THE FALL FASHION ISSUE
Music
BAG RAIDERS
Sunny Sounds from the Heart of Winter Three years ago Sydney residents Chris Stracey and Jack Glass, the duo known as Bag Raiders, were hard at work making mix tapes for their friends. They enjoyed the process so much, they started a production company and were soon doing remixes for bands like Cut Copy, Midnight [...]
DAVID GRELLIER
College & the Valerie Collective “So you suppose I play an instrument?” It was more of a statement than a question that came from David Grellier, the one-man band behind College and composer of the track, “A Real Hero,” whose thrumming synth and chaste vocals have made their tour of today’s retro-laden blogosphere and have [...]
THE GOOD NATURED
You won’t hear Sarah McIntosh complaining about the demise of the record business. When she started The Good Natured, she ignored the industry and set out to do things on her own. She created the band and became their manager, publicist and booking agent, as well as the lead singer, songwriter and keyboard-player. “When I [...]
UH HUH HER
“Welcome to the glamorous world of life on the road,” says bass player and singer Leisha Hailey, one-half of the creative team that fronts the indie rock band Uh Huh Her. Hailey and her partner, singer/guitarist/producer/keyboard-player Camila Grey, are in a laundromat in Cleveland, Ohio. They’re washing their stage clothes. Later on, they’ll jump in [...]
High Places
Photography by Colin Patrick Smith High Places is the duo of Mary Pearson, a classically trained bassoon player, and Rob Barber, a guitarist, visual artist and producer. Pearson and Barber were introduced by a mutual friend when Pearson came to New York City to audition for her graduate program. After a lengthy conversation about musical [...]
Delicate Cutters
Photography by Brandon Brown When Delicate Cutters front woman Janet Simpson sings, her warm, inviting tone pulls you into her troubled and emotional world. The music may be mellow, marked by lilting melodies with pop, folk and Celtic influences, but lyrically, Simpson investigates the darker regions of the human heart. She visits the disturbing places [...]
James Allan/ Glasvegas
Few examples better illustrate the well-known inferiority complex of the Scottish than the 1996 indie masterpiece Trainspotting. “It’s shiet being Scottish! We’re the lowest of the low. The scum of the fucking Earth!” Mark Renton deftly exclaims with a sentiment that can only be calmed by massive amounts of heroin. Evolving as it did to [...]
Music Changing with the Tides
Many may think that Seattle’s music scene ended with a shotgun blast when, in a spare room above a garage in a large house facing Lake Washington, Kurt Cobain killed himself. The lead singer of Nirvana left a suicide note for his wife, Courtney Love, and their baby daughter, Frances Bean. On April 8, 1994, [...]
Eye Can Groove
What does a South African living in Australia do in his spare time? The DJ with the given name of Nick Bertke, but just known as Pogo, has for the past four years done something that other DJ’s haven’t—he has been mixing and scratching with not just music, but also with images. As Lewis Carroll [...]
Gavin Friday
A tangible connection to the original punks is slowly being erased. In just the last year, Ari Up of The Slits and Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex shed their mortal coils, Joe Strummer’s death in 2002 was especially poignant and even the seemingly endless supply of Ramones is dwindling. Gavin Friday is one of the [...]
Loyal Divide
Adam Johnson is the songwriter and producer behind Chicago’s Loyal Divide, a young band that’s taking the blend of rock and electronic music in striking new directions. His band has generated a powerful street-level buzz in the past few years, but Johnson says he never intended to be a full-time musician, even though he grew [...]
Zee Avi
Tiny Dynamo from Borneo A few years ago, singer/songwriter Zee Avi wasn’t sure what she was going to do with her life. “I studied law for my pre-college A Levels, then went to the American Intercontinental University in London for design,” Avi says from her current home in Brooklyn. “I dropped out of college after [...]
Metal Mother
“I don’t like fluffy music,” says Tara Tati, the woman who records as Metal Mother. “I like music with a dark, elemental core. That’s why I chose Metal Mother as the name for my project. It’s not a reference to heavy metal, although I love that kind of music; it’s about the mother that lives [...]
Hush Hush
Imagine Midnite Vultures-era Beck using the word ‘panties’ with a straight face. Now imagine him about a foot taller with a six inch beard. Berlin-based Hush Hush (aka Christopher Kline) frenetically writhes atop salacious dirty pop beats on his 2010 release Oh God and his forthcoming 12” Ooze. And he’s not afraid to sing without [...]
Magnetic Man
The press in England is currently hyping dubstep, a mix of dub reggae, grime, garage, classic rave, techno and soul, as the most innovative sound to come out of British dance clubs in a decade. Magnetic Man, a trio of producers and songwriters from Croydon—ground zero for the dubstep movement—are currently the face of dubstep, [...]
RYAT
All bands dream of creating sounds that can’t be pigeonholed. Philadelphia’s RYAT (pronounced riot) has done it with an innovative blend of electronica, jazz, pop and modern experimental music. Their dense asymmetric rhythmic textures, swirling multi-layered vocals, unexpected shifts in tempo and cryptic lyrics, produce music that inhabits an intoxicating twilight zone between sweet dreams [...]
I’m From Barcelona
Emanuel Lundgren’s Wall of Sunshine Emanuel Lundgren had no intention of starting a 29 member group when he began recording his upbeat pop tunes in 2005. The band came together as the result of a series of unlikely events. “A few years ago, I’d accumulated five weeks of vacation time,” Lundgren recalls from his home [...]
Bill Carter
The U2 Connection Bill Carter has had a long and varied career as an assistant director, bartender, adobe mason, firefighter, commercial fisherman, photographer, journalist and filmmaker. In 1993, he landed in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War and joined The Serious Road Trip, an unofficial aid organization that delivered food to children affected by the war. [...]
Echo Lake: Drowning in Reverb
On their debut EP, Young Silence, Echo Lake’s expansive, hypnotic music is quietly overwhelming and completely irresistible. Bandleader and producer Thom Hill has created a sound that moves smoothly between icy, hissing guitar fuzz, keyboard textures denser than the atmosphere of Jupiter and tidal waves of psychedelic noise. When the delicately indecipherable vocals of Linda [...]
Joy To The (Music) World
In many ways, Marla Joy is a throwback. Channeling artists like Janis Joplin and Aretha Franklin, she sings with a power and rawness rarely heard anymore. In stature, she’s diminutive, which makes the magnitude of her voice and stage presence truly surprising. She’d fit in seamlessly at Woodstock or the Chelsea Hotel in the early [...]
Holy Fuck
Unholy noise from Toronto After a few unsteady gigs, Holy Fuck exploded out of Toronto’s indie rock scene in 2004 with a sound that blends driving rock rhythms with wailing synthesizers and a grinding pulse generated by a 35mm film synchronizer, broken toy keyboards and an array of effects pedals. Their music mixes elements of [...]
5 minutes with Maus Haus
As a self-proclaimed “Craigslist band” with Brian Wilson, Aphex Twin, spaghetti westerns, Tortoise, Dr. Octagon, Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart, ‘80s synth-pop and Miami bass among its myriad influences, San Francisco’s Maus Haus finds tension at the core of its experimental pop music. After the band—consisting of multi-instrumentalists Joseph Genden, Jason Kick, Joshua Rampage, Aaron Weiss [...]
No Age Grows Up
Post-punk role models of tomorrow As L.A. post-punk/noise rock duo No Age was recording its third album, Everything in Between (released September 2010 on Sub Pop), drummer/vocalist Dean Spunt was going through a difficult stretch. “I was breaking up with my longtime girlfriend, I had family members that were sick, and I had a, I [...]
Neighborhood Vibe With a Hi-Fi Sound
Audyssey’s SoMA Inspiration South of Market, SF—It’s late in the afternoon and the streets of this San Francisco neighborhood brim with an eclectic mix of individuals who are, once again, reinventing a modern urban landscape. Nine-to-fivers filter into watering hole hotspots for happy hour concoctions. Up and down the street, new restaurants buzz with managers [...]