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June 26, 2007
Audio Dregs on CoolHunting Video
This episode features E*rock, the musician and artist who co-founded the record label Audio Dregs with his brother nearly 10 years ago. In that time he has not only become one of experimental electronic music's most important figures but also generously contributed many, many songs to early soundtracks of Cool Hunting's videos.
Posted by kmikeym at 11:42 AM | Comments (1)
June 25, 2007
local music-video directors are making the genre sing
While MTV withers, local music-video directors are making the genre sing again.
As long as musicians make interesting music, filmmakers are going to make interesting music videos. Sure, it's a quick argument otherwise. The medium's progenitor, MTV, has withered into a corporate shell, firing into the dark for the next Real World and packing cuts from their few rotating videos in the after-school, emo-'n'-bling staple, TRL. It's been a long, pathetic decline from the days when the network would proudly premiere new videos from bands like Sonic Youth, New Order and Nirvana, and troll the indie underground with its revered 120 Minutes show. With rare exceptions, mainstream music-video culture has grown positively "Toxic." This is no surprise. Local filmmaker Matt McCormick sums up the mainstream music-video market simply: "It has more to do with the label, the PR, than it does the quality of video."
Read the rest at WWeek.com
Posted by kmikeym at 3:25 PM | Comments (3)
Appropriately Atmospheric
Local filmaker gets appropriately atmospheric on his sonic debut.
Listening to Matt McCormick's Very Stereo not long ago, a friend remarked that "Elevator Muzac" sounded like an old desktop computer's last, drawn-out bleep before crashing. That increasingly modulated tone is then joined by what sounds like the mashing of a telephone touchpad. It's spare and nearly inaccessible to anyone searching for music in the proper (narrative, virtuosic, made with "real" instruments) sense.
Read the rest at WWeek.com.
Posted by kmikeym at 3:19 PM
June 16, 2007
Matthew Stadler is The Citizen Intellectual
by J. DAVID SANTEN JR. for the Oregonian:
Matthew Stadler looks out on a room of friendly faces, more than 50 people seated at tables arranged in a horseshoe. Stadler, a writer whose parallel life as Northwest literary gadfly has won him many ardent admirers and a few dissenters, asks those present at Podkrepa Hall in North Portland not to leave after dinner has ended.
This is the Back Room, a concept that brings together friends and strangers for an evening of food, music and conversation. Since the Back Room began in summer 2005, Gore Vidal, Mary Gaitskill, Lawrence Weschler and many others have spoken. Musicians such as Stephen Malkmus and, on this night, Carrie Brownstein (formerly of Sleater-Kinney) have performed.
Per custom, the menu reflects the evening's theme. With authors John Trombold and Peter Donahue discussing their anthologies "Reading Portland" and "Reading Seattle," chef Naomi Pomeroy has prepared a quintessentially Northwest meal.
Read the rest at OregonLive.com.
Posted by kmikeym at 11:15 AM | Comments (1)
June 7, 2007
Jona Leaves The Blow
In case you missed it, Jona has left The Blow.
CMJ: Jona Officially Leaves The Blow
Filter Magazine: Jona Bechtolt Leaves The Blow To Pursue YACHT
Exclaim: Jona Bechtolt Quits the Blow to Pursue YACHT
Aversion: The Blow Splits in Half
Pitchfork: Jona Bechtolt Quits the Blow, Does YACHT Full Time
Grape Juice Plus: QUITTER!
QCLA: The Blow Loses A Jona
Skank Your Art: YACHT Stuff
Posted by kmikeym at 2:13 PM | Comments (2)