Jason SimpsonThere has always been a divide between the daytime and the night — a war between Saturday night and the Sunday morning penitents. Since the beginning of time, people have gathered in caves and juke joints and space stations to dance and dream...
Vee Hua 華婷婷While the decommissioning of NASA's space program seems to be an outward indicator of a global lack of interest in the great beyond, one can always look to the arts to realize that the human fascination in space and sci-fi are as strong as they've...
MusicfestNW has always had one of the more diverse festival lineups around. A large part of that is because -- rather than jamming thousands upon thousands of people asses to elbows in a huge field on some farm somewhere -- MusicfestNW puts the...
Dawn of Midi – Dysnomia Album Review (w/ Track-By-Track of Astronomical & Mythological Implications)
When the American trio Dawn of Midi released their accomplished 2010 debut album, First, the world had gained another practitioner of minimalist free jazz. Two years in the making, and at a reported cost of thirty thousand dollars, Dysnomia is the...
Oakland’s Lumerians are releasing The High Frontier this month, and its first single is the surprisingly female-narrated “Life Without Skin”. The track shows Lumerians at their finest, full of subdued control; they roll through...
"I think as we get older, that idea of magic is just taken from us. There's just less of it and less of it... I really try to just kind of dabble in things that feel magical." -- Steve Ellison of Flying Lotus
Ensemble Pearl Ensemble Pearl Drag City (2013 February) Comprised of drone merchant Stephen O’Malley (Sunn O)))); psychedelic guitar wizard Michio Kurihara (Ghost/Boris); white-gloved drummer Atsuo, (also Boris); and William Herzog (Jesse...
Many people in the United States will say that post-rock has played itself out — but to just go ahead and label things as straight up post-rock is really the more played out aspect of the criticism, for what exactly makes post-rock? Generally...
![Sweetheart Deal @SweetheartDealMovie, a cinéma vérité-style documentary from local filmmaker Elisa Levine @ElisaLevine99, follows the trajectories of four sex workers on Aurora, and eschews feverish commentary in favor of unvarnished truths...
Sweetheart Deal‘s four subjects — Krista (formerly Amy), Kristine, Sara, and Tammy — brim with wry humor and startling honesty about “being dopesick” and “turning tricks.” In the decade or so of filming between 2011 and 2021, they splinter off then reconnect, make amends and give apologies, all while being pulled relentlessly back into Aurora’s undertow. Each cycles in and out of Elliott’s RV, gradually shifting from casual acquaintances to close friends.
“Everybody who’s out there on Aurora: you don’t know what their background is,” says Levine, who felt it was important to highlight the disparate backgrounds of these women, but also their solidarity and similarity. “They could come from a family of millionaires or they could come from a life of poverty. Once you get out there, [with] the intensity of what you have to deal with every day, just trying to survive there — everybody’s on an equal playing field. Nobody cares where anybody else came from. So that was something that was surprising and interesting and sad. Even people who came from a better-off background and had more opportunities to go into rehab more times and things like that over the years — they still very often fall back into the addiction.”
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READ THE INTERVIEW
w/ Director Elisa Levine
by Alison J. Smith @alison.j.smith:
https://bit.ly/redefinesweetheart
Initially viewed at @SIFFnews
#SeattleFilm #REDEFINEmagazine #REDEFINEmag #FilmReview #FilmReviews #SeattleFilms #SeattleFilmmaker #SeattleFilmmakers #FilmJournalism #DirectorInterview #ElisaLevine #SweetheartDeal #AuroraAve #AuroraAvenue #Streetwise #DocumentaryFilm #DocumentaryFilms #GabrielMiller #CinemaVerite #Highway99](https://scontent-atl3-2.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.29350-15/280151906_381199520608193_6699221920708279913_n.webp?stp=dst-jpg&_nc_cat=104&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=9YghD9ljGcIAX9jhMHO&_nc_ht=scontent-atl3-2.cdninstagram.com&edm=AL-3X8kEAAAA&oh=00_AT9QtIg85NQqTeSh2wt9B_n4JgYbKRpeFqYOfjsmq7Cm_A&oe=628D49DF)
![Ghanian-Australian musician @GenesisOwusu is finishing his first-ever U.S. tour this month! Check out our review of the blistering, high-concept show in Philly, written by Vee Hua @hellomynameisvee -- READ: https://bit.ly/redefinegenesislive
By the end of the night, multi-faceted Australian musician Genesis Owusu and his three back-up “goons” will have brought the entire audience at Philadelphia’s @UndergroundArts venue through an emotional journey of darkness and lightness, exploring themes found throughout his 2021 concept-heavy record, Smiling With No Teeth. The album’s main narrative centers around two symbolic characters known as the “black dogs,” which are referenced in almost every track. The internal black dog represents depression; the external black dog represents racism.
“[Smiling with No Teeth] is a very personal project for me… it’s a relaying of rage, sorrow, happiness, joy, hopefulness… For the longest time, Black people, especially, have been wronged and then expected to be the bigger person, and then expected to be the educators for the people who just wronged them. [Your] feelings of rage are then invalidated. You’re made to feel hysterical or paranoid… so this is moreso an intention and a statement of those raw feelings, whether logical or not.” - Genesis Owusu
READ THE REVIEW:
http://bit.ly/redefinegenesislive
RED OUR INTERVIEW W/ OWUSU:
http://bit.ly/redefinegenesis
///
REMAINING TOUR DATES
(don't miss this rare opportunity)
4/10 - Terminal West - Atlanta, GA
4/12 - Basement East - Nashville, TN
4/14 - Antone's - Austin, TX
#REDEFINEmagazine #MusicJournalism #MusicWriting #MusicReview #LiveShowReview #LiveShowReviews #MusicVideos #AustralianMusician #AustralianMusicians #SmilingWithNoTeeth #BlackDogs #Colonialism #Racism #PopMusic #Soul #RNB #R&B #DanceMusic #GenesisOwusu #Goons @Ourness @HouseAnxiety](https://scontent-atl3-2.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/277973179_354611006721297_4579906513960108085_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=1nmyLnGuuFAAX9PlOvR&_nc_ht=scontent-atl3-2.cdninstagram.com&edm=AL-3X8kEAAAA&oh=00_AT-a1rCYFnDlhQfPAJlrZmEpzELt8AREmXNyBN9E6g_wGg&oe=628C0A36)
![The Growth Eternal's PARASAiL-18, is out now! Read the new interview by Vee Hua @hellomynameisvee -- https://bit.ly/redefinegrowth
On its surface, PARASAiL-18, the 2022 full-length from experimental solo musician @TheGrowthEternal, comes across as a smooth, harmonious, and vocoder-laden electronic offering. Beneath its surface, however, one finds a challenging, highly-personal record that came from years of introspection and escape from challenging life circumstances — though the journey ultimately has a positive ending. It resolves in the type of self-aware expansiveness that the project’s name might suggest.
Originally from Tulsa, Byron Crenshaw relocated to Los Angeles in 2019 and immediately connected with the community-oriented record label @LeavingRecords, who would go on to release PARASAiL-18. Yet life hasn’t always felt so smooth or aligned. He first began working on the record in 2018, when he was studying jazz at a Texas college and feeling massively conflicted that the institution’s approach to jazz varied significantly from his own.
“My initial exposure to jazz before that was very much organic and vocalized and a lot of time mentorship-focused, which is basically the dynamic of jazz traditionally and how it was,” notes Crenshaw. “It was really conflicting when I knew I was passionate about this enough to put my life into it, and then I get to a space where… [due to the] the academic culture behind [the college] and how they viewed and positioned jazz in the curriculum, I felt marginal…”
This marginalization, however, had a bright side; it allowed Crenshaw to connect to the historically Black artform in a deep way that he had never experienced before, as well as find his personal connection to it.
“It felt like one of those things where I didn’t really conceptualize it a lot of the time, but… it felt like a natural falling into,” he says.
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW:
https://bit.ly/redefinegrowth
#TheGrowthEternal #LeavingRecords #ExperimentalMusic #ElectronicMusic #REDEFINEmag #REDEFINEMagazine #MusicJournalism #MusicWriting #MusicReview #MusicReviews #MusicInterviews #BlackMusic #MusicWriter #ExperimentalElectronic #Jazz #Electronic](https://scontent-atl3-2.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.29350-15/278093628_353901813341512_8927193726196441923_n.webp?stp=dst-jpg&_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=8VjifspI27wAX9LBVAb&_nc_ht=scontent-atl3-2.cdninstagram.com&edm=AL-3X8kEAAAA&oh=00_AT_1-bc0zpIuEVNI3BJNRlaAhzl3MViJco5d5ZLdy1wRqA&oe=628BEEBA)
![Ghanian-Australian musician @GenesisOwusu is finishing his first-ever U.S. tour this month! Check out our review of the blistering, high-concept show in Philly, written by Vee Hua @hellomynameisvee -- READ: https://bit.ly/redefinegenesislive
By the end of the night, multi-faceted Australian musician Genesis Owusu and his three back-up “goons” will have brought the entire audience at Philadelphia’s @UndergroundArts venue through an emotional journey of darkness and lightness, exploring themes found throughout his 2021 concept-heavy record, Smiling With No Teeth. The album’s main narrative centers around two symbolic characters known as the “black dogs,” which are referenced in almost every track. The internal black dog represents depression; the external black dog represents racism.
“[Smiling with No Teeth] is a very personal project for me… it’s a relaying of rage, sorrow, happiness, joy, hopefulness… For the longest time, Black people, especially, have been wronged and then expected to be the bigger person, and then expected to be the educators for the people who just wronged them. [Your] feelings of rage are then invalidated. You’re made to feel hysterical or paranoid… so this is moreso an intention and a statement of those raw feelings, whether logical or not.” - Genesis Owusu
READ THE REVIEW:
http://bit.ly/redefinegenesislive
RED OUR INTERVIEW W/ OWUSU:
http://bit.ly/redefinegenesis
///
REMAINING TOUR DATES
(don't miss this rare opportunity)
4/10 - Terminal West - Atlanta, GA
4/12 - Basement East - Nashville, TN
4/14 - Antone's - Austin, TX
#REDEFINEmagazine #MusicJournalism #MusicWriting #MusicReview #LiveShowReview #LiveShowReviews #MusicVideos #AustralianMusician #AustralianMusicians #SmilingWithNoTeeth #BlackDogs #Colonialism #Racism #PopMusic #Soul #RNB #R&B #DanceMusic #GenesisOwusu #Goons @Ourness @HouseAnxiety](https://scontent-atl3-2.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/277939142_142308468303215_4593680293674451008_n.jpg?_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=qQB0kVbOP0kAX_EMGUf&_nc_ht=scontent-atl3-2.cdninstagram.com&edm=AL-3X8kEAAAA&oh=00_AT_v_lHB7BDXZnB0Y7oJ-fxrZpRQ-lF1DPdRtN03r4zDeQ&oe=628D833D)