Soundtrack of our Lives
Soundtrack of our lives: Queens based artist Will Kaplan give us his picks as his TransBorder Art residency begins
New Jersey born, Queens based artist Will Kaplan crosses boundaries of mediums, techniques and text to create his work. Exploring hemmed nature reserves growing up he focused on tensions between the organic and the human made in his work. As well as creating, Will writes about the NYC art scene and the work of other …
Soundtrack Of Our Lives: Magna Zero
For many of us who grew up playing in garage bands, we daydream about what life could’ve been like if we continued jamming and made it to the big-time. That very well could’ve been the case for progressive rock outfit Magna Zero, but after a ten year hiatus from growing up playing music together, they …
Soundtrack of Our Lives: Emma Spartz
It’s one thing to admire an artist’s work from afar, behind a screen, or in the crowd of a show. But it is something else entirely to share a personal connection with an inspiring artist — for myself and singer-songwriter Emma Spartz, that personal connection was SPEA-A 236/336: Music Industry I/II at university. In a …
Soundtrack of Our Lives: Who Parked The Car
I was first turned onto the French funk outfit Who Parked The Car when they submitted their second single, “Other Side” to me for review. Their throwback sound, in line with modern sensibilities, inspired me to the extent of reviewing their song on this very blog. Who Parked The Car showcased a seamless blend of …
Soundtrack Of Our Lives: Patrick Pearson of LYR
If you heard last years brilliant Call In The Crash Team, no doubt you’ll be a fan of LYR, the band comprised of poet laureate Simon Armitage alongside producers Richard Walters and Patrick Pearson. It’s slightly amazing and at the same time disconcerting that the band didn’t seem to get the recognition they so richly …
Soundtrack of Our Lives: Bo Moore of The Peacers brings the groove
SAN FRAN’S Sic Alps, living guitar legends, were one of those bands which, with the amount of the talent in its ranks, could only burn bright and, like an unstable isotope, emit members to spin off into other musical pursuits, eventually to transform itself in a musical half-life. Tim Hellman went into the ranks of …
Soundtrack of Our Lives: Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles freewheel us through great handpicked tracks
BILL MACKAY, the Chicago-based guitarist, improviser of note and all-round scion of six strings, sure loves to enter into a two-way conversation with other artists with reliably beautiful results; witness the brace of albums he’s recorded with the freewheelin’ Ryley Walker, Land Of Plenty and Spiderbeetlebee. And loving that American instrumental guitar tradition in all its iterations, from …
Soundtrack of Our Lives: breaking psych-folk troubadour E.R. Jurken takes us a for a trip through the music of his life
THEY loved what they heard so much they set up a label just for him. Yep, that’s the tale of E.R. (Ed to his friends) Jurken’s slow peregrination towards a recording contract once he’d landed in Chicago after one of those periods when life gets dismantled, leaves you tumbling in its riptides; criss-crossing the States, …
Soundtrack of Our Lives: New Bums’ Ben Chasny takes us for a musical trip
NEW BUMS is the collaborative shore of of Six Organs of Admittance’s prolific psych voyager Ben Chasny and Donovan Quinn, of erstwhile Jagjaguwar psych-folk mainstays Skygreen Leopards. The duo first ventured into the world of recorded sound for Drag City six? Nope, seven years ago now, their debut album Voices In A Rented Room containing such raggedy lovelies as “Black Bough” and “Your Girlfriend …
Soundtracks of Our Lives: Farmer Dave Scher
FARMER DAVE SCHER may be better known to you from the string of excellent bands he’s both been in and collaborated with down the years. He was a member of the brilliant West Coast country-psych outfit Beachwood Sparks, who took on Sade’s “By Your Side” and completely won (and actually chaps, while we’re here, could …