King Draft
King Draft is hip-hop recording artist originally from Plainfield, New Jersey, but he’s come to admirably represent independent hip-hop in the Triangle. In March, King Draft and four other local rappersKonvo the Mutant, $wank, Kelly Kale, and (J) Rowdytraveled to New York City to compete on BET’s reboot of Freestyle Fridays. There, he wasted no…
Cat’s Cradle Sound Engineer Andy Young Needs a Hand. His Musician Friends Are Sounding Off.
You may not recognize his name or face, but if you’ve been to Cat’s Cradle in the last decade, odds are you’ve heard the work of Andy Young. Cutting his teeth in the early eighties with his brother Darrell’s beach band, Andy has spent virtually his entire adult life as a sound engineer. He was…
Independent Venue Week Comes to Motorco
This week, fourteen venues across the country, including Durham’s Motorco Music Hall, are partaking in the stateside debut of Independent Venue Week, which runs July 9-15. Billed as “Record Store Day for venues,” it’s designed to commemorate independently run music venues through a series of shows, spotlighting smaller clubs and giving them the chance to…
Chris Brown Still Sucks
A comical side effect of the #MeToo movement has been the concern that it’ll ruin the lives and careers of powerful men. I say “comical” in the “laugh-to-keep-from-crying” senseto see the utter failure of this feeble strain of whataboutism, we need look no further than Chris Brown. On Tuesday, Brown headlines the Coastal Credit Union…
Bowerbirds Fly Again at the Festival for the Eno
It’s been a long while since we last heard from Bowerbirds, the beguiling folk-rock band led by Beth Tacular and Phil Moore. The band’s most recent record, The Clearing, is six years old, and it’s been nearly that long since they last graced a stage in the Triangle. But on July 4, Bowerbirds return to…
Chelsea Manning’s Next Chapter
What does a music festival have to do with activism toward a more open government? On the surface, not much, which makes Chelsea Manningwho rocketed toward international recognition when she was imprisoned in 2010 for leaked scores of confidential documents about the United States’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistanseem like an odd choice for Moogfest’s…
The Bloody Brilliance of Jenny Hval
Jenny Hval opens her 2015 record Apocalypse, girl with a set of instructions. “Think big, girl. Like a king,” she says with a slow, intentional patience on “Kingsize.” A few seconds later, she poses the question, “What is soft dick rock?” It may be a jarring start for those unfamiliar with Hval’s work, but it’s…
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Record Review: The Coke Dares’ Fake Lake Is a Fast, Funny Romp
THE EWFR The Coke Dares Fake LakeFake Lake Third Uncle Records Raleigh band The Coke Dares, once the rhythm section of the late Jason Molina’s Magnolia Electric Co., trades in zippy bursts of punky power-pop with the arty verve of Wire, the sinewy energy of The Minutemen, and the pith of Guided by Voices. So…
Record Review: Matt Douglas Has a Need for Reeds on His Woodwinds-Only Solo Debut
Affirmation (with Discomfort) Self-released | On the back cover of their album A Night at the Opera, Queen famously declared “No synthesizers!” It’s an attempt to claim a certain kind of rock authenticity, to assert the power of the studio and the band’s own technical virtuosity. Similarly, saxophonist Colin Stetson often boasts about how his…
Record Review: P.A.T. Junior Teams Up With Kooley High’s Sinopsis to Remix Black & Mild
P.A.T. JUNIOR AND SINOPSIS Smoke Signals Self-released Closing in on the age of thirty and rapping sometimes gets scoffed at as immature, but in fact, it’s probably the best time in one’s life to express the feelings of regret, relief, hope, and uncertainty that come with the age. In the case of P.A.T. Junior, the…
Live: Bill Callahan Sees How Low He Can Go
What makes Bill Callahan a mesmerizing performer? He has two expressionsone shyly, slyly neutral, the other a stanky guitar faceand two stage moves. Sometimes he prances a little, like a kitten marching on a duvet, and sometimes he adds a sort of “move away from the mic to breathe in” maneuver, like in “Chocolate Rain.”…
Record Review: ZenSoFly Blooms Into Hip-House With Her New Sunflowers EP
Sunflowers EP Self-released Of the various trends and fads cropping up throughout hip-hop’s four-decade history, hip-house is not one of its best regarded. Though one could argue that trap EDM and even the prevalence of electronic sounds in contemporary rap beats owes the subgenre some small debt, in retrospect the dated eighties and nineties blend…
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