Author: J T. Ramsay

A few pass­ing thoughts while I try to fin­ish up this over­due Andrew Bird review. Things I’ve heard late­ly and liked: Boris with Michio Kuri­hara — Rain­bow Gui Borat­to — Chro­mo­pho­bia Elec­tre­lane — No Shouts, No Calls LCD Soundsys­tem — Sound of Silver A few records I’m on the fence about: Low — Drums and Guns [pret­ty, but…

Apart from the occa­sion­al laugh at cor­po­rate machi­na­tions, straw hench­men and those who pay for their ser­vices, Col­son White­head­’s uni­ver­sal­ly acclaimed book Apex Hides the Hurt comes off as bland as the cul­ture he indicts, and worse, lacks gris­tle to gnaw on. When White­head osten­si­bly takes on the Great Amer­i­can Cer­berus, a three head­ed mon­ster…

I’m a lit­tle late to this, but check your sched­ule and The Agen­da while you’re at it. Com­plete­ly awe­some guy Todd Burns and I had been talk­ing late­ly about how his­to­ry seem­ing­ly left inter­net dailies behind and spawned a mil­lion shit­ty up-to-the-moment after-mar­ket echo cham­bers. It’s fit­ting that Sty­lus could take the best of its deep-seat­ed…

Is it me, or will SXSW birth about zero buzz acts this year? Am I get­ting this sense because I’m read­ing the most bor­ing indus­try blogs around [read: all of them?] Most read as though they’re not only writ­ten in a haze of exhaus­tion [under­stand­able, all things con­sid­ered], but also out of a basic sense…

If you had­n’t checked it recent­ly, Alt-Week­ly Death­watch is pick­ing up steam. They point out David Car­r’s recent arti­cle cel­e­brat­ing a year’s worth of chaos at the Vil­lage Voice and its fam­i­ly of publications. How long before there’s a death­watch on first gen­er­a­tion mp3 blogs? Or all the web­sites that emu­lat­ed Pitch­fork and did­n’t get…