all the beauty and pain that come with all of them. You were trying hard to build a world of friends and confidants […]

Umberto : Alienation

Umberto’s Alienation feels like a cross between New Age, a giallo score, and a soundtrack to some strange early 80s sci fi film. Previous albums like Confrontation, Night Has A Thousand Screams, and Prophecy Of The Black Widow all took their cues from the Gothic and dark world of horror films from guys like Argento, […]

Landing : Third Sight

Landing seems to inhabit a musical space that resides in dreams. They create these musical patchworks that form a beautiful and surreal world where natural light and free thought connect and open doorways to ethereal universes. Of course, you have to be ready and primed to allow the music on Landing’s newest album Third Sight […]

Middle-Aged Melancholy : Two Dudes, The Cure, and the Windy City

I was never much of a Cure fan in high school. In fact, I wasn’t a fan at all. I didn’t get it; the make up, jet black hair teased to the sky, mopey guys, and the doom and gloom. None of it clicked with my Midwest, meat-and-potatoes, not really Presbyterian upbringing. If there wasn’t […]

Today’s Headline : ‘Slacker Dad Has Not-So Slacker Daughter’

I was not the best student in high school. Sure I always passed my classes and I never failed, but I did the absolute minimum I needed to do in order to move on to the next level and I never looked back. I didn’t procrastinate. In fact I usually got things done pretty early […]

Afternoon Walks On Mars

I’m sure most folks when you mention the music of summer think of The Beach Boys, Bananarama, Ice Cube, BTO, or something produced by the likes of Mark Ronson or Paul Williams. Me? I think Oneohtrix Point Never. In particular, the album Drawn and Quartered. Nothing gets my summer sunburn going more than the hazy swaths […]

A Soundtrack To Dreams : The Musical World of Landing

Feature photo by Susan Mclean Sometimes the best thing is right in your own backyard. What do I mean? Well take music for example. You go through phases where you feel you’ve found all the great bands you’re going to find. You’ve combed the great musical landscape over and over again and have come up […]

Corvette ’61

For a time when my dad was between 8 and 15 years old he lived in a small town in Northeast Indiana called Lagrange. That is where his obsession with cars started and where he would become what the car folks call a “gearhead”. The obsession may have started before, but in Lagrange is where […]

Ridiculous Vinyl Purchases : Nostalgia Gets The Best Of Us All

I guess you could say I’ve been on a bit of a nostalgia kick lately. On a trip to my local record store recently I was given access to leaf through an as-yet put out collection of records and see if anything tickled my fancy. Within this “like, totally” 80s dive I located some truly […]

The Claypool Lennon Delirium: Monolith of Phobos

I know what you’re thinking if you haven’t yet heard the Sean Lennon and Les Claypool collaboration called The Claypool Lennon Delirium. You’re thinking you have no interest in hearing this band. You’ve heard Primus and all the other nautically-themed records Claypool has put out over the last 20 years on his own and with […]