Nine Inch Nails : Not The Actual Events

Do younger generations look at Trent Reznor and NIN as some sort of fossilized, angry rich uncle? I hear folks a few years younger than me saying things of that nature. And maybe they have a point to some degree. What’s Reznor got to be mad about these days? Maybe the point isn’t that he’s […]

Wojciech Golczewski : End Of Transmission

Just when you think you’ve got the year in music all wrapped up with a nice, decorative bow an album pops out from the great ether and grabs you by the lapels and says “You’re not done yet, pal!” That album for me is Wojciech Golczewski’s End Of Transmission. Golczewski is a film composer that […]

Dr. Dog : Abandoned Mansion

Like a friend wanting to console you after a great disappointment, Dr. Dog have emerged from the wilderness of the post-election shock and awe to give us something to ease our worried minds and pained hearts. It seems the Philly folk/soul/rock philistines entered their studio and for two weeks belted out a song a day […]

Videodrones : Mondo Ferox

“It’s pretty late, yet I still have a couple videotapes left to watch. I burned through some Argento, Fulci, Carpenter; now its time to jump into a stack of Gorgon Videos that I found tucked away in the back room of Video World. Faces of Death, A Night To Dismember, and Evil Dead Trap seem […]

SURVIVE : RR7349

Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein seemed to know what they were doing when they formed and created the score to the Duffer Bros Stranger Things. They captured a feeling in those synth-heavy pieces that you can’t just get from a plug-in you use in some computer-based program. These were hands-on pieces; meticulously strung together using […]

Cymbals Eat Guitars : Pretty Years

I can remember hearing “…And The Hazy Sea” for the first time back in 2009 and being completely floored. Cymbals Eat Guitars had created this musical world that encapsulated all those wonderful elements that made the early 90s indie rock movement so magical. Bombastic guitars, quiet moments, tinkling keyboards, wobbly vocals that go from fragile […]

Atticus Ross/Leopold Ross/Bobby Krlic : Almost Holy S/T

Almost Holy is a documentary directed by Steve Hoover, and it’s about Pastor Gennadiy Mokhnenko, a rogue man of the cloth that works and lives out of Mariupol, Ukraine. In his city there was a massive influx of homeless, drug-addicted children and “Pastor Crocodile”, as Mokhnenko likes to call himself, felt it was his duty to help […]

Preoccupations : Preoccupations

Preoccupations is the band formerly known as Viet Cong. Viet Cong was a band that put out one of my favorite albums of 2015. Preoccupations is a band that may have put out one of my favorite albums of 2016. Not only for the fact that their self-titled album is a beautifully dark concoction of […]

Silver Apples : Clinging To A Dream

I have to be honest, besides a vague awareness of the name I wasn’t all that familiar with Silver Apples. I knew they were instrumental in pushing electronic music into the ears of folks that would go on to revolutionize the genre. Experimental electronic, Krautrock, motorik beats, and the whole German electronic music scene of […]

Morgan Delt : Phase Zero

The first thing that hits you on Morgan Delt’s excellent Sub Pop debut Phase Zero is the breezy, island sway of “I Don’t Wanna See What’s Happening Outside”. Vocalsjust shy of a whisper cascade along a mellow, shuffling rhythm with wobbling guitars, synths, and a prominent proper meaty bass line holding it all together. It […]