avant-garde Archive
03 Apr 2015
Rick Wakeman, Cannonball Adderley, and Me
Today I’m going to indulge in a brief change of pace. I’d like to tell you about a pair of reissues with which I am involved. I won’t be reviewing […]
27 Mar 2015
On the Fringe of Consonance: Double Naught Spy Car + Stew (Part 3)
Continued from Part Two… Bill Kopp: So the actual sessions for Panorama City took place ten years ago? Paul Lacques: Actually thirteen; we did these sessions in 2002. Y’know, we […]
26 Mar 2015
On the Fringe of Consonance: Double Naught Spy Car + Stew (Part 2)
Continued from Part One… Bill Kopp: The press release that accompanies my copy of Panorama City also uses the phrase “group ESP” when describing the interaction among you and your […]
25 Mar 2015
On the Fringe of Consonance: Double Naught Spy Car + Stew (Part 1)
The members of Double Naught Spy Car don’t seem put off by the genre labels that (cough, cough) certain rock writers tend to apply to musical artists. In fact they’ve […]
13 Feb 2015
Album Review: The Residents’ Commercial Album
Ex-Turtles and Mothers vocalists Flo and Eddie (Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan) used to have a nationally-syndicated radio show. One recurring component of the merry duo’s program involved spinning records […]
24 Dec 2014
Best of 2014: Concerts
One of the many pleasures associated with living in the small mountain city of Asheville NC is access to great live music. I grew up in the 70s and 80s […]
01 Oct 2014
Honeymoon Hundred-word Reviews, Part 3
I’m on my honeymoon this week, so I thought it would be a good time to offer up some backlog-clearing entries in my occasional series of Hundred Word Reviews. And […]
04 Aug 2014
Album Review: Magma — Zühn Wöhl Ünsaï / Live 1974
To some – okay, to most – the idea of a progressive jazz-rock group performing music in an obscure language of their own making might seem, laughable, pretentious, or…laughably pretentious. […]
22 May 2014
Album Review: Sun Ra — A Space Odyssey
As Kris Needs notes in his excellent and detailed liner notes for A Space Odyssey: From Birmingham to the Big Apple – The Quest Begins, Sun Ra was a practitioner […]
04 Apr 2014
Festival Review: Big Ears 2014, Day 3 (Part Two)
The final set of performances we took in at Big Ears 2014 were all centered around the work of minimalist composer Steve Reich. It was all deeply thrilling, visceral, emotional […]