I’ve always gravitated towards multi-instrumentalists with an array of sonic interests. Artists who extract unique ideas from a kernel of creativity always tend to mix flavors with each side project. A great example is the collective work of Kevin Hufnagel and Colin Marston (who just released another excellent Dysrhythmia album),…
Short bursts of off-kilter aggression have yet to go out of style for me. As much as I’ve gravitated toward longer and more complex music, I still periodically revisit my high school affinity for the ’00s mathgrind and noisecore scene. I was addicted to bands like An Albatross, iwrestledabearonce, and…
There’s been much written about both the quality of vinyl and the lack thereof. I’m not interested in wading into the fidelity wars, but I do want to cite a recent “
Sometimes, it’s perfectly clear that an album was produced by a group of seasoned genre veterans. Once you’ve spent enough time with a certain style of music, you can pick out exactly what defines a refined approach; namely, a heightened focus on composition over instrumental flash. In my experience, this…
We’ve covered a fair bit of ground with our Starter Kit series, where we select a handful of key records that highlight a niche musical style or penetrate the prolific status of a staple genre. Unfortunately, this format doesn’t lend itself to covering proto-genres—microcosms of musical history comprised of a specific set of albums released in a fixed period of time. But these movements are crucial to the evolution of our favorite genres, particularly when it comes to the trajectory of sludge metal. What’s become a multifaceted and often refined style was once a disparate lineage of bands from different genres who all applied the “sludge factor” in different measures. While you won’t find a dedicated section for proto-sludge at your preferred music store, the following albums an artists laid the framework for the modern sludge landscape. So whether your sludge purveyors of choice come from the atmospheric, blackened or progressive sects of he genre, they’re all indebted to the groundbreaking statements these albums made.
The seemingly immortal Michael Gira and his post-punk experimentalist world-destroyers Swans have already done the seemingly impossible in releasing their second post-reunion 2 hour-long opus in the phenomenal To Be Kind (listen to single ‘Oxygen’ if you have no idea what we’re talking about). But lest you forget for one second just…
