After three years, Dan Deacon is back with twinkling synths, clacking stacks of percussion, warped vocoders and a nervous but overall optimistic outlook. With Gliss Riffer, Deacon has tightened his song writing and honed his pop sensibilities without losing his creative edge, carefully layering fun DIY electronica with indie sensibilities and modern classical rhythms. Lyrically,
Valentine’s day is lame when you’re single, all of the saccharine nonsense around you makes you want to puke. Love is for Hallmark and chocolate is special everyday. No better way to evade than raging out to some loud, heavy bass music and getting f**ked up with your friends. Like John Stamos’ bellybutton f**ked up.
The room was dark, deep blue lights pierce through a near opaque fog, a DJ is playing some great Darkwave (Think New Wave’s goth brother) records and the seemingly morose crowd is swaying their shoulders to the beat. It was a Sunday night at Complex in Glendale, Body of Light were headlining, so I threw
This past Friday (Feb. 6) was a sold out show at the Los Angeles Forum; the arena was filled to brim with people, jumping up and down making a deafening clamor. What were they all screaming for? House music… obviously. I’ve been to a lot of massive electronic music shows in my day, but Above
Oh no, not a metal album! If you don’t enjoy the heaviest and most visceral of music, please stop reading, go listen to Hootie and the Blowfish. If the most guttural and sonically devastating metal beckons your ears, relinquish your senses to So.-Cal. fusion-metalheads Xibalba. Even their name, the Mayan Underworld, translating to “Place of
The lights go dark in the Troubadour, the crowd intermixed with twenty-somethings and middle age hipsters start screaming, Katie White and her partner in crime Julian “Jules” De Martino took to the stage, and completely blew the whole crowd away with their high-octane performance. After an exemplary opening set from synth wielding fellow duo Kaneholler,
At first impressions, the NAMM show is a bit of sensory overload. Music companies in the fields of guitar craft, accessories, strings, pro-audio, synthesizers and so on, all coalesce for the largest trade convention for the music industry. The National Association of Musician Merchants (NAMM) puts on annual conventions all around the world, but at
One of the best parts about The Decemberists is that much of their music references folklore, and their music gives you that vintage old storytelling type of feeling. Unfortunately that charm got lost somewhere in their seventh studio album, “What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World.” To say that this album is not good
Renowned critic Greil Marcus once cited Sleater-Kinney as the most important group in Rock history, a declaration more bold than any for a band. This not so diffident writer has to agree with that notion. For twenty years, the women of Alt-Punk outfit Sleater-Kinney have been kicking ass and taking names. Their genesis came from
After the half drunk, half melodies of a Jeff Tweedy look alike and the smooth, heartfelt schtick of Uke-Hunt, Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds took the stage in denim jackets, striped shirts and swaths of spring reverb. For those unacquainted, Kid Congo Powers has had a long history in music, playing with such