A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Pop Evil’s Versatile LP. Okay, this first observation of what Pop Evil is offering with their sixth album, Versatile, doesn’t actually have anything to do with the music pressed into the vinyl, but it would be easy to extrapolate an impression of the merits of this album, how it’s presented and the potential difference between “how it’s presented” and “what you get” from it. On the (surprisingly large) hype sticker which adorns...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Shirushi LP by Teke::Teke. Without question, Teke::Teke is a creature completely in its own quadrant of the pop diaspora. Does that mean that everything about their new album, Shirushi, stands completely separate from everything else in pop? Certainly not – there’s no question that it’s possible to pick out sounds and ideas which could be associated with film score composer Neal Hefti (who composed the iconic Batman theme in 1966) as...
It Never Ends: A Memoir with Nice Memories!by Tom Scharpling I don’t think I’ve ever waited so long in anticipation for a book. Being a Best Show listener for years now (which would still make me a junior, by most standards), I’ve been looking forward to this book since host Tom Scharpling first mentioned it in 2019. I can’t believe it’s been so long, but here it is, It Never Ends is among us. Listeners of the Best Show know...
WHO: Nick Cave & Warren Ellis WHAT: Carnage WHY: Nick Cave has the distinct pleasure of getting better with age. Immense tragedy is hit his life over the years and, though it all, the man (with the assistance of his collaborator Warren Ellis) has produced some of the most introspective, heartbreaking, and powerful music of his career. Their latest effort Carnage fits in perfectly with that trend. It’s haunting, profound, honest, and simmers to a boil. It’s a record that...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 4LP reissue of Since I Left You by The Avalanches. While I have serious reservations about a reissue which features enough remixes to occupy half of the medium into which the title is pressed (the 4LP reissue of Since I Left You presents the album pressed into two LPs, and features enough remixes to fill another two LPs), there is absolutely no way to deny the influence of The Avalanches’ first...
Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1 What can I possibly say about Star Trek that hasn’t been said already. If you don’t know what it is, get a clue and get on board. I was very late to the party but have gone very deep. Star Trek is a warm fuzzy place I don’t think I’ll ever want to leave. For a franchise that has done so much over so many years the idea of a Lower Decks show...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Dymaxion LP by Garbageface x Wolfagram. Over the last few years, Karol “Garbageface” Orzechowski has used a laptop, a few instruments and a prodigious amount of talent to expand the vocabulary of electronic music, and really gone out of his way to both force change and re-arrange some musical conventions and paradigms. Watching his body of work unfold, (particularly N0 FUTUR(E) and Apostasy) has been nothing short of hypnotic, in fact;...
WHO: Czarface & MF DOOM WHAT: Super What? WHY: I don’ think there’s a supergroup quite like Czarface and MF DOOM. Maybe the greatest and most underrated MC of all time unfortunately passed away last year (or did he?) and the only good that can come of it is that people would start appreciating his work more. His last collab with Czarface, released posthumously, is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it’s some of the most interesting...
Project Hail Maryby Andy Weir I love me a good sci-fi book. Especially hard sci-fi. And Andy Weir’s books are definitely hard sci-fi. I was a fan of the Martian mostly because of the engaging and fun story, but also because Weir asks his audience to think. I had high hopes for his new book Project Hail Mary, and it certainly delivered, but I wasn’t prepared for just how much thinking this book was going to make me do. One...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Coyote LP by Spencer Burton. The problem that many musicians (particularly those associated with music genres which are usually aligned with “youth” as a concept – like pop, rock and punk) run into as time passes is that, at most, they age awkwardly – if they figure out how to age at all. That might sound odd, but think about it, reader; rock, pop, punk et cetera all have a sense...