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Johnny On Point’s new CD Keefin It Real doesn’t do anything to bring dance music out of the shadows, but I doubt that’s his intent. He doesn’t bother to conform to any genre I know–they’re not House, Techno, Dubstep or what’s currently mis-labeled Electro. The only thing I can really call him is a stone-cold sound geek.
Local Albums: April 2010 – Back in the day–1979–Hawkeye basketball star Ronnie Lester was a hip hop ambassador. Ronnie took his boom box everywhere , playing “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang nonstop. It was, to Iowa ears, something strange and alien, and yet irresistible. Idris Goodwin’s track “Isiah Thomas Camp” took me back to […]
Local Albums: April 2010 – Sad Iron Music is the musical persona of Jason Lewis, originally from West Virginia, but living now in Iowa City and attending the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He was in the alt-country band Star City that a few years back achieved some prominence, accompanied, unfortunately, by little financial success. After turning […]
Local Albums: March 2010 – Olivia Rose Muzzy makes an odd brand of folk music with a double bass, loop pedal, and her wild, expressive vocals. Her debut record, Fisherman’s Dream, presents her live act accurately, rather than tracking all of the many bass parts comprising each piece separately, we’re treated to marked addition as […]
Local Albums: March 2010 – Ben Schmidt is a guy who writes songs and plays guitar, which in Iowa City, means he has to work pretty hard to stand out from the crowd. Schmidt’s singing is precisely pitched and without ornament. His songwriting has a pleasant, relaxed accessibility. His guitar playing is accomplished, but Schmidt’s […]
Local Albums: April 2010 – Being of a certain age, and having been a kid in 1960s California, surf music is totemic to me. From listening to my uncle’s Beach Boys records on a blonde-tolex-covered suitcase record player, to hearing “Wipeout” played by every garage band on my walk home from Booksin Elementary in San […]
Illinios John Fever Now Is Not The Way It Is Local Albums: March 2010 – Country Blues can really be a challenge for both performers and listeners. The basic musical gestures ossified into cliché 50 years ago, and it’s rare to find someone who can wring something new out of them. The only way it can work […]
Alex Body Just Say Yes Self-release Local Albums: March 2010 – Alex Body’s solo debut, Just Say Yes, is a glitchy, lo-fi epic consisting of condemnations of himself and humanity over digital and analog loops and faux pipe organ drones. Just Say Yes takes some time to warm up, but by the third track, “Without […]
Local Albums: January 2010 – Zachary Lint Aka Coolzey has taken time off from home renovation and starring in zombie movies, to drop another CD of profound silliness. Or silly profundity–I’m not quite sure. Full disclosure: I’ve done some post production and mastering work for Zack in the past. But hey if you want someone […]
John Schlotfelt reviews “Heaven Knows,” by The Woes, who will visit the Mill this Saturday night to play with Shame Train and The Lonelyhearts
There are few musicians whose music is as polarizing as Autechre. It would be one thing if they were resolutely in the experimental music camp. The avant-garde have their audience, who embrace abstraction and difficulty, and revel in sound only marginally less random than brownian motion. But Autechre occupies a strange middle ground between the […]
CD Reviews: February 2010 – Mountains recorded it’s third release, Choral, in front of a live audience with minimal overdubs added later for effect or layering. And despite the trappings of their genre (ambient), the record feels live, not stately. The Brooklyn-based duo pays attention to the listener, quietly adding elements like a fog descending […]
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