Foxy Digitalis
When Mark Trecka’s piano spreads its wings, magic happens. On his thoughtful new album, Acknowledgment, Trecka uses only piano, voice, and handmade cassette loops to craft an emotionally rich sound world. Acknowledgment is a record that takes multiple listens to fully absorb, and even then the deep undercurrents resonate in an almost ephemeral way. It’s music that becomes […]
New episode with some great music from the last few months, some of which I've written about here and others that I haven't had the time or mental space to cover in depth. Also a couple special snippets here - the premiere of Tikkun Olam, a new project from Ilyse Krivel and Colin Fisher coming next month on The Jewel Garden. Plus, a song from the unreleased duo of James Blackshaw and myself, Sea Turtle Legions. It's all worth checking out, though, and hopefully something will appeal to your ears. Thanks for listening.
There are moments on Sarah Louise’s spellbinding new album, Earth Bow, where she is more of a conjurer than a musician. Laraaji describes it as “pulling music from the air,” but Louise’s source is more organic than ethereal. Her work, especially on this new offering, lives and breathes. Wherever it comes from, the result is […]
When I learned MJ Guider was starting a new imprint, modemain, to serve as a central axis for her to grow ideas, experiment, and collaborate while creating editions that move beyond just physical music releases, I was excited. Guider’s 2020 album, Sour Cherry Ball, was a favorite of mine so something that offers deeper insights […]
Matthew Sage is a patient force, always moving in new and surprising directions, always with an ear listening for the heartbeat inside it all. His work is intimate and vulnerable, though not obviously so. When you listen through the stratigraphy of it all, there’s an order and a foundation, but the piece you remember, the […]
Iu Takahashi creates worlds out of everyday sounds that feel otherworldly. Her music is delicate, almost fragile in a way that leaves me breathless. Timeless motifs weave their way through increate sound design and expertly captured field recordings. On her latest album, Late in Life, on Regional Attraction, she rides under a shroud of mystery […]
I did not expect to be posting a second episode of The Electric Rubicon so quickly, but sometimes serendipitous things happen. On Saturday I was doing some research/digging for another future episode and remembered the three Elephant Micah CDRs that Time-Lag released back the mid-2000s. That, in turn, reminded me of the song he gave me for Gold Leaf Branches, a massive 3CD compilation I released on Digitalis in 2005.
As I sit listening to the winding journey of Daniel Bachman’s magnum opus, Axacan, I keep thinking about this passage from Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights: “Standing there on the embankment, staring into the current, I realized that – in spite of all the risks involved – a thing in motion will always be better than a […]
The Electric Rubicon is a project I've been thinking about for a while now, but it was only in the last few months that I got a clearer picture of how I wanted to pull it together. Basically this is going to be a regular (my goal is once-per-month!) show where each episode is focused on a single band, artist, or label and I spend some time digging into their history and importance and, more generally, what it is that makes them special. The main thing, though, is an excuse to pull out some killer tunes that most people have never heard, or at least haven't heard in a while.