An astronaut, a filmmaker, and a drum’n’bass producer. It sounds like the setup to a joke, but these unlikely bedfellows were among the base ingredients of The Edge of Everything, the first new album in 14 years from Bristolian jungle/drum’n’bass… Read More
Since introducing his Tobacco alias in 2008 in the shadow of his more cosmically inclined electro-psych act, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Thomas Fec has been engaged in a prolonged game of, as a track from his debut record put it,… Read More
In his shattering memoir Stammered Songbook: A Mother’s Book of Hours, Erwin Mortier charts his family’s struggles to care for his mother (and each other, and themselves) as Alzheimer’s takes her from them. “I can no longer hear the music… Read More
More than a few of us, these days, have been keeping an unusual, deliberate focus on our memories as they form: which ones we’d keep, which ones we’d prefer to destroy, whether any were worth keeping at all, and how… Read More
There are hard truths to be gained from burst myths. So it was in 2017, when I interviewed the respected Chicago DJ/producer Ron Trent about the birth of “deep house,” a dance-music genre often reduced to a palette of muted… Read More
Since releasing their ninth studio album Mind Made Up in 2008, Manchester mainstays A Certain Ratio have been taking stock of their history and settling themselves comfortably in the present. Last year’s ACR: BOX tracked their evolution from the icy… Read More
In the December 1960 issue of Arts and Architecture, the critic Dore Ashton described the peculiar experience of encountering Ad Reinhardt’s “black paintings”—a series of 60 x 60” canvases that appear monochrome, but that reveal subtle, multicolored geometries upon close… Read More
During his brief, glorious early ’70s peak, it seemed that Marc Bolan could send seismic tremors through the universe with delectable nonchalance. He switched from Tolkien-esque freak folk to Chuck Berry boogie in the span of an album. On a… Read More
In a scene that typically moves at a relentless pace, Zora Jones is an artist of slow, microscopic precision. Before the pandemic shuttered nightclubs around the world, the Austrian-born DJ, producer, and visual artist was living a nomadic lifestyle with… Read More
Few artists are as adept at fusing electronic music’s warmth and coldness as Kelly Lee Owens. What makes Owens’ work so distinctive is her equal proficiency as a songwriter and producer; her vocals are as confident and captivating as her… Read More