Christine Owman: Now Hear This
The term “multi-instrumentalist” doesn’t really begin to describe the unconventional, über-talented Swedish singer/songwriter Christine Owman accurately. Owman is a one-woman show-stopper who takes on not merely a few, but almost twelve, instruments on her most recent album, Throwing Knives.
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Sentimentalist Magazine Calls Out Top Twelve Releases of 2011
Why do the year-end lists always seem to come in tidy sums of ten, twenty-five, fifty, or a hundred? I would have gone and given you a baker’s dozen but I stopped myself at twelve, for fear of being overbearing. You know how overarching these lists can be.
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Battle to the Top 5 Albums of 2011, Sentimentalist Mag Style
2010 was so much better,” I said throughout 2011, despite posting Salem’s “King Night” on New Years Eve to slam the door on that horrible chapter. I started dead-set on only doing a top five for a year where I barely spun anything released more than twice, but then I looked through my downloads and saw a lot of heavy-hitters…
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Monogold: Now Hear This
Brooklyn’s Monogold brought their lush, ambient sound onto the scene in 2008 with their debut EP, We Animals, followed by a CMJ showcase, heralded as “one to see” by many. This led to immediate attention from the likes of Spin, who included their song “Feel Animal” among their year’s top ten. Not too shabby for a band just starting out.
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What Would WIM Do? Aussie Rockers Dare to Dream
WIM took New York City by storm at CMJ 2011, tearing into local venues like a blizzard of glam-folk glitter and virtuoso pop force and defying any notion of simple genre categorization. The Sydney-based band, whose debut release is out on esteemed Aussie label Modular Recordings just this week…
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Mandy Coon, Billy Reid, Antonio Azzuolo, Daryl K and Preen at NY Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2012
James Murphy was one of the first working Mandy Coon’s crowd as they were seated, appearing as a proud, nervous dad-to-be while the rest of us were zenning out to his intro music, which sounded like an undulating, futuristic heartbeat, building to its apex just as the show started.
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The Kooks: The Future Sounds Like Sunshine
It’s been a few years since Luke Pritchard had taken up temporary residence in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for a break after the Kooks’ heavy touring in support of their debut album Inside In/Inside Out and I’d bump into him at local spots like Trash Bar. He’s now settled back in the UK, but earlier this summer, the Kooks returned to the States to play a few club venue shows and to shoot a new video in Los Angeles. I meet up with Luke in a penthouse at NYC’s Chelsea Hotel…
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The Kills, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, A Place to Bury Strangers, Terminal 5, NYC. 8.9.11
A Place to Bury Strangers and The Kills were the integral raw bookends of tonight’s show, bringing rock back to its primal essence, each band in their singular, stripped bare way.
MoreDeath Grips in New York: the Secret Market Hotel Show. 7.22.11
As the guillotine slams down in three successions, Death Grips starts off ‘Guillotine’ (Yeah) and it feels like the M train had derailed and landed right into our bodies at Market Hotel, the first movie theater in Brooklyn. After that it goes, it goes, it goes; it’s unstoppable. The three men on stage are as driven as if performing is their only chance of survival, with no safety net underneath… Read More
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Austra’s Euphoric Precision: A Chat with Katie Stelmanis
Toronto-based Katie Stelmanis of Austra was one of those precocious kids whose obsession with perfecting any musical instrument she picked up and whose love of singing led to her performing with the children’s choir on vast stages with the Canadian Opera Company.
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