. You open your eyes to an industrial dystopia. Churning clouds of purple-gray obscure all but your immediate surroundings. Phosphorescence refracts through the mist, illuminating monolithic structures rising from the ground; ruins, perhaps, of a civilization long extinct. Your mind is blank. With no idea who you are or where you…
. Among the vanilla-scented bands fuming up the record charts, the Punch Brothers stick out like a whiff of an everything bagel. Their calloused, virtuosic, bluegrass-picking fingers have been caught rummaging through the cookie jars of all sorts of musical genres, a habit which renders their music largely unclassifiable. Or, at…
. I first encountered the St. Lawrence String Quartet during their 2009-10 artist residency at Arizona State University. Over the course of their visit, my peers and I frequently shared leery glances over the hemorrhaging stagemanship of first violist Geoff Nuttall, who tended to overshadow his relatively sedate colleagues. A decade…
. Following a brief hiatus, a couple of independent music projects, and the completion of the documentary film Inni in late 2011, Jonsi and the boys announced a return to the studio for a fifth album. During production, band members met with some strife—a number of tracks begun in 2009…
. Evidenced by his heavily collaborative trip-hop sobriquet Wax Tailor, Jean-Christophe Le Saoût knows how to spin a spectacular story. Dusty Rainbow's supernatural diversions call to mind Le Saoût's mother culture of French Cinema so convincingly that I'd hardly bat a lash if I encountered a short film adaptation by Jean-Pierre…
. Hearing Sarah and Josh talk about their music makes my mouth water almost as much as digging into a box of stale Cheerios. These guys take "let the music speak for itself" to the extreme; I get the feeling they'd never do an interview if they didn't have to. Fine…