Music Plankton Wat's the solo project of Dewey Mahood, a key member of Eternal Tapestry, and occasional part of the Jackie-O Motherfucker swarm/collective. It's a beautiful, graceful thing of looped and picked acoustic guitar, following a wander-glimmer-drone structure that psych fans in Portland should be well aqua...   More

Music A living, breathing version of Calvin Johnson's short-lived Sons of the Soil project will almost certainly never exist again. But a new release is about to resurrect its sound. Four years ago, the Blow's Khaela Maricich and nomadic folk troubadour Jason Anderson—longtime friends and tourmates of the K Re...   More

Music [AMBIENT HAUNT] We should expect nothing less than a devastating masterpiece from such a talented, prolific figure as Honey Owens, a.k.a. Valet. And Blood Is Clean—which was re-released internationally last week by Chicago's renowned post-everything label, Kranky—is just that. It's a devastating ma...   More

Music Stories A living, breathing version of Calvin Johnson's short-lived Sons of the Soil project will almost certainly never exist again. But a new release is about to resurrect its sound. Four years ago, the Blo ...   More

Music Stories [AMBIENT HAUNT] We should expect nothing less than a devastating masterpiece from such a talented, prolific figure as Honey Owens, a.k.a. Valet. And Blood Is Clean—which was re-released internat ...   More

Music A brief disclaimer: Mbilly, a.k.a. Will Helfrich, is something of a friend of mine. We get along, sometimes we talk about our respective days, and sometimes about music. Yesterday morning, he bought me a coffee. Through "the network" his CD reached me not too long ago, and, as so shamefully happens, I sat on it fo...   More

Music [PROG PUNK] It would have been incredibly easy for 31Knots to wreck its fourth album with conceptual/experimental grandiosity. Though The Days and Nights of Everything Anywhere—in the immediate, anyhow—is a fairly standard prog punk album, it's also littered throughout with odd, vaguely creepy samples of little-kid choirs, noise, ambient breaks and other seeming sideshows. Add to that ...   More

Music [BRICOLAGE] "Break character" represents a couple of things. First, it's a theatrical term. Second, it denotes a 9-month-old freeform project of loose sampling, fluttering flute loops, turntablism and a wee bit of good ol' fashioned echo-chamber crunk (imagine DJ Shadow getting down with Brian Eno and the Books). The musical project Break Character is comprised of two local gentleman who go by Tac...   More

Music Stories [PROG PUNK] It would have been incredibly easy for 31Knots to wreck its fourth album with conceptual/experimental grandiosity. Though The Days and Nights of Everything Anywhere—in the immediate, ...   More

Music Stories [bricolage] "Break character" represents a couple of things. First, it's a theatrical term. Second, it denotes a 9-month-old freeform project of loose sampling, fluttering flute loops, turntablism and ...   More