“PTSD” (for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, perhaps?) begins with scintillating and warbling minimalist electronics and subtle washes of restrained feedback, all gradually building and building into a cacophony of maniacal screams, demented moans, and horror movie organ. It sounds like the sort of stuff that would be trapped within the deranged mind. (I’m imagining.) A horrifying howl grows from the…
search
I wonder if Karen, over at Other Music, has gotten around to listening to Sex Worker’s The Labor of Love. I’d like to tell her about it. I probably wouldn’t tell her like this:
A few things:
1. January issues are in. Woo! We’ve been shipping our February issue. We’ll still be shipping our February issue next week. At the same time, we’ve already started work on the March issue.
What month is this, really? I’m confused.
2. For a brief, wondrous moment earlier today, the number of people following the Stereophile Twitter page reached 100. My heart soared! Immediately after, however, we dropped back down to 99. What the? My heart broke a little bit. It’s weird, this Internet. But no worries: The number of followers has been…
Oh yeah: Matador's having a holiday sale.
The label has released some of the best new music of the year: Sonic Youth, Times New Viking, Girls, Cold Cave, Yo La Tengo. And don't forget past years: Cat Power, Fucked Up, Pavement, Mogwai, Belle and Sebastian. And, really, so much more.
Do it!
Where did I hide that Replacements record, dammit?
A message from Steve Gritzan of Jersey City’s Iris Records:
yes folks, the time has come. i've decided to pack in the retail side of the business. the reasons are numerous: slumping sales (the recession?), the onslaught of technology, the endless brunswick street blues (most other businesses have shuttered), but the primary reason is that i am looking to shift things around in my own life. i'm not leaving the record and cd business at all (or this space), but the pressure of running a retail store (even just two or…
My annual piece on the Best Jazz Albums of the Year appears in today’s edition of Slate (for which I write a regular column, though usually on foreign and military policy). This time, I also drew up two lists of the Best Jazz Albums of the Decade—one for new recordings, the other for previously unreleased historical recordings (treasure troves of which were excavated this past 10 years). Readers of this blog may recall reading about most of these albums in this space.
In the Slate piece (see the External Link below), I included 30-second sound clips for each of the best albums of 2009.…
I was introduced to Scotch Tapes, “the worst hi-tech music label ever,” on December 9, by a Twitter post from Jagjaguwar. Oneida would be releasing a limited-edition cassette through Scotch Tapes. This was interesting news to me, first because I’ve been fascinated with the idea of a “cassette tape revival,” and second because Oneida is a well-established name in the world of underground rock bands. Why would Oneida release work on a format that had been all but forgotten by the music industry? Why cassettes?
As soon as I had asked myself the stupid question, the obvious answer…
John Hammond has always been a strange case. Son of the legendary record producer and scout John Hammond Sr. who worked with Billie Holiday, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, young John who sang and played guitar staked out a difficult piece of musical turf when he decided to make playing acoustic Delta–styled blues on the National Steel guitar his signature move.
Because acoustic blues only appeals to a fairly limited crowd—the old beer and biker bar crowd like their blues electrified—Hammond’s career has been low key. Larger success has alluded him which is not a…
The jazz book of the year is called, simply,Jazz. Written by Gary Giddins, the best living jazz critic, and Scott DeVeaux, one of the most astute jazz historians, it’s a vital reference for those well versed in the subject and an essential guide for those who get lost in its thickets and want to know how to listen to the music so that it at least makes sense.
There are plenty of jazz encyclopedias and histories out there. What’s distinctive about this book is that it takes you through the century’s sweep of jazz—its soloists, singers, and sidemen, its innovators and embellishers, its…
I’ve received two packages in the mail today. Both were from Portland, Oregon, a hotbed for outstanding independent music, and both contained tapes.
Happy Holidays from Ye Olde Hometapes: A cassette tape sampler of some of what was good and right in the world in 2009: Megafaun, All Tiny Creatures, Cyne, Bear in Heaven, and Slaraffenland.
Thanks, Hometapes! I’ve got a feeling that 2010 is going to be a very merry (and very analog) year.
The January 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. Hooray! A new volume! A new year! Twelve more issues of Stereophile! Whee! We are pretty excited about starting the year off with a review of a PC soundcard. And at just $200, the ASUS Xonar Essence is the least expensive product to ever grace the cover of our magazine. Plus, it’s got that pretty golden tiger thing on it. What aroused John Atkinson’s interest, however, was the ASUS’s claimed signal/noise ratio of 124dB: “True high-end territory.”
But let’s forget about equipment reports for a second and turn the…