Get to know Light Asylum’s Shannon Funchess, an artist and performer so good at what she does that she’s racked up comparisons to both Grace Jones (the hair doesn’t hurt) and Ian Curtis. She’s a total badass. Take note. Read via SPIN, or in the May issue of our iPad app SPIN Play.
We’ve joined SPIN’s Twitter reviews team. Watch us completely dismiss or irresponsibly champion an album in 140 characters or less! This week:
Posted in album reviews, SPIN
Tagged EDM, Flying Lotus, Guantanamo Baywatch, Ninja Tune, Portland, Slugabed, surf-punk, U.K.
While we won’t be attending the big Hang in ‘Bama, we do have family in that neck of the woods. Jealous of those who’ll get to see Skrillex, Yelawolf, Mavis, the Lips, Big Freedia, Jack White, the Shakes and more from the comfort of a beach blanket. Check out our top ten picks over at SPIN.
Posted in event previews, lists, SPIN
Tagged Jack White, Flaming Lips, Skrillex, Gogol Bordello, Gary Clark Jr., Yelawolf, Mavis Staples, Big Freedia, Alabama Shakes, Kaskade, Alabama, Gulf Shores, Hangout Fest
WIXIW is a shoo-in for our top five albums of 2012, so it was a particular pleasure to visit the strange space where it was created — well, at least in part. There are a few tiers to this story, and a decent amount of subterfuge, but the stuff that keeps us guessing is the stuff that keeps us coming back. Furthermore, WIXIW happens to be the most accessible work in their catalog to date, so find out what osmosis and singing underwater has to do with it. Read at SPIN.
We’ve joined SPIN’s Twitter reviews team. Watch us completely dismiss or irresponsibly champion an album in 140 characters or less! This week:
Posted in album reviews, SPIN
Tagged Beck, Dot Hacker, Gnarls Barkley, Innovative Leisure, Nick Waterhouse, San Francisco
So we did this. In the same week that we hung out with Liars in their makeshift music bunker, we hightailed it to NRG in NoHo where we were greeted by walls lined with platinum packs from such luminaries as Hoobustank and Papa Roach, and–as it turned out–a couple of the nicest, most sincere dudes in the music biz. The men of Linkin Park are good men indeed. They follow golf and basketball, and geek over old stories about performing with Stone Temple Pilots or banging on Rick Rubin’s SP1200, and are excited to play you their new songs. Head on over to SPIN to find out what they’ve been up to. And here’s this:
Another thing that made Coachella 2012 so unforgettable was the fact that we experienced it twice. Our comrade in arms Christopher R. Weingarten did a helluva job summing up the weirdness of all that (read “Why the Hell Did We Go to Coachelle Weekend Two?” via SPIN) while we here at Aural Standards took the chance to see just about everything we’d missed on the first run. Below are are four favorite sets from each day. Below you’ll find a list of what we covered with excerpted bits. Click on the DAY to read full reviews at SPIN.
FRIDAY
1. Wallpaper: when he clapped, they clapped; when he bounced, they leapt…
2. Gary Clark Jr: Black Keys could’ve learned a thing or two about the blues…
3. Explosions in the Sky: floating in on a pillow of harmonic resonance…
4. Ximena Sariñana: her powerful voice and innate charm won us over…
SATURDAY
1. St. Vincent: jagged blasts of guitar like vines of cherry bombs blowing…
2. Feist: the hulking, honking horns added a marching band-sized heft…
3. David Guetta: even 50 feet back from the tent’s edge, it was a furnace…
4. Miike Snow: Lykke Li coaxed the ancient viking vibes out of the music…
SUNDAY
1. Growlers: putting it down for the wastetoids, beach bums and shitheads…
2. Modeselektor & Thom Yorke: he bopped and jittered to the hyper beat…
3. Seun Kuti & Egypt 80: unceasing rhythms flagrantly defying the heat…
4. Girl Talk: taking breaks only to dance, head-bang or hype his loyal crowd…
Check out our coverage of Weekend One, plus other weirdness here.
In addition to reporting on the best sets of Coachella 2012 Weekend Two, the inimitable Christopher R. Weingarten and I were tasked with documenting all the weirdness that was fit to print. Or Tweet, at least. We did the latter from @SPINfestivals, and freed the most salient bits of odd from our notebooks after each 12-hour day, usually between the delirious hours of 3 and 5 a.m. Via SPIN.
1. Friday Fieldnotes: Clever Boozing, Gary Busey’s Face, Fake Mustaches
2. Saturday Fieldnotes: Side Boob, David Hasselhoff’s Handshake, Melted Vinyl
3. Sunday Fieldnotes: Eminem’s Lip-Sync, Hologram Humor, Radiohead’s Fam
Check out our Weekend One and Weekend Two coverage as well.
Posted in live reviews, SPIN
Tagged Coachella 2012, David Hasselhoff, Eminem, Gary Busey, holograms, lip-syncing, Notorious B.I.G., Radiohead, side boob
It was Aural Standards’ ninth Coachella (and tenth, counting Weekend Two), but it may have been our most memorable yet. While Sacramento’s Death Grips left a deep, seeping impression in our minds (boot-shaped) and Hologram Tupac enjoys a second life as a lasting meme, it was the reunions that did us in. Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and Refused’s The Shape of Punk to Come are two of our favorite albums of all time (At the Drive-In’s Relationship of Command flies high on that list as well), but never did we imagine we’d witness those songs performed live by the folks who actually made ‘em (NMH auteur Jeff Mangum was billed as a solo act). Cheers to the folks at Goldenvoice for throwing scads of money at the problem until it resolved itself. Here are our five faves from each of the first three days. Below is a list of what we covered with excerpted bits. Click on the DAY to read full reviews at SPIN.
FRIDAY
1. Refused: thick, primal slabs of punk that seemed to rattle the scaffolding…
2. Death Grips: Run DMC meets Aerosmith, cranked on incredibly foul PCP…
3. M83: doors opening infinitely to bigger and bigger doors, a galactic gasp…
4. Frank Ocean: for the line about Coachella, the screams were deafening…
5. The Rapture: rogue groups of get-down circles spilling from the sides…
SATURDAY
1. Jeff Mangum: he opened his mouth and for 50 minutes, we were his…
2. Flying Lotus: a wild genre-crushing journey, heady but head-knocking…
3. Black Lips: Cole dropped trou and executed a searing solo with, well…
4. Azealia Banks: fast-rapping and boasting over minimal sub-bass rumble…
5. A$AP Rocky: a perfect storm of N.W.A., Public Enemy and Bone Thugs…
SUNDAY
1. Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg: who rose from below the stage but Tupac himself…
2. At the Drive-In: a high-octane inferno of post-hardcore mania…
3. AraabMUZIK: conducting a symphony of melody, effects and percussion…
4. Le Butcherettes: she ran out into the field, arms out like an airplane…
5. Gotye: the massive human traffic jam stretched 50 yards in every direction…
Tomorrow, we get caught up with Weekend Two.
Posted in live reviews, SPIN
Tagged Flying Lotus, Neutral Milk Hotel, Snoop Dogg, M83, Black Lips, Frank Ocean, Refused, Coachella 2012, At the Drive-In, Dr. Dre, Death Grips, Jeff Mangum, Azealia Banks, A$AP Rocky, Hologram Tupac, Gotye
Bad news (read here), but I’m hopeful for Pasquale Rotella. Seems to me he’s a good guy committed to giving EDM fans something special. This is an unrelated but tonally relevant quote from an interview I conducted with him last year:
“I’m gonna stick in there. There’s light at the end of the tunnel. The worst part about having to deal with this stuff is I just want to produce the best experience possible. I want to create something that’s really special, where people leave with something memorable. I definitely look forward to the day when there’s less politics in the way. I’ve had to put on a suit more than once this past year and be the politician. I’m not passionate about that role. When you work on an event year round, get it all set up, and the gates are about to open … that’s what I love. I want to lose the distractions.”
[photo by Caesar Sebastian]
Posted in features, news, SPIN
Tagged bribery, Coliseum, conspiracy, EDM, Electric Daisy Carnival, embezzelment, Los Angeles, Pasquale Rotella, raves, Steve Cooley
