Canadian musician Tonetta is the savior of lo-fi music. Free from the irony associated with chillwave and shitgaze, he crafts poetically course tunes using whatever equipment is available, with lyrics like the raunchiest passages of a William S. Burroughs novel. He has been recording these songs for nearly three decades, and only recently released his first album, 777, on Black Tent Press. I had the honor of speaking to him over the phone about his music, his videos, and his life.
Tame Impala will take you on a journey. ‘What kind of journey?’ you may ask. A saga that starts in the subconscious, travels through the psyche, says what’s up to Freud, funnels into the bloodstream, and courses through your veins with densely textured and infectious riffs. The Perth quartet’s deep-groove psychedelic sounds have caught the attention of many over the past few weeks, as they trek along their first US tour in support of their debut album, Innerspeaker. I spoke with the band’s singer/guitarist/mastermind Kevin Parker on a day off during the group’s jaunt of dates opening for MGMT.
Niamh Corcoran’s music strikes me as something is something special for the Dublin underground music scene. Her half-dreamscape, half-electronic sounds are so chillingly awesome that I really wish she was instead here in the US. Though relatively unknown in these parts, Niamh has been playing plenty of great shows and certainly has a lot on her mind. I hope her solo endeavor Angkorwat is able to permeate foreign boundaries and put people everywhere into an infectious daze. Take a listen to her jams and thoughts here and you’ll get why I’m such a fan.
In 2008, Have A Nice Life released their monstrously bleak double album Deathconsciousness. This record set the standard for what can be accomplished by a couple of guys doing it all themselves. Tying together elements of shoegaze, drone, post-punk, and black metal, Deathconsciousness is a soul crushing experience. Tim Macuga and Dan Barrett were kind enough to answer some questions about this album and their other projects.
Ajay Saggar is a man who is constantly immersed in music, seemingly from every angle possible. If he’s not recording or playing shows with The Bent Moustache, he’s likely live mixing and sometimes tour managing another equally worthy act. Ajay has probably visited more places than any of us will in a lifetime, and yet it’s all part of a routine love for a craft and passion. He thoroughly answered the questions I had and was kind enough to share a few tracks as well.
On a perfect day, Marling is just like anyone else. It’s the weekend. She picks up the papers at the corner store, makes breakfast with her flatmates, takes a walk in the park and ends the night with friends in the pub. Describing this to me, the born and raised Brit gives the impression she’s much more interested in living her life than wondering how she can sound more like Nick Drake, or where her music lies in comparison to Noah and the Whale.
Uffie is the badass alter-ego of French expatriate Anna-Catherine Hartley. She has been working on an album for about four years now, called Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans. I decided not to be one of the billions that have asked her about the hold-up. Instead, she told me about future material, plans to leave France, and weighed in on the heated Ke$ha debate.
Robert Schneider, best known for being the front man of The Apples in stereo and producer of several key Elephant 6 albums, is an exceptionally nice dude. So nice, in fact, that after finding that the last 2/3 of my interview had been devoured by audio goblins, he obliged to take even more time out of his schedule to help me resurrect it. The following is a compilation of those two interviews, where we discussed all things Apples, the current state of Elephant 6, and why math is awesome.
A conversation with Philip Seymour Hoffman after his show at Big Fung Loft in Boston’s Chinatown on April 16, 2010.
One might naively conclude that being the drummer of an internationally critically acclaimed band is a full-time occupation, unable to be accompanied by a side project of any kind. Nate Donmoyer disproves this assumption to the fullest. Between recording an album, touring nearly non-stop for about a year now, and giving countless interviews with Passion Pit, he walks into the night with DJ equipment in hand and remix worthy tracks in mind to become Shuttle, performing alongside revered artists like Diplo and Sinden.
