Austin Sound has put together a really nice little mixtape of local bands (no, not the usual suspects), taking the time to run the mix with a short profile of each band and information / links. The best part is that it’s not just the same old songs you could find on a MySpace, either. They’ve compiled tracks from the artists themselves, previewing upcoming albums and other releases. Great stuff, too, everything from kitsch pop to local hip-hop. Highly recommended.
I went to see Anal Cunt last night at Emo’s and wrote a review/overheards piece about it for Austinist.com today. Check it out, if I do say so myself.
The question seems to be whether or not Putnam and Co. are the Lenny Bruce of grindcore or some of the worst people on the planet. While most of us can enjoy (or at least see the humor in) songs like “Windchimes Are Gay” and “You Go to Art School,” as well as numerous songs devoted to calling out other bands (Dishwalla, 311, Artimus Pyle and Kenny G have all received verbal thrashings from AC), most find some of the misogyny and racism present in the band’s typically humorous song titles one toke over the line.
Ezekiel Honig is a New York based artist and musician that is probably best described as ambient. He uses soft electronic sounds combined with found music / noise and deceptively simple melodies to create beautiful work. I’ve grabbed his ‘06 album Scattered Practices and plan on listening to the shit out of it this week. I can highly recommend the collaboration with Morgan Packard as well.
In general I take issue with most movies about 9/11. My reasons are numerous, but most of them are some version of my general distaste for films that monopolize on collective guilt and sadness and manipulate viewers into feeling, confusing them into believing that something is good.Crash did this, most Tom Hanks movies do this, and Adam Sandler’s new movie Reign Over Me (probably) does it too. I’ve read that Sandler’s film doesn’t touch on 9/11 too overtly, but it’s obvious that he lost his family (his entire family) on that day, thanks to context clues like “I remember September 12th” and “My entire family was on the plane”. While I appreciate the subtlety, I have to say that I’d be more inclined to go see this movie if Sandler’s character didn’t also lose his fucking dog on 9/11. It’s true: his wife, three daughters and his fucking dog were on the plane. I think they had his childhood baseball card collection, too.
Regardless, I missed out on a lot of movies during SXSW because I was busy and a bit disappointed in the selection, but I recently stumbled across an amazing documentary called When Pigs Fly, which is about a quadriplegic woman tending a farm of 700 pigs. You can read Film Threat’s review of it or watch the trailer here.
Preview of Daniel Ekeroth’s SWEDISH DEATH METAL book The ultimate blow-by-blow account of Sweden’s legendary death metal underground, based on exclusive interviews with members of Nihilist/ Entombed, In Flames, At the Gates, Dismember, Grave ...
Man Saves Drowning Bear Afraid the bear would drown, Warwick kept one arm underneath the animal, grabbed the scruff of his neck and dragged him to shore, where he was put in the bucket of a tractor and later released in Osceola National Forest.
Mats Gustafsson & Cor Fuhler Split LP While the explorations of these two musicians take them to very different musical and emotional terrain, the unrelenting sense of experiment is what connects them on this LP.
Lexington | The politics of hip-hop Mr McWhorter, a fellow of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank, is a hip-hop fan. He likens the group OutKast to Stravinsky.
