Bill Callahan : Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest

Bill Callahan is one of America’s best modern songwriters. Like contemporaries Will Oldham, Damien Jurado, Phil Elverum, and the late Vic Chesnutt, Callahan paints pictures of modern life that feel long ago in his songs. Touching on emotions and real life so plainly and without much need for interpretation, his dark voice and acoustic-driven songs […]

El Paraiso Records Announce Monarch’s ‘Beyond the Blue Sky’ Out In August; Listen To First Single

If you’re like me, you’ve felt the absence of Danish label El Paraiso Records this year. Besides the mammoth Chicago Odense Ensemble reissue much earlier this year(it’s incredible so get it if you haven’t yet), it’s been pretty quiet over there in Odense. One of my absolute highlights every year is to see those announcements […]

Fragile X : The Butterfly Effect

Fragile X’s The Butterfly Effect is a stunning, visceral electronic album that hits you in all the right ways. Hard electro, IDM, and all the sci fi buzzing headiness you can handle in the course of six exquisitely produced tracks. Glasgow-based record label Bricolage’s latest release is a stunning overwhelming of the senses. According to […]

Jay Som’s ‘Anak Ko’ Drops in August; Listen To The Dreamy “Superbike” Right Now

Jay Som is an artist that evokes long car rides in the summer, quiet walks in the fall, and long distance stares in the dead of winter. Melina Duterte’s songwriting makes you listen twice, as her songs and sleepy melodies creep up on you like an old friend. But it’s merely a case of deja […]

Heaven’s Gateway Drugs’ “existential crisis road trip concept album” : Slab City

The Fort Wayne psychedelic collective known as Heaven’s Gateway Drugs have been honing their mix of sixties psych pop, 70s glam, and cult-y freakdom for a few years now. Despite personnel changes and the ups and downs of keeping a band up and running over their tenure, the core of Derek Mauger and Ben […]

Cemetery Gates : Welcome to Hell

Occasionally an album will get by me. I try to keep my ears to the ground and be aware of the good stuff coming my way, but there are times when there’s so much good stuff happening at the same time I or one of my many clones will miss something great. Case in point: […]

Balance Your Madness

At one point in my life I considered myself a serious songwriter. As serious as one could be working a full-time job, married, with three kids. Somehow, with all of that responsibility I still found time to write and record songs on the regular. If inspiration struck I could sit down at the out-of-tune piano […]

Tim Heidecker : What The Brokenhearted Do…

It took me a long time to find an “in” with Tim Heidecker. In-particular, the comedy he created with Eric Warheim. Watching Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job on Adult Swim was both absolute hilarity and mild-to-extreme unease. Their comedy was this weird mix of 80s cable access video effects and mild hallucinatory fever […]

Holodeck Records Drops GRÜN WASSER’s ‘Not Ok with Things’ October 4th

There’s a darkness to Chicago’s GRÜN WASSER’s sound. The sparse music landscape of their electro-punk music gives it a ghostly vibe. Keely Dowd and producer Essej Pollock take a minimalist approach to their electronic pop music, bringing to mind some of the best of what both Chicago’s Wax Trax and early DFA artists were doing […]

The Sword’s Bryan Richie Introduces Galactic Protector; ‘Evening’ Out June 28th

Bryan Richie makes low end thunder and otherworldly noise as bass and keys player in Texas metal titans The Sword. The storytelling and sci-fi/fantasy vibes make The Sword a band you can get lost in. Imagine a Frank Frazetta painting in music form; chromed-out cod pieces, blood-red skies, and the battle cry of warriors taking […]

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