The dark electro-musings of Tucson artist Shawn Foree (a.k.a. Digital Leather) have never sounded more spastic, insidious, and danceable than on Sorcerer. This 12-track album blends quirky art-pop influences like Devo, Plastic Bertrand, and Tubeway Army with layers of synthesized desolation, lyrical angst, and gothic intensity to create a morose,…
Poor RZA. When the studio overlord produces a Wu-Tang Clan masterwork, it lands on RCA or Universal. Yet this chessboard fiend, martial-arts aficionado, and Quentin Tarantino pal can’t seem to garner any respect or sales clout as a rapper; Digi Snacks, his latest sonic escapade, is coming out on Koch…
Any band that puts out an 11-minute recording and presents it as a full-length album obviously has a sense of humor. Like Slayer’s shorty classic Reign in Blood (which is twice as long!) and Napalm Death’s Scum before it, Daughters’ Canada Songs is an attempt to capture a metal sub-genre…
The only way to experience a group this vast, colorful, and earthbound is to simply just listen. An excessive use of adjectives seems unjust. Faun Fables and its creator, Dawn McCarthy, seamlessly draw from a spiritual and mythological realm to convey world sounds that are entrancing. The expression “song telling”…
The gravel-voiced, avant-garde king of indescribable booze-jazz/art rock/blues-folk/dissident cabaret is making his first appearance in the Valley in 30 years. Waits’ song characters — whether it’s a hooker in Minneapolis sending a postcard or a lonely kid sitting after hours in Napoleone’s Pizza House — have endured with as much…
British beat-juggler Lee Burridge is sort of a freak. Sure, turntablists are known to be an eccentric lot, but it’s a safe bet your average record spinner has never claimed to have done the nasty in a DJ booth, fallen in love with a Voodoo woman, and bombed around Burning…
After seeing Eartha Kitt perform with the Phoenix Symphony, I had to find an album that contained most of what I’d heard during her performance, and then some. The Very Best of Eartha Kitt is a two-disc, 35-song collection of her best-known works, from “I Want to Be Evil” and…
By Benjamin Leatherman Juggalos (a.k.a. the rabid fans of demented horror-core rap duo Insane Clown Posse) tend to scare the shit out of most people. Maybe it’s because they’re connected with violent hooliganism, wear clown makeup out in public, or are just all-around freakazoids. (There’s also the fact their cars…
This week’s creepy-cool flier is for the monthly industrial/EDM event Sadisco. The art fits with the “doppleganger” theme of this Saturday’s soiree.
There are a lot of crappy dating sites littering the Information Superhighway. With millions of users placing and browsing personals ads and inputting general, arbitrary information like “Interests,” “Politics,” and “Religion,” finding true compatibility can be an almost impossible task.
But if music is a universal language and also the language of love, then perhaps a personals site that focuses on the musical interests of its users isn’t such a bad idea.
By Lilia Menconi It’s so nice when this job allows us to take a break from booze every once in a while — which is exactly what we did when we stopped by Red Hot Robot’s One Year Anniversary Party on Saturday, June 7. For more of this, check the…
By Jonathan McNamara Better Than: Spinal Tap. Sure, this animated band owes a lot to its comedic predecessor, but sheer technical skill from the band that makes Nathan Explosion, Pickles the drummer and all the rest of these rogue rockers live puts Dethklok a few notches higher. See more shots…
By Jonathan McNamara Maybe you’re a high school ska band with a penchant for odes to your skateboards. Maybe you’re a group of working stiffs who transform into gothic, heavy-metalers when the sun goes down. Hell, maybe you’re a free-form jazz pianist who likes to vocalize about global warming. No…
A few weeks ago, I posted a blog soliciting local CDs for review in this weekly feature called “You Asked for It.” Since then, I’ve received albums from Underwater Getdown, Reign of Vengeance, and this week’s review subject, Dude Offline.
By Benjamin Leatherman Here’s a rundown of the top 10 best-selling albums at Zia Record Exchange, 105 West University Drive in Tempe, for the week of June 2-8. 1. Weezer, Weezer (Red Album) (Geffen) 2. Disturbed, Indestructible (Reprise) 3. Portishead, Third (Mercury) 4. Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs (Atlantic)…
What the hell is wrong with Metallica? I had some empathy about the whole Napster snafu in 2000, when the band complained about copyright violations and being ripped off for royalties when Napster was a free file-sharing site. Metallica won a settlement from Napster (now a pay site), and alienated a lot of fans in the process.
By Benjamin Leatherman Music editor Niki D’Andrea decided to take a well-deserved sabbatical this past weekend, getting as far as possible from the Valley as she could. She didn’t tell anyone where she was headed, but knowing the kind of crazy life the pint-sized powerhouse of lesbian spunk leads, it…
By Joseph Golfen This weekend marked Summer of Sound’s second concert. This time around the hip hop-centered event invaded Chaser’s Bar and Nightclub in Scottsdale; a laid-back, grimy bar that shares a strip mall with both Americano Tattoo Parlor and the Jesus Is Lord Christian supply store. The Premiere The…
By Benjamin Leatherman Better than: Hanging out with the dicks in Scottsdale. Back in mid-1996, Zach de la Rocha and the rest of Rage Against the Machine ruled the alt-rock world, with stations like The Edge (then on 106.3/100.3 FM) broadcasting the foursome’s aggro agitprop songs from their second album…
By Benjamin Leatherman The horror rockers of Calabrese The monthly First Friday extravaganza in downtown Phoenix always proves to be a massively chaotic mess of sound and art, with dozens of musicians and bands performing inside galleries, outside on sidewalks, and practically any other location they can think of. In…
Here are a handful of shows that were just announced this week.
Local heavy-hitting, post-prog rock band Daughters of Fission will be playing the FBC Music Fest this weekend with several other Valley acts, including Fred Green (check out one of FG’s songs here).
The song below is from Daughters of Fission’s 2008 self-released album, The Moth. It’s called “The Sea.”
