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METHOD MAN, GOSTFACE KILLAH, RAEKWON’S WU-MASSACRE
Def Jam Records
By Anthony Benigno
As hip-hop gets more and more ornery, there’s something refreshingly old-school about three of the greats working their magic over bare-bones beats. “Wu-Massacre” isn’t a proper Wu-Tang record, but it’s almost better that way; the Clan’s troubled ’07 album “8 Diagrams” faltered amongst reports of clashing egos, so having just Method [...]
NJ PUNK ROCK COMES TO NYU FOR STRAWBERRY FESTIVAL
By Chris Ramirez
At this years’ NYU Strawberry Festival you may be getting a little more than your fill of strawberry short cake, sweets, fun games and prizes. Come Friday April 30, you may find yourself getting a little jolt from the screams, convulsing-upbeat guitar work and hard drumming of New Brunswick, NJ band Screaming Females.
The [...]
NEU! NEU! NEU! NEU! NEU! …
NEU! Vinyl Box Set
Groenland Records
By Eugene Reznik
Road tripping, sitting at the wheel, hypnotized by a big wide-open road, listening to the beat beat beat beat and the buzz of the engine and road humming and the wind howling and anything that comes across your path over and over again.
This is Krautrock. Or, it’s [...]
SHE & HIM’S VOLUME TWO
Merge Records
By Sedera Ranaivoarinosy
When actresses suddenly decide they want to sing, there are legitimate reasons to worry. It’s easy to try to make profit off a prominent personality, even by having them do something they might not be great at.
Zooey Deschanel has always sang; her goal when studying drama in college was to do musical [...]
INDIE MUSICIANS AND MUSIC VIDEOS: A LOVE STORY
By Sedera Ranaivoarinosy
The release of Lady Gaga’s video for Telephone, her second collaboration with R&B golden girl Beyoncé, was an event like we rarely see anymore: the video is more than 9 minutes long, and the next day, everyone seemed to be talking about how cool it was that she used Coke cans as rollers [...]
LOUIS ANDRIESSEN’S LA COMMEDIA
By Helen Cronin
Apparently the balalaika can only be found in hell, and the viola just doesn’t exist in the afterlife. Or at least that’s what Louis Andriessen seems to think. Thursday April 15th was the New York premiere at Carnegie Hall of the concert version of his opera La Commedia, which was based on portions [...]
NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC’S CONTACT! SERIES
By Helen Cronin
For the neophyte, trying to figure out the new music scene can be both confusing and overwhelming. The many splintered traditions as well as the huge variety of music out there can make it quite intimidating to get an idea of the bigger picture. That’s why the new Contact! Series organized by Alan [...]
DROPKICK MURPHYS’ LIVE ON LANSDOWNE, BOSTON, MA
Born & Bred Records
By Anthony Benigno
Like any punk band worth their salt, the Dropkick Murphys live are loud, rude, and crude, which makes for great mosh pit antics but has the unfortunate effect of drowning out their (well-constructed) music in sound and fury. So the most remarkable thing about their live record, “Live on Lansdowne, [...]
THE PROBLEM WITH POST-MODERN CRITICS
By Cody Thomas
In our last issue, my close friend and fellow Troubadour founder Dominic Marcella wrote a stimulating piece on contemporary composition. This is a response to his argument regarding the decline of contemporary music in the academic world.
I’d like to preface my response by noting one thing that my partner and I agree [...]
HOW WE PERCEIVE MUSIC
By Dominic Marcella
Much of the musical dialectic that I have recently encountered emphasizes the notion of expressivity in music. I have often heard it argued that a particular piece of music is either expressive or not expressive (and is consequently either good or not good), but to focus on such a notion of expressivity [...]
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