I wrote the liner notes for this collection by the Minneapolis electronic/ambient/neoclassical collective Paris 1919, released in 2022. Here’s the first paragraph. You’ll have to buy the album to read the rest, but the music is worth it. Chris Strouth’s roots as a musician and electronic artist go back to the 1980s, when he got …
Music and technology have always gone hand in hand—and the explosive flowering of music as an art form in the last century is also the story of the explosive growth of technology. Indeed, people have recognized the potential of computers to revolutionize music since before there even were computers. In 1842, writing about the theoretical …
If the Twin Cities has an answer to the literate, charmingly tuneful pop songcraft of Belle And Sebastian, or the Kinks songs that populate Wes Anderson movie soundtracks, it’s surely Walker Kong, which enlivened the Minnesota music scene with four albums of breezy indie-rock in the late ’90s and early 2000s. The band took a …
Originally published in the Spring 2011 issue of Momentum, published by the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment. Read the article on the original website here. Since he was a child, Craig Minowa’s two driving passions have been music and environmentalism. As the leader of critically acclaimed indie-rock band Cloud Cult, he’s built a …
When the electrifying, trancelike street music spearheaded by veteran Congolese band Konono No. 1 reached Western ears in the early 2000s, it sounded like something beamed in from Mars. Konono’s music was based around traditional instruments like the likembe thumb piano, but the need to use hand-built, jury-rigged amplifiers to be heard on busy Kinshasa streets brought …
Roky Erickson is a true rock ‘n’ roll survivor. Founder of the groundbreaking 1960s psychedelic band 13th Floor Elevators, Erickson fell into a spiral of drug and legal problems that culminated when he was committed to a hospital for the criminally insane. Even after his release, Erickson’s mental state was fragile, and his most productive post-Elevators …
Twin Cities post-punk quartet The Chambermaids sounds like it might have stepped out of a time machine, freshly arrived from 1983. Its new seven-song Down In The Berries fits comfortably back-to-back with spiky, art-punk classics like Wire’s Chairs Missing or Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, and though it’s undeniable that the band’s hardly breaking new ground by bringing that sound into 2009, it’s …
“I always loved the idea that music is something to cast a curse with.” Originally published in The A.V. Club’s Twin Cities edition, August 14, 2009. It’s no longer online there, so I’ve published it here. Over the course of three full-length albums and a smattering of EPs since 2006, Twin Cities quartet Vampire Hands has perfected …
St. Paul power trio The Blind Shake was already a pretty good band before it hooked up with Michael Yonkers, the psychedelic guitarist whose long-buried 1968 debut, Microminiature Love, was finally released in 2003 by Sub Pop, giving him a long overdue cult renaissance. The combination of Yonkers and his much younger brethren has been electrifying, both on last year’s Carbohydrates …
Zak Sally shifted his attention largely to graphic art after leaving Duluth slowcore trio Low in 2005, focusing on writing and drawing Recidivist, Sammy The Mouse, and the forthcoming Like A Dog, as well as running the small press La Mano 21, which releases books by artists like John Porcellino and William Schaff. While often dreamlike and full of wild invention, Sally’s …