INTERNATIONAL MUSIC REVIEWS & NEWS
Black, but white. Sharp, but flat. Brutal, but serene. There’s a record label in Mexico called Umor Rex that manages to creep and jump between these extremes, releasing music that never sounds commonplace. Even their poppiest albums have some kind of forewarning, jagged edge embedded through minor notes and sound effects. The label’s most recent [...]
The following is a prose poetry narrative inspired by both Purity Ring‘s debut album, Shrines, and a trip I took to Berlin’s infamous electronic music nightclub, Berghain. It seemed apt for Berlin that Berghain was more or less in the middle of the city, yet in the middle of nowhere. The labyrinth of residential streets [...]
If the lighter and darker music of The Beatles, The Shins, Elliott Smith, Ben Gibbard, and Nick Drake could all somehow melt into one sound of today, it would be called Stephen Steinbrink. Or maybe it would be called French Quarter. Or in this particular case, it could be either. Stephen Steinbrink is a 24-year-old musician who [...]
A while back we profiled a new and upcoming musician/photographer in Berlin, S ND Y P RL RS (Malte Cornelius Jantzen). The artist just released his latest work, a seven-track, sharp but droney, shoegazey record called REX (Umor Rex Records). When we spoke with him for the last article, Jantzen told us that the poppier sounds of [...]
Exploring live music in Barcelona led to overhearing every once in a while about a group of crazy dudes from a place called Vic. I first heard about a collective called Famèlic when speaking with the Barcelona band Mujeres. The name Els Famèlics is Catalan Spanish that actually means “the hungry” rather than the false friend, “the [...]
Readers, I have a confession to make. I’m not just a music geek who obsessively researches and writes about post-punk. I moonlight as a Russian literature geek who obsessively researches and writes about lengthy, dense, frequently moralistic novels. So naturally, when I heard about the Pussy Riot trial, I just had to write a response. [...]
The following is a personal essay about former Big Black frontman and super-producer Steve Albini. During my senior year of college, I earned honors by producing a 25-page collection of original poems. The project began inauspiciously: I wrote a fairly unprofessional project proposal peppered with “Doctor Who” and Velvet Underground references, then, to [...]
On August 6, 1969, revered songwriter Elliott Smith was born in Omaha, Nebraska. On October 21, 2003, Smith died from alleged self-inflicted stab wounds to the chest. This month, Smith’s former label Kill Rock Stars is celebrating what would have been Smith’s 43rd birthday and presenting Smith’s music in new and meaningful ways, releasing never-heard-before tracks [...]
For this issue, we tracked down Jamin Orrall, one half of JEFF the Brotherhood, a fantastic brotherly duo that is currently getting handfuls of well-deserved buzz since their June 2012 release, Hypnotic Nights. THE BOMBER JACKET met Jamin’s brother Jake at the band’s New York City album release show, where our mutual friends from the [...]
Not all bands should be described in the abstract, adjective-laden overwriting found in many music reviews. Shiko Shiko is not one of such bands. Ostensibly, they’re a group from a northern area of France and sing in English (maybe?) with a nonsensical Japanese sounding name. But between the high energy guitars, up-tempo rhythms, frenzied drumming, and [...]
