Stephen Mejias

Zola Jesus - Seekir by sacredbones

Here’s a new track from Zola Jesus’ upcoming record, Conatus, to be released by Sacred Bones Records on October 4. The track is called “Seekir” and suggests a more polished sound for Miss Nika Rosa Danilova. Combining elements of goth, industrial, pop, opera, and noise, Danilova seems to still be searching for her voice, which is exactly as it should be for a 22-year old with an extremely promising future.

Let her keep searching. I'll follow wherever she goes.

The video for Colin Stetson’s “The Stars in His Head” (Dark Lights Remix), directed by Isaac Gale and Dan Huiting. Kinda lovely, kinda creepy, kinda perfect for this chilly, gray day.

Colin Stetson's powerful record, New History Warfare, Vol.2: Judges, available from Constellation Records, was reviewed in the July 2011 issue of Stereophile.

This morning, I walked right by electrician and idiosyncratic amplifier designer, Nori Komuro, and I didn’t say a word. Not even hello. Why didn’t I say anything? I don’t know. I had just emerged from the subway, and was walking up 32nd Street, toward Herald Square, and I wasn’t expecting to see an idiosyncratic amplifier designer. I was looking, instead and as usual, at the ground, at the sky, at high-heels and at skirts. I saw plenty of those. I was pulling a small handcart carrying a box of loudspeakers. Nori Komuro and I would have had something to talk about.

“Oh, loudspeakers,” Nori Komuro might have said.

While listening to Keith Freund’s lovely Constant Comments, it’s often difficult to discern whether the sounds are coming from inside or outside the listening room. Voices, birdsong, honking horns, barking dogs, the opening and closing of doors, ocean waves and rainfall mingle, freely and happily, with crystalline and gently strummed electric guitars, synthesizer sounds, electronic burps and gurgles, tape hiss, and more.

The result is a comforting and thought-provoking ramble. Listening to Constant Comments is like walking down 3rd Street, between Coles and Monmouth, late at night, glancing into the glowing windows of strangers’ homes: I can’t help but make up stories for these scattered shards of song. The 12 tracks of Constant Comments, then, are glimpses into other worlds, at once foreign and familiar, and altogether compelling.

I won’t be in the office tomorrow. I’ll be down in Hunterdon County, NJ, helping a very good friend set up a very special hi-fi system. This is big&#151BIG&#151news, but I can’t say anything else about it yet.

Speculate amongst yourselves.

Forum member “jgrossman” wants to know what’s stopping more people from getting into hi-fi. Is it the high cost of audio components, the hobby’s steep learning curve, the lack of hi-fi dealers, or something else?

Anton argues that audiophiles are the problem. “I have seen the enemy of high end audio,” he writes, “and it is us.”

What do you think? Talk about it in the Forum.

Oneohtrix Point Never is young electronic composer Daniel Lopatin. His critically acclaimed Returnal shook my listening room walls, clattered around in my mind, and stirred my soul. While more lighthearted recent collaborations with Joel Ford (first under the guise of “Games” and later simply as “Ford and Lopatin”) haven’t reached the same emotional depths, news of Lopatin’s upcoming album, Replica, is intriguing.