Farben – Silikon
11 pm on Thanksgiving night, a bunch of suitably overstuffed Americans. I want to put on some music to sleep to, as the last several days had been filled with the oldies station on the four hour drive to Bellingham and Nancy&#[…]

‘There’s a feeling in my heart that tells me if I keep doing this shit I’m gonna make it.’ But no guarantees. And a bell tolls for thee, ominously. Someone cues up a brutal kick sequence on their Playstation in probably the[…]

So, after dicking about on Soulseek for many weeks, I finally managed to snag a copy of this. And it’s good. A solid, subtle listen that my tinny, underfed computer speakers are doing sonic violence to. I’m sure listened to on speakers[…]

Note to self: remember this the next time you feel like the “untold stories of 90s pop” have been told by now, over and over, until everyone is long sick of them. Then tell them again. Louder.[…]

So musically this comes over like a ’99 era Irv Gotti/Ja Rule track (you know, when they were good): stop-start rhythm, lotsa chimes, pizzicato xylophone(?). Only the dippy-dippy-do funk bass maroons it in the 70s. It’s fucking great. […]

grave robbing never sounded so profitable: i read this news – about another round of tape and EP raking by jeff buckley’s label (is it right to call it a “former label” when they’re still pumping out the product long aft[…]

Introduction
For a long time, hardcore was my secret shame, a big red H sewed to my side of anti-modernist thinking, an albatross from my misspent youth. Its strictures, its anti-pleasures, its ugliness are very far indeed from what makes up the bulk[…]

V/A – Scumtron: A Tribute To Merzbow
My girlfriend (whose taste typically falls in a spectrum between Death Cab For Cutie and the Quad City DJ’s) had an unexpected reaction to this record last night. After explaining the “concept&#[…]

And speaking of plagiarism and cover versions, here’s a fascinating (and exhaustive) look at the history of “Mbube” (aka “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”) It’s the rather sad tale of Soloman Linda, a South African who &[…]

Some excerpts from my aborted notes to Mark Sinker’s epic “noise” essay (themselves a bastardization of an aborted essay on Lester Bangs/Richard Meltzer [just be thankful I left out the two paragraphs comparing Steve Albini to Dean […]