THE SPRING ISSUE
Posts Tagged ‘music’
Gang Gang Dance
The band Gang Gang Dance (GGD) is like a thunderstorm: dramatic, powerful, and energized. After a build up, when voltage accrues and focuses, lightning strikes. Sometimes the effects are beautiful, and other times they are completely devastating. Explosions have defined the band’s musical evolution. Lightning killed an original member; a recent tour fire destroyed all […]
Jeremy Jay
If there were to be a remake of the 1985 John Hughes flick Weird Science with two bookish girls creating their perfect heartthrob via computer, rather than two ‘80s era nerds creating Kelly Lebrock, Jeremy Jay would surely land a starring role. Because, by all outward appearances, he is a Godard-loving, Modern Lovers-listening indie girl’s […]
The Golden Filter
Merely saying that 2009 has been quite a year for The Golden Filter would be a massive understatement. It’s rare, if not completely impossible, that an American-based duo with a desire to keep their anonymity, who write songs almost entirely with electronic sounds, and whose personal philosophies are the exact antithesis of the current generation […]
Mission Creek Music Festival
The Mission Creek Music & Arts Festival: Evolving and Explosive A once-navigable subterranean creek, originating from the foothills of San Francisco’s Twin Peaks region and curving east towards Mission Bay, quietly flows beneath San Francisco’s Mission District. Above ground, indie kids, yuppies, and bohemians party and promenade on the bustling city streets, having no idea […]
An Axe to Grind
Davis Guggenheim and Three Generations of Rock Documentarian Davis Guggenheim gives a brief history of the electric guitar, as explored through the eyes of three rock goliaths in his latest feature film. To the careless observer, It Might Get Loud bears some of the ostensible trappings of what we’ve come to know as the “rockumentary.” […]
Cocknbullkid
Could Anita Blay inherit the crown of U.K. pop? As is often the case with superheroes, there is a tendency to preface the hero’s birth by a natural occurrence, such as a bolt of lightning, earthquake, or, of course, a meteor. The scenario goes something like this: a meteor crashes to Earth; around the fiery […]
Akwaaba Music
Third World Sound to First World Ears Akwaaba Music founder Benjamin Lebrave doesn’t feel comfortable with the term “fair trade,” nor with the category known as “world music.” Yet for the uninitiated, it’s the easiest way to describe the fledgling, unorthodox music label that splits net profits 50/50 with its African music licensees and distributes […]
Street Pulse: Portland
They say that you can walk down any Portland street, on any given day, throw a rock, and hit a musician. Here at SOMA we don’t encourage throwing rocks at the rock stars, but we did send local resident and contributing photographer, Anthony Georgis, to toss a few questions to some of best and […]
The Whip: Manchester Rampant in the 21st, Persistence in Destination
Text by Markus von Pfeiffer Photography by Okeedokee There is no evading Amsterdam. No jitterbugging your way through that town. It beams a primal, irresistible homing beacon straight to the hypothalamus. I was connecting through the city on my way home from the forests of Gabon, where I’d collected specimens of the rare butterfly Charaxes […]
MSTRKRFT: Touched by the Fist of God
Photography by Geoff McLean Text by Jorge Hernandez MSTRKRFT’s Jesse F. Keeler’s voicemail goes something like this: “I can’t take this, because I’m doing something important, so text or email. And if you’re one of those people that hangs up before the tone, don’t bother calling back ‘cause I’ve already deleted you.” A piquant summation […]
Hush Life: Asobi Seksu—-Mellow Out, Fuzz Down
Text by Michael D Ayers Photography by Jesper Justesen New York’s Asobi Seksu fill 500-person rooms, make regular rounds in Europe and have produced two records of hard-hitting, fuzzed out fem-pop, which use Yuki Chikudate’s delicate vocals as their locus. But following 2006’s Citrus, some confusion brewed as to how to proceed. On one hand, […]
The Bird and The Bee: Living Past the Future
Text by Markus von Pfeiffer Photography by Autumn de Wilde It didn’t happen in their home base town of Los Angles. That would be too cheap. In addition it would break my blood-oath of never returning to the city which casts no shadows—even on the warmest of summer days. No, we three met in San […]
Telefon Tel Aviv: Electronic Punk Rock Pirates Making Music for Strange Seaports
Text by Sage Rader After nearly five years on hiatus, Telefon Tel Aviv’s Josh Eustis and Charlie Cooper have something they’d like to say: “I swear to God, we couldn’t give a fuck what anybody thinks of this record… we don’t give a SHIT. Really. Finally. We did this record for ourselves.” It only takes […]
Guilt Complex: Prolific A.C. Newman Rolls Solo, Again
Text by Michael D. Ayers As the front man for critically acclaimed indie-rock act The New Pornographers, you’d think that front man A.C. Newman would have his hands full. The group has released four records this decade; Newman first branched out in 2004 with The Slow Wonder, a jangly pop record that mixed a love […]
Elisa Toffoli: Dancing on the Edge of the World
Text by Rhiannon Nicole Anderson Silently praising myself for my rudimentary Italian conversational skills, the musician Elisa Toffoli answers the phone. “Hello? Do you mind if I call you back from my house, I’m walking my dogs and can’t hear you very well,” she apologizes. And yet, despite being oceans apart, a bad connection and […]
THE STREETS
Proto hip-hop icon Mike Skinner crafts his indie-embraced, chart-topping tracks one day at a time. What happened to the roughed up, tongue-in-cheek Mike Skinner that everyone knows…or thought they knew? The Birmingham-based Streets lead man has returned light-hearted. But as a precautionary disclaimer: he didn’t plan it to be this way. Just like he didn’t […]
Morgan Geist
A contemporary disco phenom ponders the extinction. It’s not hard to consider dance music, on nearly all platforms, to be synonymous with enormous soundsystem clubs and those that choose to “feel” rather than “listen.” There’s the producer or sound nerd that really does give a shit about the quality of the mp3 and the dude […]
Growing Up in Front of Everyone
Jay Reatard proves that staying at home doesn’t make you a loser There’s something dated about Jay Reatard’s face-forward music. Anthemic hooks over boiled-down guitars are often reminiscent of a ’70s punk outfit, not an artist who is enjoying increasing popularity in the age of short-attention spans. The musical milieu of the ’70s seems to […]
Fontän
Crafting Sweden’s new wave of post-Pink Floyd psychedelia. Fontän is the product of a seven-year musical collaboration between Johan Melin and Jesper Jarold. Formed in 2001, the pair met while taking a multi-media class in its native Sweden and had a rather bizarre first musical encounter. During class, the two were grouped together and asked […]
Grails
Portland’s most enigmatic psych-troupe orbits beyond experimental parameters It seems like just about every city has its crowning moment in music history. Simply consider any predictable VH1 retrospective on ’60s San Francisco or throwback story about the emergence of punk in New York City. But like any great city, there are always a few bands […]
Tori Amos
Flame-haired doll—or was it beekeeper, maybe sex-kitten—finds forgiveness. On her ninth studio album, Tori Amos has shape-shifted once again, veering away from the ladylike The Beekeeper and the restless wanderings of 2002’s, Scarlet’s Walk. On American Doll Posse, the provocative enchantress has created five personas based on goddesses in Greek mythology, and sculpted herself into […]
Sound Check
Various Artists / Radio Algeria / Sublime Frequencies 029 For those not familiar with the Sublime Frequencies’ explosion of exotica over the last few years, Radio Algeria is a stellar example of curator Alan Bishop’s region/world/mind-spanning collage work using the radio as his only source. Presented with minimal liner notes, Radio Algeria does not hide […]
Get Hustle’s Sugar and Chaos
Text by Adam Gnade Photography by Yoni Kifle Some people notice their clothes first: Get Hustle pianist Mac Mann’s gelled silent film-star finery, and drummer Ron Avila and singer Valentine Falcon’s Hendrix-gypsy trip. It’s also easy to draw cues and clues from the band’s album cover art and song titles, which give an impression of […]
Monsters are Waiting
Text by Allison Bloch Photograph by Zen Sekizawa From their name to their unique mode of transportation (a short bus complete with two dogs, Bear and Monkey), the four members of Monsters Are Waiting combine refreshingly quirky behavior with style and sophistication. Emerging from Southern California comes a band with its own brand of indie […]
