Tag: Vol. 34 No. 52

Trauma victims often report a disturbance in their perception of time–even in memory their ordeal crawls by in terrible slow motion. Khanate’s excruciating antimusic is like doom metal afflicted by that same sort of temporal dilation, each song drawn out into an irregular 10- or 20-minute series of isolated impacts–four seconds apart, five seconds, fifty–so […]

Seattle music critic Charles Cross seems intent on tackling the lives of his city’s musical titans one by one. Given its subject’s brief and messy existence, Cross’s 2001 Heavier Than Heaven was as close to a definitive biography of Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain as we’re likely to see. His latest effort, Room Full of […]

Dan Whitford, the one-man wonder behind CUT COPY, owes a debt to early Human League and New Order that can’t be overstated. But to me the glowing grays of his sonic palette feel culled from a more specific place, where overcast puddle reflections burst into petrochemical bloom–the rarefied realm of Heaven 17, Visage, and Talk […]

I used to think of Deerhoof’s music as a sublime juxtaposition–sweet pop melodies brutally colliding with angular riffs and rhythms–but on their forthcoming and best album, The Runners Four (Kill Rock Stars/5RC), those elements seem inseparably intertwined. Recorded in their Oakland practice space without the elaborate multitracking that’s given previous efforts such a supernatural feel, […]