May 24, 2012
Cornershop is a British indie rock band formed in 1991 by Tjinder Singh, his brother Avtar, David Chambers, and Ben Ayres. The band name originated from a stereotype referring to British Asians often owning street corner stores. Their music is a fusion of Indian music, Britpop, and electronic dance music.
Their debut release, the ‘In The Days of Ford Cortina’ EP, pressed on ‘curry-colored vinyl,’ contained a blend of Indian-tinged noise pop. The sound mellowed somewhat with the release of debut album ‘Hold On It Hurts’ in 1994. The album impressed David Byrne sufficiently for him to sign the band to his Luaka Bop label. Although David Chambers left, replaced by Nick Simms, the band re-emerged in 1995.
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May 24, 2012
CFCF is the stage name of Canadian electronic musician Michael Silver. Based in Montreal, Silver took the name CFCF from the call sign of the city’s CFCF-TV.
Silver has released an album and several EPs, independently and on Paper Bag Records, and Rvng Intl.
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May 11, 2012
Himanshu Kumar Suri aka Heems is an American rapper from Queens best known for being part of the alternative hip hop group Das Racist. Suri is also the founder of Greedhead Entertainment, an independent record label. In 2012, he released his first solo mixtape, ‘Nehru Jackets’ on his Greedhead imprint and in conjunction with SEVA NY, a community-based organization from Queens of which Suri is a board member. Suri has also written about music and all things South Asian for the ‘Village Voice,’ ‘Death and Taxes’ magazine, ‘Fuse,’ ‘Stereogum,’ and ‘Alternet.’ Suri graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 2003, where he was vice president when the September 11 attacks happened two blocks away. Suri then attended Wesleyan University where he studied economics.
In 2008, Suri formed Das Racist with his college friend Victor Vazquez. Shortly thereafter, Suri’s high school friend Ashok Kondabolu joined as their hype man. Das Racist first found success on the internet with their 2008 song ‘Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell,’ and then quickly established themselves within the underground rap scene with their 2010 mixtapes ‘Shut Up, Dude’ and ‘Sit Down, Man,’ both of which earned them critical acclaim.
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May 11, 2012
Donald Glover (b. 1983) is an American actor, writer, comedian, and musician. Glover first came to attention for his work in the sketch group Derrick Comedy. He is best known for being a writer for ’30 Rock,’ and for his role the NBC comedy series ‘Community.’ In 2011, Glover signed to Glassnote Records under the stage name Childish Gambino; his first studio album, ‘Camp,’ was released in 2011. Glover DJs and produces his own music under the moniker ‘mcDJ.’
His music is of the electronic/remix variety and is often made available for free download via his official site. Glover raps as Childish Gambino, a name he found from a Wu-Tang Clan name generator. His work touches on family issues, schoolyard bullying, troubled romantic relationships, suicidal thoughts, and alcoholism. He has disowned his 2005 album, ‘The Younger I Get,’ as the too-raw ramblings of what he calls a ‘decrepit Drake.’
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May 8, 2012
Passion Pit is an American electropop band from Cambridge, Massachusetts, formed in 2007. The band consists of Michael Angelakos (lead vocals, keyboards), Ian Hultquist (keyboards, guitar), Ayad Al Adhamy (synthesizer, samples), Jeff Apruzzese (bass, synth bass), and Nate Donmoyer (drums).
All of the band members, with the exception of Angelakos, attended Berklee College of Music in Boston. The band culled their name from the ‘Slanguage Dictionary,’ a glossary of ‘Variety’ magazine’s frequently-used slang, which was provided by the Hollywood-insider publication to help not-so-savvy readers decipher its content. The magazine used the term to refer to drive-in theaters, because of their privacy and romantic allure for teenagers.
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April 30, 2012
Belbury Poly is an alias of electronic musician Jim Jupp (along with Eric Zann). Jupp’s releases are on the Ghost Box Music label (which he co-founded). Belbury Poly’s sound is a blend of influences: old library music, sixties-inspired psychedelic rock, soundtracks, folk, and public information films.
Jupp has spoken at length about trying to incorporate the mundanity of life in the seventies and eldritch (foreign) elements simultaneously in his music, as well as acknowledging a debt to Welsh author and mystic Arthur Machen. The name references a fictional institution, created by the author C.S. Lewis.
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April 26, 2012
Ken Nordine (b. 1920) is an American voiceover and recording artist best known for his series of ‘Word Jazz’ albums. His deep, resonant voice has also been featured in many commercial advertisements and movie trailers. One critic wrote that ‘you may not know Ken Nordine by name or face, but you’ll almost certainly recognize his voice.’ During the 1940s, he was heard on ‘The World’s Great Novels’ and other radio programs broadcast from Chicago. He attracted wider attention when he recorded the aural vignettes on ‘Word Jazz’ (1957), which features Nordine’s narration over cool jazz by the Chico Hamilton jazz group, recording under the alias of Fred Katz, who was then the cellist with Hamilton’s quintet.
Nordine began performing and recording such albums at the peak of the beat era and was associated with the poetry-and-jazz movement. However, some of Nordine’s ‘writings are more akin to Franz Kafka or Edgar Allan Poe’ than to the beats. Many of his word jazz tracks feature critiques of societal norms. Some are lightweight and humorous, while others reveal dark, paranoid undercurrents and bizarre, dream-like scenarios. Nordine was Linda Blair’s vocal coach for her role in ‘The Exorcist.’
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April 26, 2012
Orbital are a British electronic dance music duo from England consisting of brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll. Their career initially ran from 1989 until 2004, but in 2009 they announced that they would be reforming and headlining The Big Chill, (an annual festival of alternative, dance, and chill-out music, and comedy, held in the grounds of Eastnor Castle during early August) in addition to a number of other live shows in 2009.
The band’s name was taken from Greater London’s orbital motorway, the M25, which was central to the early rave scene and party network in the South East during the early days of acid house. One of the biggest names in British electronica during the 1990s, Orbital were both critically and commercially successful, and known particularly for their element of live improvisation during shows, a rarity among techno acts. They were initially influenced by early electro and punk rock.
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April 26, 2012
Suzanne Ciani [cha-nee] (b. 1946) is an Italian American pianist and music composer who found early success with innovative electronic music. She received classical music training at Wellesley College and obtained her M.A. in music composition in 1970 at University of California, Berkeley where she met and was influenced by the synthesizer designer, Don Buchla. She studied computer generated music with John Chowning and Max Mathews at Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Labs in the early 1970s.
In 1974 she formed her own company, Ciani/Musica, and, using a Buchla Analog Modular Synthesizer, composed scores for television commercials for corporations such as Coca-Cola, Merrill Lynch, AT&T, and General Electric. Besides music, her specialty was reproducing sound effects on the synthesizer that recording engineers had found difficult to record properly; the sound of a bottle of Coca-Cola being opened and poured was one of Ciani’s most widely recognized works, and was used in a series of radio and television commercials in the late 1970s.
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April 21, 2012
Noisia, stylized as NOISIΛ (‘VISION’ rotated 180°), is a Dutch electronic music trio consisting of Nik Roos, Martijn van Sonderen, and Thijs de Vlieger from The Netherlands. They produce drum and bass, dubstep, breakbeat, and house music.
For a time between 2005 and 2009, NOISIΛ also released tracks under the name ‘Drifter,’ encompassing the lighter side of Drum and Bass known as ‘Liquid Funk,’ as well as releasing a EP under the name ‘Hustle Athletics.’ They later decided to go back to releasing all their music under the name ‘NOISIΛ’ so as to not confuse the audience and to avoid being pigeonholed into different genres with different names.
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April 17, 2012
Lorin Ashton, better known by the stage name Bassnectar, is a freeform electronic music and dubstep artist, DJ, and producer based in San Francisco. He is best known for his live performances, light shows, and community engagement. Bassnectar was originally influenced by heavy metal and grunge groups such as Metallica, Megadeth, and Nirvana, bringing these influences with him into his own musical career. He’s also mentioned that early IDM and Ambient artists like Orbital also played a major influence.
He has been creating genre-bending music since the 1990s, using a variety of programs such as Vision/OpCode, Reason, and Ableton Live. Bassnectar describes his music as amorphous and ever-changing, which is reflected in the distinct sounds and personalities of his numerous albums, EPs, and podcasts. He has collaborated with and remixed a host of artists and producers, including Lupe Fiasco, Ellie Goulding, Gogol Bordello, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Datsik, ill.Gates, and Jantsen, among others.
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April 16, 2012
The Residents are an American art collective best known for avant-garde music and multimedia works. The first official release under the name of The Residents was in 1972, and the group has since released over sixty albums, numerous music videos and short films, three CD-ROM projects and ten DVDs. They have undertaken seven major world tours and scored multiple films. Throughout the group’s existence, the individual members have ostensibly attempted to operate under anonymity, preferring instead to have attention focused on their art output.
Much outside speculation and rumor has focused on this aspect of the group. In public, the group appears silent and costumed, often wearing eyeball helmets, top hats and tuxedos – a long-lasting costume now recognized as their signature iconography. Their albums generally fall into two categories: deconstructions of Western popular music, or complex conceptual pieces, composed around a theme, theory or plot. They are noted for surrealistic lyrics and sound, disregard for conventional music composition, and the over the top, theatrical spectacle of their live performances.
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