Homebound in quarantine during the early stages of Italy's COVID-19 outbreak, musician Bruno Bavota composed Apartment Loops Vol. 1 -- an EP that reflected not despair and hopelessness, but Bavota's unexpected bout of inspiration after lockdown. He traded in his solo piano compositions for synthesizers and woke up early each...
Laraaji, whose name honors the divine energy of the sun, is a radiant personality who often plays up solar influences by dressing head-to-toe in a bright orange color, considered by Eastern yogis and color theorists as symbolic of transcendence. Sun Piano, his summer 2020 release on the British label, All...
For centuries, witchcraft has been the sign and symbol of subversive and liminal pathways in life and art; the focal point of cultural anxieties and repressed dreams. Lately, the aesthetics of witchiness have enjoyed a major resurgence. Showing up in fashion and the popularity of herbs and crystals, its widespread...
With the onset of COVID and all things moving online, some event promoters have had the technological know-how to adapt more easily than others. Pink Noise is one of those projects. An art festival and immersive experience "full of noise, sound, music, performance, interactive installations, video, ritual, and healing,"...
Strangers, Marissa Nadler's second record for Brooklyn-based Scared Bones and seventh overall, mixes elements both familiar and unfamiliar to create an uneven, but often rewarding listen. As with the best of her prior work, the songs that hit still retain the ability to steal your breath. And while...
Thousands of years ago, the ancient Greeks would pilgrimage to Eleusis, in Attica, to watch a reenactment of the abduction of Persephone by Hades into the Underworld. These rites, known as the Eleusinian Mysteries, offered the ancient Greeks a tactile connection to the Myths of Demeter and Persephone, as well...
With each passing year, Northside Festival ups the ante, taking over more northern Brooklyn venues and gaining more and more international recognition. Now in its 8th year, the festival added their Innovation track a few years back, which seems like a smart move considering that the tech industry conference economy...
In reviews for Kikagaku Moyo's House in the Tall Grass, some have implied that the Japanese psych folk up-and-comers are simply rehashing old ground. Consider a sentence from Danny Riley of The Quietus, who writes, "The problem comes when artists fail to recognize the elements of their chosen influence that have...
Self-referential yet self-governing in the best of ways, the music video for Pantha Du Prince's "The Winter Hymn", directed by the musician Hendrik Weber himself, culls together years of video footage to offer a look into his recent collaboration Scott Mou, aka Queens, and Bendik Kjeldsberg of the Bell Laboratory....
Portland has been changing a lot in the last decade, much to the chagrin of both long-term residents and more freshly minted transplants, who've coasted in on the myth of Portland as "the place where people in their 20s go to retire." While message boards may be flooded with complaints...