As anyone who’s followed GusGus knows, surprises await with every release. But the Icelandic collective has even more surprising surprises with its latest album, 24/7. First, there’s the Jesus-on-velvet cover art; then there’s a cameo by pop-savant Jimi Tenor. And there’s the track list, just six songs long.
24/7 is the group’s first album on Cologne’s micro-house juggernaut Kompakt, so it’s filled with darker, abstract electronic tracks instead of club hits. The video for the first single, the share-friendly “Add This Song,” takes place in a morgue and includes a fetish-friendly corpse-licking scene. Despite these quirks, singer Daníel Ágúst says that this time around, the intent was to take a break from the circus vibe the group spent the last decade cultivating. “We allow the band to go through changes and develop musically,” he explains. “When I came back, it was because I felt I had something to share.” Read More »
Fringe music is an elusive beast. Whereas the points of slick tales of love and loss are usually pretty obvious, the undercurrents of the avant-garde are infinitely harder to navigate. Enter your intrepid guide: Earplug. In this bi-monthly series, Flavorwire’s sister publication — home to several experimental, indie, and techno experts — will separate the hidden gems from the record bin rejects. After the jump, reviews of Turntable wonder A-Trak‘s Farbriclive mix, Akron/Family‘s new animal house, and Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker‘s gritty return.
Fringe music is an elusive beast. Whereas the points of slick tales of love and loss are usually pretty obvious, the undercurrents of the avant-garde are infinitely harder to navigate. Enter your intrepid guide: Earplug. In this bi-monthly series, Flavorwire’s sister publication — home to several experimental, indie, and techno experts — will separate the hidden gems from the record bin rejects. After the jump, reviews of Baltimore noiseniks Black Dice, a darker band of happy house from the Juan Maclean, and Mono‘s post-rock return.
Scrunchies. Jazzercise. The Gremlin car, in all its hatchback deformity. Cone-shaped bras. Jell-o fruit salad. Members Only jackets. Hammer pants. Over the course of a decade, countless trends have lit the pop-culture landscape and receded into obsolescence. What is it, then, that endures about Devo? Why does their 1978 album, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo, still sound timely nearly 40 years later. Why do their energy-dome hats still look awesome? We met with Devo’s Jerry Casale over several months to find out. In this, the third installment of our exclusive Devo interview series, Sara Jayne Crow delves into the origins of “energy-dome” hats, explores the pending McDonald’s lawsuit, and encounters the ghost of lawsuits past.
Like most of the snowbirds, I was at Miami’s annual Winter Music Conference for some sun, beach, dancing, and schmoozing. As often happens, my first night descended into a series of mix-ups: was Gui Boratto playing or not? Was I “sorted” at Danny Tenaglia‘s marathon? Fortunately, I’d caught both of them last year, so calling it a night (especially after a two-hour flight delay) came easy. Read More »
Fringe music is an elusive beast. Whereas the points of slick tales of love and loss are usually pretty obvious, the undercurrents of the avant-garde are infinitely harder to navigate. Enter your intrepid guide: Earplug. In this bi-monthly series, Flavorwire’s sister publication — home to several experimental, indie, and techno experts — will separate the hidden gems from the record bin rejects, helping the adventurous pluck new albums from the outer edges. After the jump, reviews of Baltimore bleeper Dan Deacon’s new electronic opus and the Knife off-shoot Fever Ray’s magnesium-bright debut. Read More »
Like Kurt Vonnegut’s Dresden, the Sleepytime Gorilla Museum is burning itself to the ground, on purpose. From the beginning, the Dadaist cabaret’s spectacle of metal piping, industrial textures, gothic pantomime, and avant-garde electronics has attempted destroy music as we know it. Ashwin Sodhi, of Flavorwire’s sister publication Earplug caught up with with Matthias Bossi — percussionist, curator of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and member of the (very) extended Vonnegut family — on the cusp of the band’s first national tour in two years, to talk Stockhausen, Neubauten, and “rock against rock.” Read More »
Known to eschew stages in favor of floors, sweet-faced Baltimore producer Dan Deacon regularly commands enormous crowds of sweat-drenched onlookers. Deacon, a former student of composition at the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College, uses crowds the way many would an instrument, dictating and inspiring the ways they interact. His bidding often includes dance-offs, human-tunnel formations, and trippy chorus chanting. Read More »
Last month, Earplug’s Michael Byrne hit massive music industry gathering (and unofficial weenie roast) SXSW alongside photographer Josh Sisk, wading through the thousands of bands and lapping up all the backyard BBQ he could eat. What’d he take away? Austin’s premiere event isn’t going anywhere. Read More »
Fringe music is an elusive beast, indeed. Whereas the points of slick tales of love and loss are usually pretty obvious, the undercurrents of the avant-garde are infinitely harder to navigate. Enter your intrepid guide: Earplug. In this bi-monthly series, Flavorwire’s sister publication — home to several experimental, indie, and techno experts — will separate the hidden gems from the record bin rejects, helping the adventurous among us pluck new albums from the outer edges.
After the jump, a review of the bleepy, heart-in-mouth pulse of Ben Klock’s One by minimal master Philip Sherburne.
