Featured Music
Shabazz Palaces
Little is known about Seattle’s Shabazz Palaces, but that’s just how they like it. (MC Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler of Digable Planets uses the pseudonym MC Lazaro.) Their goal is to focus on the music, not the people or process that goes into it. This is admirable in a world where more emphasis goes to public reputation than the content.
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti: Before Today
Before Today is the brilliant new record released by experimental psychedelic rock/pop revivalists, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti. As expected, the new album is hard to pin down, as are many of Pink’s past lo-fi indie projects. There are so many sounds on Before Today and so many styles that it seems only fair to evaluate it is piece by piece, song by song.
Delorean: Subiza
If you type in the word “Delorean” into Google, the first results to appear in your search would be about the DeLorean automobile. You know, that 80s sports car/time machine made famous by Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future. Strangely enough, this could be a way of describing the music of Barcelona-based synth-pop band, Delorean and their new album Subiza.
In Memory of Gang Starr’s Guru
Today’s Music Byte post is dedicated to Keith Elam, best known as MC Guru, the founder and late member of East Coast hip-hop duo Gang Starr. Guru, which is an acronym for Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal, passed away earlier this week after his long battle with cancer. READ MORE…
Laura Marling: I Speak Because I Can
There’s something awe inspiring about a twenty year-old singer/songwriter that has a better grip on sweetly harmonious folk than people twice her age. Laura Marling released her excellent debut Alas I Cannot Swim two years ago at the age of seventeen (!) to mass critical reception.
MGMT: Congratulations
If what you remember about MGMT is poppy, danceable fun, then you’re in for a pleasant surprise. While the Brooklyn-based duo still retains some remnants of their trademark sound, it is sewn neatly and subtly throughout the songs on their new album Congratulations.
GORILLAZ: PLASTIC BEACH
“Hip-kid astronauts,” “dreamlike” and “futuristic” are just a few ways to describe Gorillaz’s brilliant new album, Plastic Beach. This is the third release for the virtual super group lead by past Blur front man, Damon Albarn and comic book artist Jamie Hewlett (of Tank Girl fame). The album channels the melancholy, philosophical side of Albarn’s [...]
New Music: Broken Bells (that work)
“It’s not too late to feel a little more alive/We can escape before we start to vaporize,” sings Broken Bells’ James Mercer in “Vaporize.” Their other single, “The High Road” has Mercer singing “It’s too late to change your mind.”
Brooklyn Bands
New York’s music scene has always thrived with ground breaking artists and influential rock bands. From legendary greats like The Velvet Underground and Ramones, to the experimental and modern sounds of Sonic Youth, Le Tigre, Interpol, and The Strokes – there’s no argument that the city has produced some of the coolest music on the planet.
Surfer Blood Makes Waves
If you didn’t get a chance to read last month’s post on Surfer Blood, then now is the time to catch a break and hear the band’s full length debut, Astro Coast.
Released on Brooklyn’s budding Kanine Records, Astro Coast is a brilliant array of shiny guitar rock and catchy pop melodies that recalls the sounds [...]