avant-garde Archive
11 Mar 2016
Album Review: Jaimeo Brown Transcendence — Work Songs
As a music reviewer, I get a lot of albums for potential coverage. A lot. And to manage the flow, I keep a spreadsheet, cataloging those slated for eventual review […]
10 Feb 2016
Album Mini-review: Homme — Homme
File Next to: KT Tunstall, The Roches, Radiohead With electric guitars (run through a Leslie speaker cabinet and other assorted effects) and close yet vocal-acrobatic harmonies, the experimental yet inviting […]
11 Jan 2016
Album Mini-review: Sunn O))) – Kannon
File next to: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Earth, Glenn Branca It’s easy to dismiss the pummeling, sludgy, drone-rock of Sunn O))) as noise; even fans of the group might happily […]
03 Dec 2015
Ahleuchatistas’ Arrebato: Wordless Tributes to the DIY Aesthetic
Even in the fertile musical ground of WNC, Asheville isn’t really known as a hotbed of avant-garde musical adventures. But the two-man group Ahleuchatistas are nothing if not sonic explorers. […]
24 Aug 2015
Concert Review: Jaga Jazzist — Asheville NC, 23 June 2015
Demonstrating yet again that – more than sixty-odd years after the dawn of rock’n’roll – popular music idioms remain fertile ground for experimentation and cross-fertilization, Jaga Jazzist combines rock, jazz, […]
08 Jul 2015
Album Mini-review: Tyondai Braxton — HIVE1
File Next to: David Byrne and Brian Eno, TR-i Son of legendary jazz improv master Anthony Braxton, Tyondai Braxton (formerly of Battles) has set out to make a name of […]
22 Jun 2015
Album Reviews: Four from The Residents
Though they initially submitted demo recordings to major record labels (the bootleg The Warner Brothers Tapes documents the most notorious of these), the inscrutable collective that once jokingly billed themselves […]
06 May 2015
Hundred Word Reviews for May 2015, Part 3
I’m not complaining; it’s a good problem to have. But even after culling the ones I don’t like (and skipping the ones that impress me only mildly), I still end […]
07 Apr 2015
Festival Review: Big Ears Festival 2015, Part 2
Continued from Part One… Next, it was drone time. The minimalist work of the duo A Winged Victory for the Sullen (joined by three additional musicians) was delivered in the […]
06 Apr 2015
Festival Review: Big Ears Festival 2015, Part 1
Typically, I don’t make a point of attending “kickoff events” at the start of music festivals. My thinking is that they’re generally an opportunity to spotlight the event sponsors and […]