by
Camille Miller on September 1, 2017
Before gaining his cult star status in the West, Omar Souleyman—whose high-speed Arabic dance music is transforming the world music terrain—was a sought-out wedding singer with over 500 live albums to his name. After civil war broke out in his native Syria in 2011, Souleyman fled to Turkey where he wrote songs…
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Brooks Nielsen has always viewed himself as a bit of an outsider. A core member and frontman of SoCal weirdo surf punks The Growlers, Brooks grew up riding waves in the small Orange County town of Dana Point. Even then, Nielsen was resistant to join up with the surfers. “For a long…
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Yousif Kassab on August 30, 2017
Plenty have heard the trippy, left-field production of Nosaj Thing. Yet, as is the case with so many beatmakers, his behind-the-scenes work has often remained in the shadow of the larger stars it has helped propel into the limelight.
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Yousif Kassab on August 9, 2017
Some music is just universal. No matter what kind of day you had, or how subconscious you might feel, once you hear it you have to move. The work of Seattle producer Sango falls in this category. His newest project, De Mim, Pra Você is a combination of baile funk and light…
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Camille Miller on August 2, 2017
A behemoth on New York’s noise-metal scene, Unsane have been producing stark, aggressive music for 20 years. Guitarist-frontman Chris Spencer, whose distorted yelps remain a trademark of Unsane’s sound, moved to the Lower East Side with his bandmates in the late ’80s. The group’s self-titled debut album shocked fans and critics alike…
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Payje Redmond on July 28, 2017
In 2010, the classically trained pianist Olya Fomina left Russia to fulfill her rock & roll dreams in New York. Her career kickstarted as a hired keyboard player for D Generation on their 2014 tour. Later she met Brian Viglione, former drummer for Dresden Dolls. The two, fell in love, married and…
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Yousif Kassab on July 21, 2017
Corey O’Brien, owner of The Ritz, was a pro skater back in the day—his single-tail Santa Cruz board is displayed at Cinebar. So it makes sense that he would host this super-gnar screening party. The Ritz will show the latest episode of the Viceland show a week before its premiere. The Thrasher-sponsored…
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Andy Liszt takes a winding, loopy path to answering an admittedly abstruse inquiry into the philosophical intent of his music. That’s fine. His rambling approach fits neatly within confines of the not-so-neat piles of feedback and swirls of delay he and his bandmates conjure up as LSD and the Search for God.
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Yousif Kassab on July 12, 2017
Los Angeles surf rockers La Luz bring their reverb-drenched sound to San Jose for a night of California worship, as they show off what goes into their self-proclaimed surf noir sound. Their mix of plucky guitarwork, sweeping vocal harmonies and overall fuzziness has been known to inspire both crowd surfing and soul-train…
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Not long after Chris Manak moved to Los Angeles to live with underground hip-hop producer Madlib, Metro reached out to the founder of Stones Throw Records and asked him to share highlights from his youth growing up on San Jose’s East Side.
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