by
A.J. Urquidi
|
May 2, 2024 12:01 pm
|
Comments
(0)
HELMET: LOOKLEFTTOUR with CRO-MAGS Teragram Ballroom Los Angeles April 28, 2024
On Sunday in Central Los Angeles, I parked on one of Westlake’s copious skid rows, crunching the gutter-salad of glass crumbles from the last car that gave up circling the block and settled for this fateful spot. A wife-beater-clad gentleman was exchanging a baggie for cash before the unblinking eye of the Wells Fargo ATM. Descending toward 7th, not far from abandoned real estate that could’ve housed the houseless, I passed three different flavors of fecal stench and a dusty man shrieking and smacking his skull like an 11th-century friar.
Hip hop heads will grant Takuya Kuroda street cred from his time in NYC playing with one half of legendary duo Gang Starr and one of the greatest producers of all time, DJ Premiere, in Premiere’s BADDER band. Jazz aficionados will appreciate that in 2014 he was signed to Blue Note Records for his album Rising Son, the same record label to which John Coltrane and Miles Davis contributed. And so, prior to showtime at The New Parish on Thursday night, the anticipation amongst the crowd was tangible.
by
Nora Grace-Flood
|
May 1, 2024 10:30 am
|
Comments
(0)
Yoga instructor Deb Cohen leads a lesson back by dark ambient band Monks Pond.
Savage Sisters Metal Meditation with Monks Pond PhilaMOCA 531 N. 12th St. Philadelphia April 28, 2024
*Extra credit: Test your focus (or flexibility) by reading this review while listening to the heavy metal meditation recorded above.*
People packed like sardines on 2‑foot-wide yoga mats were practicing their box breathing when a force of harmonium, gong and electric guitar smacked me square in the face.
by
Emily VanKoughnett
|
May 1, 2024 10:28 am
|
Comments
(0)
MANNEQUINPUSSY: I GOTHEAVENTOUR with SOULGLO The Fonda Theater Los Angeles April 26, 2024
My millennial algorithm keeps pushing TikToks about the power of listening to nostalgic music, claiming, essentially, that dancing to System of a Down beats finding a new therapist. An internet psychologist in my feed says it’s harder to form the same relationship to music as an adult than it is as a teen — something to do with dopamine receptors and reaching an age past which art can’t biohack the chemically ingrained bitterness in our brains. But fuck all that, because the band Mannequin Pussy has pushed me to levels of fandom apparently unbefitting people in their thirties.
by
Jamil Ragland
|
May 1, 2024 9:35 am
|
Comments
(0)
Jamil Ragland Photo
Melissa White and Sophie Shao perform together
Strings of Inspiration! Artists Collective Hartford April 30, 2024
Not to toot my own horn, but I’m not just a band geek — I was band president in high school. I transcribed videogame music for fun. I was about that life.
Going to the Artists Collective on Tuesday night to watch Strings of Inspiration, a performance featuring Grammy-winning violinist Melissa White, let me relive those memories of high school band practice and the joy I used to feel when I played the clarinet (and by “played,” I mean “honked aggressively”).
Woodworker Jesse Rinyu and Poet LindoYes attempt to fix their shared sculpture's nutty brain.
LindoYes performs his poem, "Irregular Heartbeat."
The Poetry Gumball Machine Project Museum for Art in Wood 141 N. 3rd St. Philadelphia April 27, 2024
“Tough love is being punched until you don’t cry — and crying is the only thing that stops the punching from hurting as much,” Philly Poet and local organizer LindoYes recited softly. His words were resonant enough to reach his audience without relying on a mic as he stood next to a wooden robot designed to dispense his poems — and social service supports — to the city at large.
Ceschi perfomring on WNHH FM's "Acoustic Thursday @ Studio 51."
Like the rest of us, Ceschi, a.k.a. Julio Ramos, had long since emerged from the darkest days of the Covid-19 pandemic. But he hadn’t forgotten.
Nor had he lost hope.
Fuck your neighbor to survive Eat your neighbor to survive We were hiding our faces long before pandemics arrived …
Ceschi (he performs under a familial nickname) was live on WNHHFM’s“Acoustic Thursday @ Studio 51” program (watch the full episode in the above video) performing“2020 BC,” a powerful song he wrote in the early lockdown pandemic days.
by
Breezy Bratton
|
Apr 28, 2024 11:51 am
|
Comments
(0)
Breezy Bratton Photo
Castlemont High School Ensemble performs Kirk Franklin's "Revolution."
2nd Annual East Oakland Vocal Festival Phillip Reeder Auditorium at Castlemont High School 8601 MacArthur Blvd Bldg. 300 Oakland April 24, 2024
The energy was frenetic in the spacious Phillip Reeder Auditorium as students from six schools wearing black “Town Business Vocal Program” T‑shirts shrieked, did vocal warmups, and sprinted between purple seats the shade of grape jelly.
Host and MC Keenan Foster stood center stage both literally and figuratively as he introduced the event at the 2nd East Annual Vocal Festival within Castlemont High School. He aimed to bring his interests as music teacher and producer/songwriter at Town Business Inc. together in partnership with the nonprofit Elevate Oakland founded by Sheila E., Yoshie Akiba (of Oakland’s own Yoshi’s jazz club), among others, to “reignite the legacy of choral music and vocal performance for our youth in East Oakland.”
by
Nora Grace-Flood
|
Apr 26, 2024 11:51 am
|
Comments
(0)
Stellar sound from KulfiGirls Wednesday night.
KulfiGirls The Dolphin Tavern 1539 S Broad St. Philadelphia April 24, 2024
Amid the fuzz rock, punk and noise music bouncing off the walls of the Dolphin Tavern Wednesday night, I found myself transported out of South Philly and into a Lisa Frank-like wonderland — as Carnatic rock crew KulfiGirls cut through an acidic night with an experimental mixture of sweet, sometimes gritty pop, colorful multi-instrumentalism, and neon joy.
by
Alicia Chesser
|
Apr 26, 2024 11:40 am
|
Comments
(0)
ALICIA CHESSER PHOTO
Water Is The Sun at Noise Town
ONEAUX: A Night Of Ambience Noise Town April 17, 2024
If you’ve never spent a Wednesday night sitting on a floor in West Tulsa listening to experimental ambient soundscapes with trippy projections in a music venue the size of a New York City railroad apartment across from the Tulsa Stove Hospital (est. 1921), have you even Tulsa’d?
by
Brian Slattery
|
Apr 25, 2024 11:36 am
|
Comments
(0)
“Hello several people, rap professionals, and various cool people,” said Sketch Tha Cataclysm from the Three Sheets stage, as he and fellow New Haven hip hop stalwart Mo Niklz hosted a group of touring artists from Chicago for a night of high-energy indie hip hop.
A small but enthusiastic audience stayed close for that Wednesday night show, which included performances by Chicago-based artists Aplacecalledhell, Tomcantsleep, and Killvongard.
Dom Flemons City Winery Philadelphia April 19, 2024
“Don’t it always seem to go?” former Carolina Chocolate Drop and Black Cowboy Dom Flemons lamented into a City Winery microphone — as he quoted famed folk singer Joni Mitchell, not as part of a song, but to make a point.
by
Z.B. Reeves
|
Apr 19, 2024 6:05 pm
|
Comments
(0)
ZB REEVES PHOTO
This was no "Weekend at Herbie's"
Herbie Hancock Tulsa Performing Arts Center April 7, 2024
It was a privilege to watch Herbie Hancock cavort around a stage with a keytar. I hope you got to see it too. His show at the PAC was a powerhouse example of the genre-defining and ‑breaking prowess he’s wielded over jazz for decades. The man still has more energy than some 30-year-olds I know, and he’s 83.
by
Tosten Burks
|
Apr 19, 2024 9:48 am
|
Comments
(0)
OUTSIDEWORLD 71 Studio Bar Los Angeles April 5, 2024
On my way to the jazz duo Outside World’srelease show in Hollywood two Fridays ago, I learned from my younger sister through tears over the phone that our grandmother was starting hospice. I walked up that annoying stretch of Cahuenga by the dormant Cinerama dome where the old Variety office – turned – Amoeba Music building now hosts ticketed TikTok art traps with Grandma Andy on my mind. When she arrived in Los Angeles from small-town Iowa to model, the night’s venue, 71 Studio Bar, was a printing business, then a recording studio; now it’s a brass-plated cocktail lounge and performance space that advertises its rock and roll lore and offers four distinct bottle service packages. Baritone saxophonist Henry Solomon in neon-bleached hair dyed with black stars and bassist Logan Kane in a New York City tourist T‑shirt, backed by pianist Chris Fishman and drummer Benjamin Ring, were playing their second song as I squeezed, on assignment, into the modest concrete room hung with mustard curtains and packed with baggy jeans.
