Album Review: Huge Lewis – Ascending Into Heaven
“I have swallowed the sky/through only a straw”—the 56-second opener of Ascending Into Heaven is a quiet moment of organ and silly psychedelic lyrics that ends without resolving to the tonic...
Author Archives: Kent Williams
Album Review: Raw Mojo – Brickbat Theory
Raw Mojo is a rock band, full stop. Not to be reductive about what Raw Mojo does, but there’s something really basic and elemental about what they do. Hard hitting drums, loud fuzz guitars fused tigh...
Scott Miller (Game Theory, The Loud Family) 1960-2013
Scott Miller leader/song-writer for Game Theory and The Loud Family died Wednesday, his website announced. Even though he was never a widely known artist, he had enough fans among music journalists a...
Album Review: Daddy – Songs About Prostitutes
The first time I encountered the man now known as “Daddy” was at a Kickass Tarantulas show at the old Gabe’s. Dressed in a Speedo, he was rolling around in the cigarette butts, spilled beer, and brok...
Interview with Pete Swanson, playing tonight at Yacht Club
Pete Swanson was one half of the experimental electronic music band Yellow Swans, who made their mark as extremely ambitious musicians, and whose performances balanced improvisation, chaotically comp...
Hitting the wall
My doughty Mormon forbears--who from what I understand stayed for a while at Student Housing over by Coralville on their way to Utah--walked over a thousand miles without the benefit of modern medici...
Feeling The Rave
I've known Brendan Hanks (aka Ex-Action Model) for several years, first encountering him at a Yellow Ghetto house show where he was running his laptop off of battery power...
Running up and down the alley
Wednesday was a Mission Creek evening for me like a meal at a tapas bar. I caught six different bands at three venues, mostly traversing the alley between Gabe’s and Yacht Club to try and sample the ...
Show Review: William Basinski, Julianna Barwick and Teaadora
My first event of the festival was an overwhelming musical experience. Arriving upstairs at Gabe's, they had set up chairs down front...
Mission Creek: Kent Williams’ electronic music picks
I do listen to most every genre of music–dance music, rock, hip hop, country, classical and so on. I even have a soft spot for easy listening conductor arranger Hugo Winterhalter. But what I’m most i...
Album Review: Steve Grismore Trio – Bésame Mucho!
Steve Grismore is a guy who has had a huge influence on jazz in Iowa City, being a lecturer in the University Department of Music and co-founder of the Iowa City Jazz Festival. But above all, Grismor...
Gabe’s to screen “Pussy Riot: A Punk Rock Prayer” April 3...
Want more proof that Mission Creek Festival is more than just a Music & Literature Festival? On April 3rd, at 7PM, before the White Lung show, FilmScene and Mission Creek Festival will be screening t...
Show Preview: Valgeir Sigurðsson playing Englert Theatre on March 13
Valgeir Sigurðsson is an Icelandic composer, musician, producer and studio engineer. A lot of Americans will, like me, see his last name and think ‘Sigur Rós’ but that is probably one of the few Ice...
Album Review: Omens – Omens EP/No Dawn Casette
Metal never really did it for me. So much of it centered on contrived attitude and image. Growing up I was in the orchestra and AP English, and the metal fans were in Shop classes. While the gearhead...
