I'm thinking about Lorraine Hunt Lieberson today, perhaps because Peter Sellars' production of Handel's Theodora has just appeared on CD, and its music has been resounding through our house for days...

The following songs were all released this year, all on full-length LP’s. The exception, however, is the track “You and I,” which features Richard Hawley accompanied by The Arctic Monkeys (listed here as The Death Ramps)–a collaboration which I hope will yield more. Some of these songs appear on albums I’ve reviewed here already; the main criteria for inclusion is simply frequency of plays.  There have been...

“Pieces of wood, love, knowledge and 299 hours of work, condensed in a 3 minute film.” Director & VFX – Spiros Rasidakis, Dimitris Ladopoulos Director of photography – Nikos Mexis Editing – Yiannis Kostavaras Sound Design – Nikos Tsines Guitarist & Composer – Edsart Udo De Haes Guitar Maker – Vassilis Lazarides lazarides.com via Deep Green...

Dictaphones became  popular circa 1910, through the Columbia Gramophone Company, as a way of transcribing speech.  Using wax cylinders, which by this point had been replaced by disc technology for most sound recording, these devices, resembling elaborate hookahs, were the last vestiges of Alexander Graham Bell’s revolutionary discoveries in sound fidelity.  Some still claim that cylindrical wax’s actual aural replication is...

I am wary of sincerity.  Is it because I am incapable of appearing to possess it even if I feel possessed by it?  I joked with a friend recently that I am capable of competing with almost anything but the hint of sincerity.  Its place in art necessarily troubled given that by definition the creative act is an artificial one, a construct by which feeling is enacted and/or elicited—sincerity remains misunderstood.  And yet it is...

Another finished RPM Challenge and more shameless self-promotion! I’m currently listening to Damien Jurado’s new album Maraqopa and Guy Capecelatro III’s North For The Winter.

After having one of my songs featured on the first 2012 RPM podcast (I’m about twenty minutes in, the penultimate piece), They Went On (an odd moniker for a one-man band, I know) is glad...

The RPM Challenge continues.  Into the second week and I’ve got five unnamed rough tracks.  I’m unclear exactly how things are shaping up, as I’m too in the middle of it to get a clear sense of direction.  I do notice a piano-driven impulse on these, and I’m enjoying some experimentation with mini-moog.  I got in my obligatory dub vibe, but I tried to subvert the reggae form by accenting the down strokes, giving...

Each year musicians from around the world challenge one another to compose and record an album’s worth of material (10 songs or 35 minutes of music) in the month of February (this being a leap year, we get an extra day).  This is not a competition, but rather a community effort to push ourselves into new creative endeavors.  The results of my efforts last year, as well my first untitled (suggestions are welcome!) song on my as yet...

A few words on year-end lists:  Those who make them feel important for doing so.