Author: J T. Ramsay

  • We were all queued up for Kill Bill Vol. 4.

    Remem­ber Jan­u­ary? Before 2006 became the year that met­al broke, it seemed like elec­tron­ic music, whether it was tech­no or house, dub­step or grime, ambi­ent or noise, was on its way to a stel­lar year. Maybe it’s a tes­ta­ment to Amer­i­ca’s pop appetites and we’ve learned that we’re just not as omniv­o­rous as crit­ics ini­tial­ly…

  • There’s no one here but crooks and death.

    In case you were won­der­ing where else I might be spend­ing all my time online these days, you can look no fur­ther than Paper Thin Walls. Keep an eye on their Bull­horn sec­tion for my “byline”. I’m new to the snark game so be gentle!

  • So she resorted to more drastic measures and called his bluff.

    Jay‑Z may be get­ting cred­it for the great rock-n-roll swin­dle of 2006, but it’s hard to deny that Bey­once and her boo did­n’t cre­ate a media shit­storm to beat all this year. As Mr. San­neh points out, it may be dif­fi­cult to bal­ance that dra­ma and a career, but Bey­once, stun­ning yet vul­ner­a­ble, gen­er­ates more…

  • You may have already guessed.

    Lis­ten: Moha! — C5 [Rune Gram­mophon, 2006] Unlike oth­er Rune Gram­mophon artists Super­si­lent and Shin­ing, Moha! stayed well under the radar, although they got a pass­ing men­tion in Bran­don Sto­suy’s piece on Øyafes­ti­valen. Their halt­ing, spas­tic impro­vi­sa­tion sounds far denser than two peo­ple might pos­si­bly cre­ate with just per­cus­sion and gui­tar. Yet as “C5” illus­trates,…

  • But everyone still worships at the Church of Springsteen ’75!

    I’m with this guy. I guess com­par­ing the Hold Steady’s Boys and Girls in Amer­i­ca to Count­ing Crows ca. This Desert Life is too embar­rass­ing a propo­si­tion for most crit­ics, since they’d have to admit that they’d heard it in the first place.