// Category Archive for: Music

Goodbye D.O.A., Thanks For All The State Smashing!

By Tim Murr

Hardcore architects and Canada’s Clash, D.O.A., are on their farewell tour! They hit the road on August 29 and have now reached the East Coast (tour dates below)

D.O.A., along with Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys, created hardcore punk in the late ’70s/early ’80s. Always outspoken leftist agitators, D.O.A. have spent their career standing up for various political causes and performing benefit concerts.

Sudden Death Records will be releasing a definitive double live album, Welcome To Chinatown, which includes songs from the band’s entire history.

Hats off to Joe and the boys; it’s been a great run!

You can keep updated by checking the band’s website.

NORTH AMERICA:
September 17: West Chester, PA; The Note
September 18: Washington, DC; Black Cat
September 19: Pittsburgh, PA; 31st Street Pub
September 20: Louisville, KY; Phoenix Hill Tavern
September 21: Columbus, OH; Rumba Cafe
September 22: Indianapolis, IN; The Melody Inn

EUROPE:
October 9: Hamburg, Germany; Hafenklang
October 10: Kiel, Germany; Schaubude
October 11: Eindhoven, Netherlands; The Rambler
October 12: London, UK; Boston Arms
October 13: Leeds, UKvBrundell Social Club w/ Chelsea
October 14: Glasgow, Scotland; Audio
October 15: Nottingham, UK; The Dog House
October 16: Paris, France; TBA
October 17: Lyon, France; Warm Audio
October 18: Milano, Italy; Lo-Fi
October 19: Bologna, Italy; Freakout Club
October 20: Luzern, Switzerland; Sedel
October 21: Nuremberg, Germany; TBA
October 22: Dresden, Germany; TBA
October 23: Wroclaw, Poland; Alibi
October 24: Warsaw, Poland TBA
October 25: Gdansk, Poland; B-90
October 26: Tampere, Finland; TBA
October 28: Wormerveer, Netherlands; De Groote Weiver

Various Artists, ZZK Sound Volume 3

By Chelsea Spear

When I got a copy of ZZK Sound to review, I felt pulled in opposite directions. Many of the Latin alternative blogs and podcasts from which I get the latest music news cite the Argentine label ZZK Records as an innovative new label that marries the traditional folk idiom cumbia to more contemporary forms of music, particularly EDM. ZZK’s adventurous perspective piqued my interest, but their concentration in dance music gave me pause. I don’t go to the clubs enough to hear dance music the way it was meant to be heard, and if you asked me to tell you what EDM sounded like, I’d throw out the following words: amelodic, beat-heavy, high-endy, compressed production, “bricked” sound.

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Music Review: Holograms, Forever

By Less Lee Moore

The first time I heard Holograms’ second album Forever, I got goosebumps. It was like being transported back to 1985, listening to college radio late at night, rushing to press the RECORD button on my stereo, waiting for the DJ to reveal the name of the band. But Holograms is not a post-punk ripoff.

The album takes off like a rocket with “Sacred State”: booming drums, bass dancing around the jagged guitar edges, and enormous vocals from singer Andreas Lagerström. The frenetic energy is undeniable. It’s tempered only slightly by a instrumental bridge towards the end that prepares you for a melodic assault of guitar slowly building to an intense emotional peak before the vocalized chorus joins in again. And that’s just the first song.

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Waxing Nostalgic Connecting the Dots: Phasing

By Jeffery X Martin

In 1971, I was two years old the house was awash in mild psychedelia. We had an aluminum Christmas tree, all silver. The branches were metal spikes that fit into a pre-drilled steel tube. Reflective bits of Mylar replaced the false pine needles. We also had a color wheel, four plastic cels of colored plastic revolving slowly in front of a bare light bulb. Groovy? Yeah, man.

The living room awash in color, my father had the music playing as usual. I was sitting on the couch under my own power, which was a relatively new thing for me. The speakers were huge and he liked it loud. He took a sip from his drink, looked at me levelly, and said, “Phasing.”

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Music Review: Glen Campbell, See You There

By Melissa Bratcher

There’s debate on the Internets regarding whether releasing Glen Campbell’s See You There is exploitative. Campbell is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and some say this album—stripped down versions of his greatest hits—is just an attempt to cash in. I disagree, utterly. See You There is touching and triumphant—and painful to hear, but in a good way.

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Music Review: San Fermin, San Fermin

By Melissa Bratcher

San Fermin‘s self-titled debut is wildly ambitious. Full of songs that are like journeys, but journeys that end up in an entirely different place than you thought you might go, it’s a challenging, interesting listen. San Fermin is the brainchild of Yale-educated composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone, and he is ably backed by vocalists Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig (of Lucius) and Allen Tate.

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Waxing Nostalgic Connecting The Dots: The Moody Blues

By Jeffery X Martin

I can’t remember the first song I ever heard. It seems like very few people would. I can remember the first song I remember hearing, but I know that’s not the first song I ever actually heard. There’s no way to divine the actual first piece of music I ever heard, but I can get close.

From what I’m able to gather, the first album my parents bought after I was born was To Our Children’s Children’s Children by The Moody Blues. That record came out in November of 1969. I came out in June.

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Music Review: Barrence Whitfield & The Savages, Dig Thy Savage Soul

By Chelsea Spear

The legendary Barrence Whitfield cut a curious figure during Boston’s college rock boom of the ’80s. As the frontman for the Savages, Whitfield attracted a diverse audience with his raucous live shows. The man could rock a high noon set at a street fair like it was a tiny, sweaty juke joint, and his cover of “Stop Twistin’ My Arm” lit up left-of-the-dial rock stations like WBCN. Sadly, no recording studio could quite represent Whitfield’s talent and energy. The kindest thing one can say about the compressed, high-endy production on his previous albums is that he stayed away from synth charts and gated drums.

Whitfield’s shows with the Savages won him the Best Live Act award from the Boston Phoenix, and he frequently embarked on well-attended tours of Europe. In the past fifteen years or so, though, he’s remained more visible as a clerk at the Record Exchange in Salem, MA, than on the concert stage. With labels like Third Man, Dap-Tone, and Bloodshot releasing new material by R&B legends, an interest in new material from Whitfield seemed inevitable. And so it came to pass that the venerable Barrence Whitfield and the Savages would release Dig Thy Savage Soul, an all-new record, in 2013, showing listeners around the world how it’s done.

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Music Review: Various Artists, Mutazione: Italian Electronic & New Wave Underground 1980 – 1988

By Less Lee Moore

For those of us who still listen to much of the same post-punk music we listened to in the ’80s, discovering new bands from that time is as exciting as hearing those new bands who are obviously influenced by those same sounds. The recent release of Mutazione by Strut Records is cause for celebration. Mutazione is a fabulous, two-disc compilation with 26 tracks of Italian post-punk music from 1980 – 1988. The arrangement of the songs is superb, like an excellent mixtape made by a music-savvy friend. For that we can thank Alessio Natalizia of Walls, who curated the collection.

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Music Review: Ty Segall, Sleeper

By Less Lee Moore

Ty Segall‘s music frequently shreds, so one wonders what the contingent of stage divers at his shows must think of his newest release Sleeper. Perhaps it’s the sonic antithesis to Fuzz, the upcoming project from Segall, guitarist Charlie Moothart, and bassist Roland Cosio, whose name describes the band accurately. Sleeper is mostly acoustic, but “Ty Segall Unplugged” it is not. There are amps and distortion, although both are kept to a minimum.

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