Still recovering from last night’s dream-of-a-show with Come & Silkworm in Somerville, and also neck-deep in the day job, so this “Weekly Boston-area shows” post of imminent & recently-announced events has to be a quick one. There are two lists below: First, shows of note (to me, at least) happening around here within the next […]

Jump to 18.55 for the amazing "Farewell to A Hill" by Alice Shields - "a piece made in mourning for the death of a loved one", whose components include "electronically manipulated harpsichords, the sounds of small bells, and the cries of mallards."This YouTube upload above is the quadraphonic version of the album (in fact this may be the only version of the album as originally on vinyl). Which obviously is not going to come through on your or my computer / phone / tablet / whatever, but…

gonna rank from worst to best song ranking system 😇- need to have a looong conversation with whoever made this song 🥹- teared up a little 🥰- i love love love 😊- very good 🙂- good with some issues 🤔- i would let it play in the background ig.. 😪- not feeling it 😠- no this is bad. 😡- this is really bad. 🤬- play this around me and im taking a gun out. for both of us. my my 🤬 they really played in my face i cant even listen up to the chorus. fearless 😡 was trying to give fear's sister but…

I had never heard of Fred again.., but I do know Thomas Bangalter as half of Daft Punk. Jason Kottke shared this performance back when it was uploaded almost two months ago and it has sat in a tab on my laptop since then. I finally dove in this morning and have been loving it. I may not necessarily advise watching the show—there are waaaaaay too many flashing lights. The music is straight fire though. It's a rare treat in many ways. First and foremost, seeing Bangalter live in any way shape or…

In honour of Swervedriver announcing the North American leg of their Raise 35th anniversary tour – in which they will play the entirety of their 1991 debut album Raise alongside another set of favourites – here’s the promo clip for the first single from the album, “Son Of Mustang Ford”, aka the song which forever […] The post Swervedriver – “Son Of Mustang Ford” appeared first on Space Echo.

A minor entry in the Nicolas Roeg filmography that few people will have seen. In March 2001 the BBC broadcast four 15-minute films that the corporation had commissioned for an occasional arts strand, Sound on Film. Each episode featured a new piece of music by a living composer, with visual accompaniment by four very different directors. Pilgrimage was directed by Werner Herzog with music by John Taverner; The New Math was directed by Hal Hartley with music by Louis Andriessen; In Absentia was…

All One Song - “T-Bone” with Matthew SpecktorHello out there — it’s another week, and that means another episode of All One Song. I’ve been spending some time this spring talking with some of our favorite artists, writers and musicians about their favorite Neil Young songs. And I’ve been having a blast doing it. I hope you’ve been having a blast listening.Before we get to this week’s song, I want to give a little bit of time to something very important … a website! AquariumDrunkard.com!…

By now most people who read Heathen are, I’m sure, aware of the SNL trio Please Don’t Destroy, which is comprised of Ben Marshall, John Higgins, and Martin Herlihy. They make jokes about the fact that Higgins and Herlihy are SNL legacies. Higgins’ father is Steve Higgins, now the longtime announcer on Fallon’s Tonight Show, but previously a writer on SNL. Higgins also cameoed in a Timberlake monologue years ago as an obsessed fan there at the expense of his daughter, which was super funny.…

Best Record of 2001: Day 38 | Fennesz ‘Endless Summer’ Good morning! Today we’re taking a look at ‘Endless Summer’ by Fennesz. Note: As many of you saw, I recently wrote about a Best Record of 2001 challenge and noted that I’d be writing some of these up. The plan is to do quick hits on each first-round matchup and post them directly to the page. Some will be longer, some won’t, and some might just be a handful of sentences. There’ll probably be a few typos. We’ll also have a few guest posts…

"Play a Train Song" by Robert Earl Keen Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Share a song you discovered via another artist's song (cover, sample, featured artist, etc) - Pay a Train Song by Robert Earl Keen I love Robert Earl Keen and the late Todd Snider equally. I don't know whose version of this sing-along classic I like the best. View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile

gonna rank from worst to best song ranking system 😇- need to have a looong conversation with whoever made this song 🥹- teared up a little 🥰- i love love love 😊- very good 🙂- good with some issues 🤔- i would let it play in the background ig.. 😪- not feeling it 😠- no this is bad. 😡- this is really bad. 🤬- play this around me and im taking a gun out. for both of us. lie again 😡 boring. sloppy. lazy. NEXT. 247 🤔 it's alright. they know they have better let me hear you say 😊 this song actually used…

Werwolf: Satanic TerrorOut 24th April on Dominance of Darkness As a bare bones mixture of early Graveland and Celtic Frost via ‘Under a Funeral Moon’ offcuts one could do worse than inspecting this debut from Germany’s Werwolf. Through its very primitivism it projects strength and confidence, and from there a captivating spirit that almost compensates for the lack of originality and vigour in the riffcraft itself. Such austerity feels like a provocation in the current climate. Even artists…

The angle and sun damage did not inspire confidence

Anamchara collects 9 cuts from Woodleigh Research Facility’s vast archive and presses them across 4 sides of vinyl.* These treasures have been selected from tracks recorded between 2016 and 2019, and previously released digitally in 2023, under the banner Apparently Solo. Several of the tunes are dance floor directed numbers, with dynamic drum programming that blurs the boundaries between motorik, house and electro. Crack-Ed and SHLAP, for example, boast bass-lines and TB-303 touches that pay…

I’m still not ok with this.

Goodness, but it's been glorious out there in the parish lately.The combination of all that heavy rain earlier in the year - and the spell of cloudless skies and midsummer heat in late April - resulted in a virulent verdancy I've never seen before.What did the poet say? The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foilDancersend was incandescent last week.And then, the other day, driving past the station and through those four or five fields of rape…

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others. Dimitry Elias Léger’s Death of the Soccer God is an atmospheric, moving, and hilarious novel with soccer at its heart. Kirkus wrote of the book: “Like its predecessor [God Loves Haiti], the novel moves…

To be clear, I wanted to see Piranha 3D. I rented it from Apple to watch on their overpriced headset, specifically hoping that I’d get the full 3D version. But for whatever reason, they only have the HD version, and I just had to imagine that all the fish and oars and motorboat props and breasts were comin’ right at me. I might very well have seen this movie before. It all seemed extremely familiar, but I still can’t tell if that’s because I saw it and completely forgot about it (entirely…

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others. Sam Beckbessinger’s debut novel Femme Feral is a striking feminist satire. Publishers Weekly wrote of the book: “A darkly entertaining feminist satire…This tale of women’s rage against societal…

hey! this is the first microblog and/or tumblr i have celebrated here, weird!? not only do i love their tumblry/microblog, but i love love love their podcast starring weekly, none other than a frog. hop on in and scroll on through this fascinating frog blog (take a listen to the podcast too 🎧): https://weeklyfrogpod.tumblr.com/ ↗ cozy times on the lily pad.

Seeing another LA landmark last week had me thinking about the years I’ve spent settling in, gradually transitioning from “newcomer” to “resident.” I thought I’d choose a couple of songs about Los Angeles as a tribute. There’s definitely no shortage of them! Frank Black’s, Randy Newman’s, or anything from the La La Land soundtrack comes immediately to mind. But soon after we moved, I started noticing that people almost never write earnestly about the city. At best, there’s a begrudging…

[1960]To get to Telstar you had to have this first. Still sounds sleek and modern, fucking great stuff. I'm wondering if there is a world of Shadows that I've missed out on. I mean my old man had some Shadows records but I never paid them much attention. Was this their one great golden moment or...Apache - Hot Butter [1972]A year before Incredible Bongo Band made it their own Hot Butter did my favourite version of Apache. It's an outrageously futuristic proto-techno space age electro jam. Add N…

Toledo, day 7.

Van Morrison - Armadillo World Headquarters, Austin, Texas, January 12, 1974Get in the Van — we’re headed back in time to Austin, TX, to check out the Caledonia Soul Orchestra at Armadillo World Headquarters! This previously uncirculated soundboard of Van Morrison and his big band at the legendary Lone Star State music hall/beer garden is an hour-and-a-half of pure good times. Van and the Orchestra had spent much of the previous year touring all over, performances that resulted in the classic…

A relatively spontaneous announcement of a relatively spontaneous gig: this for a new quartet combining poetry and music, with myself (poetry), Andrea Burelli (voice, poetry, perhaps violin), Lucio Capece (bass clarinet), and Stellan Veloce (cello). It will happen at the Casino for Social Medicine at Sonnenallee 100, Berlin, on this coming Saturday, 16th May, at 19h.As a trio, Stellan, Lucio and I worked together twice last year, and that was beautiful. (Their duo at a performance a few months…

Best Record of 2001: Day 37 Good morning! Today we’re taking a look at Aaliyah’s self-titled record, aka “The Red Album.” Note: As many of you saw, I recently wrote about a Best Record of 2001 challengeand noted that I’d be writing some of these up. The plan is to do quick hits on each first-round matchup and post them directly to the page. Some will be longer, some won’t, and some might just be a handful of sentences. There’ll probably be a few typos. We’ll also have a few guest posts along…

"A Day In the Life" by The Beatles Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Share a song from an album you think has great cover art. - A Day in the Life by The Beatles View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile

Black Orpheus (1959)

That’s a cello.