Author Archives: Black
Muscle Cars
Twin Shadow‘s George Lewis Jr. used to front the Boston-based Mad Mad Films. He’s a marvelous performer with whom I’ve had the pleasure of sharing the stage on several occasions. Since his move to the Big Apple, he’s getting a lot of attention for this newer project and will be releasing his album on Chris [...]
Posted in Videos Tagged Chris Taylor, George Lewis Jr., Grizzly Bear, Slow, Terrible Records, Twin Shadow 1 Comment
Don’t Sleep
For the independent music world, it might seem like a strange bad dream to have Mountain Dew start a record label and go around snatching upstart acts for a roster that looks like it’s run by someone at Vice. Sure, it’s a singles only label and Chuck Inglish of the The Cool Kids says it’s [...]
Come On, Tower Crane Driver
Despite enjoying the twilight of my twenties, I am occasionally surprised to miss out on a whole class of music I would describe as “adult music”. It is not anything like “adult movies” (sexually explicit music ultimately sounds juvenile more often than not). It is vaguely yuppie. I’d characterize it primarily as inoffensive and I [...]
Posted in mp3s Tagged Elbow, The Loneliness Of A Tower Crane Driver, The Seldom Seen Kid Leave a comment
Fore & Aft: Echoplex II
A few weeks ago, I wrote what might have been an overly academic piece about a musical dialogue between The-Dream and R. Kelly. Soon after, I went in search of tracks on which the two might have collaborated. The most pertinent of what I found is the first track on “The Demo”, from R. Kelly’s [...]
My New Theme Song
I’m 6’5″. Sometimes that’s neat. Other times it’s obnoxious. At the amusement park, for example, I can’t ride certain rides because I just can’t keep my limbs and head safely out of harm’s way and my spine isn’t short enough to sit comfortably in those harnesses that clamp down over your shoulders. And all those [...]
Fore & Aft: Echoplex
“Ella-ella-ella-ay-ay-ay”. Or so goes the biggest line of the biggest single of 2007. The deviously catchy delivery tactic of that echoing artifact sunk its hooks in so deeply that over the last few years, we’ve heard its success replicated far and wide by both the original songwriting team of The-Dream and Christopher “Tricky” Stewart and [...]
Posted in Fore & Aft, mp3s Tagged Bed, Beyonce, Echo, J Holiday, Kelly's 12 Play, Put It Down, R Kelly, Single Ladies, The-Dream 5 Comments
Senseis Are Standing By
I wasn’t as enamoured with The Ecstatic as everyone else appeared to be. First off, the mix sounded really strange to me, the same kind of strange that the Q-Tip album sounded. It had sloppy production on the beats end with flat sonics and not much frequency range, so the vocals sat on top of [...]
Every Day The Fourteenth
Happy/fuck that Valentine’s Day from your friends at The Cadillac Of Winter. Outkast – Happy Valentine’s Day [Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Songs That Explode: A Primer
I particularly like songs that, you know, do stuff. Sequentially, the thing about doing stuff is that one goes from doing nothing to doing something. Causally, the tension of not doing stuff often propels one into doing stuff. But if we were talking about absolute opposites, doing nothing would just be nothing and doing something [...]
The Cadillac of Winter is Moving