Heavy-hearted in the Midwest since 2011
Songwriter Jeffrey Silverstein connects to the Pacific Northwest on a very deep level. His adopted home spoke to him so deeply that he made his debut solo album You Become The Mountain as if speaking for the landscape of Portland. The album acts as a conduit to his surroundings. Listening to the record you can […]
Read More Song and Spirit : A Conversation With Songwriter Jeffrey SilversteinWhen Martin Rude and Jakob Skøtt got together to make their collaborative LP the two Danish musicians could have gone in any direction. They worked together in the band Sun River(along with Jonas Munk), and both have established themselves as versatile players. What they came up with is an album filled with subtle sonic manipulations […]
Read More Martin Rude & Jakob Skøtt Duo : The Discipline of AssentShortwave Broadcaster is the experimental/ambient music project of Keith Canisius Baerken. Baerken works in the realm of electronic music in the duo Astral TV, as well as in Rumskib and has released music with Darla Records as Keith Canisius. With Shortwave Broadcaster Baerken is deep diving into serious ambient vibes courtesy of heavily effected guitar. […]
Read More Shortwave Broadcaster : Afraid of AiThe latest from Alexander Leonard Donat sees him pushing his post-punk project Vlimmer into even brighter and darker realms. His varied sonic worlds seem to keep colliding together, grabbing bits of both his Fir Cone Children and Vlimmer projects, turning the darker realms lighter, and the lighter a bit darker. With XIIIIII/XIIIIIII(16 & 17) the […]
Read More Vlimmer : XIIIIII/XIIIIIII (16 & 17)When I was little our family would occasionally drive west 2 1/2 hours to Chicago for a weekend event. Be it the Brookfield Zoo, a White Sox game, the Science and Industry Museum, or the Field Museum. These were isolated events because my dad wasn’t a fan of Chicago traffic, so it had to be […]
Read More Cosmic Terrors and Happy MealsBradford Trojan makes the kind of music that feels both sun-kissed and world-weary. Weather worn pop songs that fall into the category of DIY, but not lo-fi. His tunes are like finding a cassette underneath your car seat that’s been there years, maybe even decades. Unmarked you put it in the deck and find this […]
Read More Bradford Trojan : MeanwhileLet us rejoice, for Protomartyr have returned from the Motor City to deliver unto us another sermon of epic proportions. Their rapturous mix of post-punk and art rock combined with front man Joe Casey’s pulpit tirades and apocalyptic urban decay manifestos are the kind of serious talk we all need to hear right now. In […]
Read More Protomartyr : Ultimate Success Todayfeatured photos by Daniel Di Domenico Josh Mills put out one of the best electronic albums of 2019 with his Missions LP Subcreature. On that album Mills built deep, dark electro jams for slinking thru neon-lit city streets with laser precision. His vibes were early 80s electro funk mixed with neo-futuristic dystopia. These were club […]
Read More Missions Returns With “Loversnight”featured photo by Marcus Fisher It’s hard to describe Secret Drum Band’s Chuva, the Portland music collective’s second full-length album and first with the great Moon Glyph Records. It’s nothing like anything Moon Glyph has dabbled in before, with the focus here on rhythm and powerful soundscapes created with intricately orchestrated percussion, ambient electronics, and […]
Read More Secret Drum Band : ChuvaEvery year I like to take a moment and pay my respects to the folks behind the amazing album art that don the gatefold jackets and cassette sleeves and Bandcamp pages. Not just any album covers, but the ones that pull you in. The kind of album art that makes you want to own that […]
Read More Visual Connection : Great Album Art of 2020