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Deadmau5 and the reimagining of the album
The album: From LP to SoundCloud The album as an art form has been under escalating artistic, economic, and political pressures for decades. Since the decline of vinyl LPs in the 1980s, creative...
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How to write a good album review
Intro: Musica practica The music album review is a blank canvas. Specialized, technical music criticism – anything that addresses time signatures, keys, or the musicians’ technical ability at length –...
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Shovel Knight
Shovel Knight nails the look and feel of the NES. A love letter to 8-bit gaming It has been nearly 30 years since the Nintendo Entertainment System debuted in North America and no other console since...
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La Roux –“Trouble in Paradise”
La Roux en bleu Kentucky is blue, and not just because of the countless shirts, caps and jackets adorned with the colors of the University of Kentucky. The grass is blue in select parts of the...
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Primal Scream’s “XTRMNTR” and the age of inequality
Xtrmntr Primal Scream once entitled a song “Bomb the Pentagon,” before 9/11 happened. By 2002, it had morphed into a mediocre stomper called “Rise,” and the legendary Scottish band was never the same....
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Blur’s “Think Tank” and the Iraq War
Think Tank In America, the term “think tank” has connotations with the hard right. The words “conservative think tank ___” often preface a sobering news story about why it’s such a great idea to cut...
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The greatest American bands
Talking Points Memo recently began a discussion of the greatest American bands, a contentious subject given how many of rock’s canonical bands are from the U.K. (e.g., The Beatles, The Rolling Stones)...
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10 Albums That Seem Really Overrated
I thought about calling this entry “the 10 most overrated albums ever,” but that would be stupid, because, as Kip would say, “like anyone could even know that.” Understanding why someone else like...
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“Six for gold”: The long shelf life and deep riches of nursery rhymes
There’s an English nursery rhyme called “One for Sorrow” that is about the superstitions associated with watching magpies. If you haven’t read it, it is simplicity itself: One for sorrow, Two for joy,...
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How cutting and pasting can work for creative writing
“Somewhere, out in America, it’s just starting to rain” I didn’t get much reading done today, but I heard that lyric in a live version of a Counting Crows song from 1998. The words are originally from...
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#ABGT 100
2004 seems longer ago than any other year to me, which I understand makes no sense. How can it seem longer ago than 1999, or 1991, or even 1989 – all years I remember, at least in bits and chunks?...
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Toward a critical theory of EDM
Yesterday, Netflix included in my “Top Picks” queue the Cameron Crowe film about rock n’ roll stardom (and journalism), “Almost Famous.” I had already seen it, but, given the recent arc of my blog...
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“Get Scraped”: Understanding deadmau5 Through his First Album
deadmau5’s career has been a recurring topic on this blog. I was inspired to write one of my most successful posts ever, about authenticity in EDM, by deadmau5’s occasional orneriness on Twitter and...
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The Internet and The Physical World
A 2004 album reimagined for the iPhone 6 Plus lock screen Look out: Death From Above Last year, Canadian band Death From Above 1979 (their name, if you’re curious, was created at the last minute so as...
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Jeff Bridges – Sleeping Tapes
1998 1998 feels like a million years ago, maybe because it was the last year that I felt like a child the whole year. I turned 12 and I remember the University of Kentucky Wildcats winning the national...
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Settling Back In
Today was a transitional one (and a holiday here in the U.S., Presidents Day – a third-tier holiday, but still a day off), and I spent most of my time around the house adjusting to the London-to-NYC...
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