News

David Grubbs has been gettin' down to business on The Plain Where the Palace Stood - and everywhere else too! His new album comes out next Tuesday—and you can preview it on Pitchfork leading up till then! Meanwhile, David has appeared in a handful of monumental performances in Europe in the past few weeks that have nothing to do with The Plain Where the Palace Stood, mining fertile other territories in the world of sound. The first of these was “The Wired Salutation,”... (read more)

Our favorite living, loving legend (she's just a woman), Baby Dee is no stranger to the road - her vaudevillian soul has been spirited all over the world, performing in any situation your mind could muster. Like situations involving monkeys, unicycles and a one-eyed dwarf, if you know what we're saying. Lucky for all of us North Amerikaners, Yanks and Canucks alike, Dee's revving her engines for a quick dash through the American midwest, with a stop in the Canadian New York (or so... (read more)

The prints of the 'Prince' lead everywhere! Sighted last week in record stores and radio stations in central California and scheduled to appear in Scandanavia in May/June and the Upper US (Alaska, that is) and the freakin' Yukon Territory later this summer in the company of What The Brothers Sang duet partner (and so much more) Dawn McCarthy, he's also riding the wires of Wild Wonderful West Virginia's Mountain Stage starting today! His set will be beaming out to over 100 stations around this... (read more)

Silencio is yours and ours to keep, OK? Truth out loud, Laetitia Sadier's got a bunch of things to say, despite the title of her latest album. That's why the Silencio tour continues so far and wide, across 3 major continents. It all began in North America last fall, when Laetitia performed complete with band in all the major and minor markets of these socioeconomically challenged United States. Things got realer as she then winged on over to London, gave it to the Queen,... (read more)

Brain Pulse Music, Maski Batoh's requiem album for Japan and their struggle with the Great East Earthquake and resulting tsunami, utilizes not only traditional Japanese instruments but also a new one of Batoh's own creation: the Brain Pulse Music Machine. It's the mind's music in practice - not the compositional mind, instructing pen to paper or finger to fret - rather, it's the amplified frequencies of the Alpha, Theta and Delta waves of the mind, transmitted from diodes on a head... (read more)

It's nearly April and we ain't foolin' - What The Brothers Sang is fully blooming! Dawn McCarthy & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's live USA dates, where they're sure to play some of these songs, don't kick in until mid-July, but that don't matter; there's plenty of pre-tour fun to be had, and wherever fun's ripe for having, Bonne and Dawn are there pluck it straight from the tree for sweet little nibbles and big juicy bites. So look out for your lemons, all you Bay... (read more)

The earth's melted, unfrozen from the core outwards. Scientists believed the source to be underneath our current terraform, but in truth it was borne from the trans-continental reaches of Ensemble Pearl. You've streamed their offering, falling prey to subliminal urges (and totally liminal ones, too!) to purchase a real, tangible copy of their mass melting, self-titled album. And in your hand, looking at it, LP or CD jacket radiating, you've fallen in love with the album's gatefold artwork. How do you obtain such... (read more)

ONE WEEK LATER

What is this – we’re all still here? Society and civilization at large didn’t boil over and spontaneously reset theyself? It just doesn’t make sense, people. One week ago today, Drag City dropped a motherfucker of new releases that we felt had mega-devastational hydro-bubonic capabilities. Culturally speaking, that is. Of course, we’re not scientists here – unless you count the science of music, which we do – and according to our calculations, a compound of fizzy and syrupy organic cola (Ensemble... (read more)

Just as OM's Advaitic Songs achieved a level of composition that was impossible to foresee, it might come as a surprise to hear that they handed over the track 'Addis' from their most recent long player for a dubplate reworking from UK roots and dub legends Alpha & Omega. Then again, given OM's longstanding mantra when it comes to creating bass-heavy and sensually rhythmic songs, perhaps it should not. The Addis Dubplate emerged from other vibrational dimensions to ours on... (read more)

While we Chicago heads try and fail to tame March's wild lion, David Grubbs is one full step ahead of the calendar with The Plain Where The Palace Stood set to drop on the 16th of April. Cultured man that he be, Professor Grubbs love a jaunt through Europe every opportunity he gets - and what better opportunity than those presented by the release of such a rockingly erudite LP of songs and meditations, a track of which is available for free listenin' here on... (read more)