It has been eleven years since the first Calexico record was released, and despite the lengthy experience of founders Joey Burns and John Convertino, many of the same methods of producing the group’s records took shape in its latest LP, Carried to Dust (Touch and Go).
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Hard-hitting jazz trio The Bad Plus knows how to pen pieces of proprietary gold. But its three members are also known for their genre-leaping renditions of rock songs, propelled by the chops of pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson, and drummer David King. Here are the group’s ten best covers.
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When Joel Grind started Toxic Holocaust in Baltimore in 1999, he hadn’t counted on becoming an anomaly: a one-man speed-metal band. Jamie Ludwig catches up with Grind after the release of his third album, An Overdose of Death, by Relapse Records on September 2.
Jazz/jam trio Medeski, Martin & Wood (shown left) leads our picks of the week, but its new disc is followed closely by dreamy hip-hop fusionist Koushik, organic hip-hop group Look Daggers, and more.
After a few years of delays, political/humorist punk group Dillinger Four will finally release CIVILWAR, its fourth full-length album and first in six years, on October 14. Its label, Fat Wreck Chords, calls the band “the Redd Foxx - mixed with Chalmers Johnson - of punk rock,” and taking one look at its track listings makes that obvious. To mark the occasion, here are the group’s ten best song titles and their themes.
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Led by Tsugaru-shamisen master Kevin Kmetz, Santa Cruz’s God of Shamisen creates cultural collisions in the form of shredding, Japanese-infused progressive metal. Scott Morrow catches up with Kmetz and bassist/producer Mark Thornton on the heels of the group’s full-length debut release.
Just prior to an acrimonious breakup in 1998, Swedish hardcore group Refused released its magnum opus, The Shape of Punk to Come: A Chimerical Bombination in 12 Bursts. It was as much an assault on capitalist philosophy as it was a striking stylistic evolution, and it did its best to advance hardcore in the way that its titular influence, Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come, did with jazz.
After mastering the 8-bit rhythms of NES games with The Advantage and complimenting Zach Hill with quirky yet adept guitar riffs in Hella, Spencer Seim appears to exemplify a satisfied musician. On his latest solo project, sBACH (Suicide Squeeze), Seim once again delves into the far corners of sonic exploration. Despite no particular fondness for Star Trek, Seim describes sBACH as what, “Vulcan classical music, sounds like [to] me.” And although that description may conjure up unwanted images of a Shatner/Nimoy duet, the sound is something equally strange and out of this world. (more…)
There’s a video on YouTube of four guys backstage in a small dressing room. The acoustic guitarist plays a riff and the drummer, with only a sleigh bells and a tambourine, joins in, followed by two more guitars and a sequencer. The main vocalist stumbles on his words during a verse and the band snickers. Any band could’ve made this video. But with over 200,000 views in its first two weeks online, this one not only made Alamo Race Track an internet phenomenon but it also created international hype for their latest release, Black Cat John Brown. (more…)
Coliseum front man Ryan Patterson laughs when I ask him about the “thousands” of bands he has been in over the years. “More like a million,” he says. “I got to the point that every band I had been in was around for a year, and then it fell apart. Someone would quit and it would be over.” Although he had been playing guitar with Louisville hardcore act Black Cross, in forming Coliseum he saw both a chance to play heavier and faster material than what Black Cross had been doing as well as the opportunity to decide for himself whether or not to continue if the going got tough. (more…)
