Independent radio is a good thing for obvious reasons, but no reason so obvious as loosening music fans from the narrow lanes of restricted listening and limited music discovery. Major radio stations have their painfully structured playlists of songs that you’ll hear repeated every hour on the hour with little room for deviation. And then there are free spirits like […]

A band’s success or career trajectory is one of those disturbingly unpredictable aspects in music…and then sometimes it just feels like a fucking no-brainer. Where San Diego’s the Silent Comedy are concerned, it’s been of the ‘no-brainer’ variety in my very partial brain since I met these guys in 2009. From my initial and accidental introduction to brothers Joshua and […]

Chic Gamine are quite a bit of lovely… although a different kind of lovely than their earlier work may have suggested.  Chic Gamine are a four-piece girl group, rounded out by a pretty amazing drummer.  The outfit are from Canada and earlier this year they released their self-titled US debut.  The album rings of sounds ranging from Motown to Ye’ye […]

“Everythingis an inspiration.  Right now I’m having some personal issues… as always… with my love life,” electro chanteuse Maria Minerva tells me.  She tells me that her love life always manages to inspire her to feel like she’s being creative: “I think that’s the point when people should be making music.  You can call it heartache, but that’s a big […]

How can five music-making dudes who occupy space in the beachfront city of Venice, CA possibly go all south of the Mason-Dixon line-sound and blend it with California sun and soul without sounding- what’s the word- ridiculous? Yes, fricking ridiculous. Well, that’s Terraplane Sun for you. These guys are my guys: I  took ownership of them a long time ago […]

Even though ‘folk rock’ has been around for years, as genres go, it’s a conflicted one as ‘rock’ and ‘folk’ have such dissimilar energies and origins. But the merger of the two has gone on to be the impetus of great and highly conscious musical things: see Cat Stevens and Bob Dylan for further. Today is International Workers’ Day and […]

Jonathan Bates is the sexiest Venezuelan that I know. Granted, he’s the only Venezuelan that I know but that’s nitpicking and I’m not about to diminish his level of cool particularly on the musical front. Now based in Los Angeles, in 2011 under the moniker of Big Black Delta, Bates (formerly of Mellowdrone) ventured off into the world of electronically […]