Music
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Ratatat has the unique ability to sound familiar and fresh all at once. So many bands strive for dubious originality that they lose focus of making music that’s simply good. Ratatat never fa...read more
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More great acoustic-guitar music from Tompkins Square, which is quickly establishing itself as the Takoma label of our time. Berkeley Guitar features new recordings by three of the Bay Area’s...read more
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Modal guitarist Walker was the musical director for noted Harvard hippie Timothy Leary’s psychedelic “Celebrations” and made a pair of acoustic guitar raga LPs for Vanguard Record...read more
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Slabs of pulsating angst with moments of quiet lyricism, Scotland’s Mogwai here delivers their most varied effort yet.read more
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Cynics may wonder how many albums we need by an instrumental indie-rock band. If the band is Explosions in the Sky, the answer is “all of them and more,” since they just keep getting be...read more
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There are so many levels on which to appreciate the music of James Blackshaw. For guitarists, there’s the sheer how-does-he-do-it of his dazzling technique, used to produce three simultaneous...read more
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Continuing their recent trend towards quieter and more intricately constructed records, Scotland’s finest rock instrumental band may not be breaking any new ground, but they’ve perfecte...read more
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Sun City Girls, yada yada, whatever. I enjoy every one of Richard Bishop’s solo albums a lot more than anything he did with SCG. Though still quite eclectic, his discs are more focused and cohere...read more
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Texas always has kicked out this country’s best psychedelic stuff. The duo Headdress (who might live here in NYC now, hard to say with dudes like this) adds a hazy, shimmering new chapter to ...read more
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The greatest musicians are those that are not easily classified. As a solo artist, collaborator and producer, Jim O’Rourke has displayed an uncanny ability to create music that is at once fam...read more
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The four tracks on this Canadian band’s sixth full-length are called, fittingly, “Do,” “Make,” “Say” and “Think.” While they’ve always been known for their powerful instrumental...read more
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Pay little mind to the misdirecting names used here (“Black to Comm” being a blazing old MC5 psych-soul track, and 1968 being the most explosive year of the Sixties). This Black to Comm...read more
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Instrumental hip-hop record: Why does the notion seem tired and played-out? It’s probably a result of our (okay, my) laziness and the massive over-everythingedness of the music world that thi...read more
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This is the third soundtrack collaboration between Cave and the Dirty Three’s Warren Ellis, and while the movieread more
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Before scoring the Mad Men theme, RJD2 rose to fame in Columbus, Ohio, in the late-‘90s making beats for local hip-hop artists. Since then, through several albums on Definitive Jux and now, h...read more
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If the oddly named solo artist The Seven Fields of Aphelion sounds more familiar than it should, it’s because she’s (isn’t it obvious that that’s a lady’s name?) a mem...read more
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Album No. 10 from this slippery, idiosyncratic UK duo might be their best — and not coincidentally, least glitchy — since 1994’s classic Amber. Actually, let’s clarify that:...read more
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If you're like me, then you took one look at this Canadian band's name a few years ago and dismissed them immediately as attention-hungry party-mooks. Well, as their third album, Latin, proves, the...read more
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The new ambience is a lovely thing. The UK duo Pausal have been moving at a deliberate pace, releasing a debut EP a few years ago and then setting to work, slowly, on Lapses, their first full-lengt...read more
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Style into substance -- that's the magical feat of San Francisco trio the Alps on their gently affecting (and at times subtly unnerving) fourth album, Le Voyage. This instrumental record provides o...read more
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It can be hard to do this job when a band that has so thoroughly established a presence returns with an album on which little has changed. (Pity me, yes!) But on LP4 (which is a far better title th...read more
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Reminder: The music industry is in trouble, not the music. So while his Definitive Jux label folded up its tent (for the most part) in February, head Jukie El-P pushes on like a soldier with this d...read more
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Perhaps the purest articulation of the Daptone aesthetic, this 12-strong Afro-soul instrumental group hits its best good foot yet on its third outing. The Budos Band's sound will never quite come t...read more
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This CD/DVD combo is a must for any self-respecting Mogwai fan -- because any self-respecting Mogwai fan knows well the fluid power and emotional grace of the Scottish band's live shows, and its en...read more
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