Foxy Digitalis
“Blindsided” catches us in its web before we realize we’re trapped. “How to love in the face of this death?,” Sabra serenades in the chorus, spelling out the album’s core theme. The combination of the propulsive, almost buoyant rhythm with Sabra’s lilting vocal melodies and Tabbal’s layered electronics is captivating, both exultant and ethereal. We […]
Dao Strom’s “re-voicing” of David Bowie’s “China Girl” is the most striking moment on Tender Revolutions, where she confronts the song’s troubling legacy head-on by stepping directly into what she calls its “discomfiting silence at its center.” Rather than simply covering or critiquing Bowie’s problematic hit, Strom inhabits the space where an Asian woman’s actual […]
There’s something almost geological about the way trauma settles into memory; layer upon layer accumulating until what was once fluid hardens into something you can build upon, or break against. Ted Laderas understands this kind of sediment intimately. The Portland-based cellist and composer has spent the last several years excavating his own relationship to catastrophe, […]
“Go North” moves like a breath half-remembered. Jesse Perlstein’s voice holds the center in soft focus while Laura Naukkarinen’s drifts just outside it, twisting around each phrase like vapor. Tape murmur, acoustic guitar, distant piano, and soft electronics ripple beneath, creating a surface that seems calm until small glitches begin to press against it. These […]
With Patio User Manual, Alex Cobb continues his decades-long quest to mirror the stillness and richness of the cosmos here on Earth. His delicate, carefully wrought soundscapes – which first arrived under the name Taiga Remains but have since taken on the Etelin moniker – flow with the grace of starlight and the solemnity of […]
Some programming notes to start: Why? The main reason is that I have a solo exhibition called Lost Waters opening in Tulsa on October 11 and will be completely swamped with that to start the month. If you are in town that evening, please come by! If you are going to be passing through Tulsa […]
Ascendant, resonant patterns are an immovable force on Mark Trecka’s The Bloom of Performance. Buoyed by an air of tangible sonic textures, this music feels as though it was unearthed from deep within the Earth. Trecka worked with producer Sam Skarstad (Yellow Eyes) and a host of stellar collaborators to create something as strange and interesting […]
It’s BC Friday, hooray? No, it’s a good thing because it means you can shovel some bucks to artists and labels and entities you’d rather not get some of that cash won’t. So, that’s good! Otherwise, just rolling along and dreaming of going back to the planetarium. Boy am I tired. It’s [redacted] Friday! I […]
It’s Valentine’s Day – woo! If you listened to last week’s Foxy Digitalis Podcast, you know that Nina Dante converted me, so I’m celebrating today in a multitude of ways, most of which don’t apply to anyone reading this. Ha! Let’s start with the thing related to Nina. So, we’ve been working on some music together for the […]