Jensen Thjung keeps busy. I first heard his work via the band Lower Plenty, who make haunting, low-key music that treads the line between unsettling bliss and disquieting obsession. Thjung is also one-quarter of the Melbourne-based rock band Deaf Wish, who released their latest album, Wish, on Sub Pop in the second half of last year. (Also in the group: bassist Nick Pratt, drummer Daniel Twomey and guitarist Sarah Hardiman.) Deaf Wish’s show at Alphaville was, flat-out, one of the […]
“I Look For Music That’s Very Honest”: An Interview With White Magic’s Mira Billotte
The first time I heard Mira Billotte’s music was at a White Magic show in New York City. For a while, the group were regulars on the city’s music scene. Their 2006 album Dat Rosa Mel Apibus captures the blend of styles that made the band’s music so powerful and so difficult to pigeonhole. There are aspects of traditional music in here; there are Billotte’s haunted vocals, and a penchant for mystical imagery. Billotte’s musical background is varied indeed–prior to […]
Michelle Cruz Gonzales’s Memoir “The Spitboy Rule” Has a Trailer
Things we like: punk memoirs, the fantastic 90s hardcore band Spitboy, and book trailers. We were happy to hear that Michelle Cruz Gonzales of Spitboy was working on a memoir when we read Jes Skolnik’s interview with her last year. That memoir, The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band, is due out later this year, and a trailer for it has just been published.
2015: The Year Music Made Me Feel OK
I listened to a lot of music, at least according to Spotify. That doesn’t count all the records I bought and played, the shows I saw, and everything I listened to that wasn’t on my streaming service of choice. Of course, I didn’t need some report to tell me that, I always listen to a ton of music, almost most of my day is spent with headphones on and I’m fine with that. I listened to a lot of old […]
“I Want Friction High Up in the Mix”: An Interview With Sara Jaffe
There’s a lot happening in Dryland, Sara Jaffe’s debut novel. It follows several months in the life of Julie, a high school student in the early 1990s, as she struggles with the legacy of her absent brother, an acclaimed competitive swimmer; becomes increasingly aware of her own sexuality; and takes up swimming herself. It’s an impressive work, and one that moves well from the naturalistic to the dreamlike and back again. I spoke with Jaffe about the novel, her writing […]
Talking Publicist UK With Zachary Lipez
Writer, musician, and occasional Vol.1 Brooklyn contributor Zachary Lipez is a busy guy. He writes regularly for the likes of Noisey, Hazlitt, and Pitchfork, and his new band Publicist UK recently concluded a short tour behind their debut album, Forgive Yourself. Said record is terrific, a compelling selection of brooding postpunk songs that hit the right marks both for heaviness and for musical and lyrical smarts. And thus, he and I talked about the making of the album, the way […]
“I Became Accustomed to Absurdity in Early Childhood”: An Interview With Eric Paul
Eric Paul has been writing since his days as singer for the celebrated noise-rock band Arab on Radar. The Providence-based poet recently released his latest book A Popular Place to Explode to critical acclaim on Heartworm Press, run by Wesley Eisold of Cold Cave and the hardcore band American Nightmare. The New York release party for this is on Saturday at Over the Eight in Brooklyn. I asked Paul questions over email about absurdity and being mentored by writers you […]
Where Chamber Music Meets Miéville
Qasim Naqvi is one-third of the compelling, often experimental Brooklyn trio Dawn of Midi. He’s also a composer in his own right. Next month, NNA Tapes will release “Preamble”, a collection of new compositions written by Naqvi and performed by The Contemporary Music Ensemble of NYU. There’s also a literary connection, which may well interest those who like their music and their fiction unpredictable and unconventional.