For the love of music
David Grubbs on… John Cage’s The 25-Year Retrospective Concert Of The Music Of John Cage (no label, 1959) I have always been intrigued by John Cage’s dismissive attitude towards sound recordings. Actually, I should be a bit more precise than that. John Cage was often dismissive towards commercially-released sound recordings, even … [Read more...]
Steadfast and willingly able to further his craft, Ty Segall returns with his third album of 2012, Twins. His first and only album of the year as a solo artist, it follows Slaughterhouse’s smashing success and Hair’s brilliant chemistry with sounds that are reliably Segall’s. And thank goodness really, Segall has been one of music’s most … [Read more...]
When considering the prolific songwriter that Ty Segall is, one must simply look at his body of work. Diversifying into different outfits, working with various musicians, and continuously releasing music in between months has led to a varied color of music. And needless to say, Segall has continued to impress and improve with every consistently … [Read more...]
Direction and a change of scenery can always make for interestingly new facets and focuses. For Pat Gubler’s P.G. Six, taking four years off and beefing up their scenery with an arsenal of veteran musicians has taken on a developing twist to a greater sound. On Starry Mind Gubler re-tools his band with steady musicians that allow Gubler to give … [Read more...]
While there’s something to say about great music, there’s also something absolutely astonishing in being able to churn out great music so consistently. Through his tenure as one of rock’s stellar musicians, Ty Segall has continued to impress with album after album of tremendously, again, great music. Where Lemons left off, Melted pushed it … [Read more...]
For Annabel Alpers, the mastermind behind the calling that is Bachelorette, music has always maintained a precise declaration. A resounding assertion in knowing that music can be peaceful and still inventive has given Alpers an expressive project in Bachelorette’s growing development of sound. Moving past her first two albums obscurity, … [Read more...]
In a recent interview Irish guitarist/songwriter Sean O’Hagan noted that his band’s new album “Is a colourful record that has a spring feel at the start and an early spring evening feel at the end. There is reference to the pink evening sky.” While merely describing something obscurely aesthetic – without any reference to the actual sound … [Read more...]
Bill Callahan's last album Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle was billed as a personal turn from a songwriter with a reputation for being cantankerously distanced. But when you come down to it, all of his music has seemed to emanate from an inward looking viewpoint - Eagle just felt a little more tender and human, with its warm strings and horns and … [Read more...]
Over the course of his 15 years recording as Six Organs of Admittance, Ben Chasny's output has morphed in a snaky, somewhat unpredictable manner much like his individual pieces and albums. Veering into drone here, speeding up a little there, approaching folk territory for a second before winding up tightly and then releasing the noise. It all … [Read more...]
Dawn McCarthy hasn’t necessarily made it easy to read her Faun Fables. Through her dalliances with performance art theatrics, rustic film-noir atmospherics and heady conceptual songwriting – which reached a peak on 2006’s The Transit Rider – McCarthy and her primary Faun Fables sideman Nils Frykdahl have in part been ghettoised by both … [Read more...]