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March 25, 2008 | Music News
March 24, 2008 | Music Features
March 21, 2008 | Reviews: Concerts
March 21, 2008 | Music News
Fans can find the dates of Boris’ upcoming European tour on their handy new MySpace profile, as well as watch some videos and listen to some well-selected tunes. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, their photos have been made private, so you’ll just have to imagine that part… or stare at a somewhat aloof hand-drawn bird-thing. Boris on MySpace: www.myspace.com/borisdronevil
March 21, 2008 | Music Features
March 19, 2008 | Music Features
Sigur Rós doesn’t usually play shows in damp, concrete shells smelling of century-old herring or on rolling hilltops surrounded by bonfires. But during the summer of 2006, the melodic four-piece group set out for a host of locations like these with a film crew in tow to make Heima (Home), a feature-length documentary of an unconventional tour across their homeland. Read more
March 19, 2008 | Music Features
March 18, 2008 | Art Features
March 18, 2008 | Art
March 18, 2008 | Music Features
“We” refers to Votolato and bandmate/singer/keyboardist Johnny Whitney, who, following The Blood Brothers’ breakup, have joined forces with guitarist/drummer Jay Clark of Pretty Girls Make Graves to form Jaguar Love. Read more |
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ALARM Issue #31 |
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Clear Channel Spin-off company, Live Nation, recently announced the line up for the first ever Pemberton Music Festival. Set to take place July 25th through July 27th with the backdrop of postcard perfect Pemberton, British Columbia. The concert features heavyweight acts such as Coldplay, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Nine Inch Nails, and Jay-Z. 
Prog-based post-punk outfit Coheed and Cambria wrote the final chapter to its long-standing concept series with just one album. But for the New York-based act, the terminus of its own story almost became reality before its album storyline could be completed. 
As soon as I entered Austin’s Encore Records, I should have surrendered my credit card at the door. Whose great idea was it to leave me unattended in a record store for six hours? The Austin, Texas independent music retailer (and DVD rental location) has one of the country’s best selections of metal and hardcore, as well as an impressive selection of music from local artists. Of course “local” in these parts means Roky Erickson and Scratch Acid, but that’s a story for another time. 
Doom metal masters Boris have at long last made an 
Welsh singer and Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys has had a busy year. “It’s been nuts, but in a good way.” Tonight he is performing solo in Chicago as part of a North American tour supporting his solo album, Candylion. By some miracle, Kliph Scurlock of the Flaming Lips just happened to be in town and is sitting in as a last-minute replacement drummer. “We met him at a show just before he started playing for the Flaming Lips. We became instant friends.” 
Few bands could live up to the tense expectation presented by such an austere and otherworldly scene, but this is the forté of Sigur Rós, the most innovative and off-beat act to come out of Iceland since the Sugarcubes in 1986.
Though few self-respecting artists would admit to making music for the sole purpose of pleasing their fans, it’s certainly a rare musician who makes an album that he doesn’t expect will connect with his audience. From Neil Young dropping an electronic album in the middle of a series of folk and rock records or Lou Reed terrorizing his listeners with an album of guitar feedback, artists have made albums that seem designed to shake less resilient listeners off their bandwagons. A similar path has now been taken by Guillermo Scott Herren, also known as Prefuse 73, for his new full-length album Preparations (reviewed in ALARM #29 - 
Rolling blunts with Iranian currency, appropriating coveted Iranian paintings with tattoos and bottles of whiskey, and turning the chador into a sexy, sensuously revealing cloth, San Francisco-based artist Taravat Talepasand loves to play. 
Showing in the main room of New York’s Proposition Gallery until April 12 is Gothic Intrusion, a group show headlined by Chinese artist Huang Yan’s Skulls, a collection of intricate floral patterns and traditional Chinese landscapes painted directly onto human skulls. The image of the skull is echoed in a series of drawings by Alfredo Martinez, and complimented by industrial/architectural work by Jason Gringler. 
Former Blood Brothers guitarist Cody Votolato is patient when explaining what Kombucha is—he is even kind enough to spell it out. “It’s a fermented mushroom drink. We drink Kombucha and write songs.”