popcorn youth

First of all, apologies for lack of posts. I hope everyone’s Thanksgiving was as deliriously yummy as mine was! This week’s cover story is on Cornell Cinema’s Rock the Cinema Ball, which will feature the musical talents of Johnny Dowd, Jennie Stearns, The Atomic Forces, Mary Lorson, and Candy Pants, as well as this amazing […]

“The Price of Love” by Seattle-based duo Chromatics, defies their previous comparisons to Blood Brothers and Erase Errata, instead combining nought-era alienation and anxiety, 40s film noir stylishness, a Nosferatu-esque narrator (”Sleep until the sun comes down, wake up in the dark/ half alive and hating it, staring at the wall”); a post-grunge minimalist construct […]

Take a break from baking pies, sweeping floors, basting turkeys, and being thankful to check out what’s featured in the Ithaca Times this week. Our cover story this week is about the Johnny Cash tribute concert — featuring Chickenwire Parachute, the Don Bazley Projectiles, Missing Marcus, Sean Kobuk, Common Railers, PJ & G Marcus, and […]

I haven’t read anything about The Decemberists that’s even mildly interested me in YEARS, and ever since Her Majesty (which I loved), I’ve always felt like they were a band that I was “supposed” to like, and as a result, I resented — and resisted — their presence. Reading Ott’s words — or should […]

Saw Jamie Lidell perform over the weekend at Hamilton college and was seriously impressed. Among other things, Lidell performed tracks from Multiply, which sounded even more convincing live than on record, if you can believe that. It is difficult, if you know Lidell’s ten year history with Warp, his collaborations with Christian […]

As if Beirut cancelling the Oswego show tonight wasn’t bad enough, some very sad news: For unknown reasons, !!! were forced to drop off the tour and won’t be playing tonight at Hamilton College. In their place will be the Berlin-based ex-pat/musician Paul Bonomo aka Snax. As far as I can tell, he seems like […]

In an attempt to compile the majority of writing I’ve done in the past six months, I’ve created a new category on the site, which you can access by clicking on the tab “My Writings” at the top of the page. This will include my previous articles for other websites Blender Magazine, Neumu, Harmonium Music, […]

… plus some other miscellani. Our cover story covers a host of Russia-related events: Cornell’s Shostakovich Festival, the Moscow Ballet at the State Theatre, and the Moscow State Symphony. The Moscow State Symphony is playing tonight, and you can enjoy them play selections by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff tonight at the newly renovated Bailey Hall on […]

Exciting update: Thanks to a gentle bit of nudging, I’ve been convinced to add to the archives all of my previous interviews from other publications and sites. It will be exciting to go back through them and to notice all of the embarrassing trends in my question-asking (I’m pretty sure that I ask basically every […]

Tidbits, of which will be here to remind me that I need to post about these very topics in greater length in the coming days . . .
“Bubble and Squeak,” an excellent introduction for those who know little about dubstep (like yours truly), is in this month’s ArtForum (!) by Michael Wilson. He name drops […]

Here’s the full, unedited transcript with Alloy Orchestra junk percussionist Ken Winokur. Their first performance is tonight at 7:15pm at the Willard Straight movie theatre on the Cornell campus. The combination of live, experimental music with old, restored silent films sounds like an exciting and fresh idea, especially in the wake of the invigorating and […]

A couple of days ago, I came across this essay by Ryan over at Good Hodgkins. It’s already spurred lively debate in his comments section, but mostly it reminded me of my earlier conversation with Roger. Matthew Perpetua’s (of Fluxblog) comment touches on a topic that I almost always try to address with my interviewees, […]

Yesterday was a good day. So I’m going to celebrate and indulge myself with this link which made me smile and laugh. This is courtesy of one of the best websites ever. I am infatuated with pandas. When I saw this yesterday, I thought my head was going to explode. Thanks ChinaDaily!

Happy Thursday everyone, and […]

And as far as complementing, Alloy Orchestra is a very reasonable type of music group. (Laughs) It’s something that you would associate with maturity. (Laughs) We play concerts, we’re treated well, they take us out to dinner, they put us up in hotels. Whereas [with] Burma, same age group, but you would not associate with maturity, you would associate with out of control youth. So when we play those concerts, it’s late at night, you’re zonked out of your gourd, yet people will be screaming and yelling. Alloy Orchestra concerts, people give you standing ovations and come up and talk to you afterwards. It’s a very, very different kind of situation, and if I only had one of those, I really like Mission of Burma. It’s an incredibly zonked out experience. It’s really satisfying, but if I did that all the time it would probably wear me down, so Alloy Orchestra is this incredibly reasonable way of going out and living this life as a musician. But it’s much more level. So between the two of them I survive. I mean, there are other things to keep me surviving, too.

This week in the Ithaca Times appears to be a modest homage to the life and times of Roger Miller, but so it goes. My cover story is on Miller’s involvement with Boston band Mission of Burma; my Encore is a brief discography of important MoB releases; my Club Notes is on Alloy Orchestra, a […]