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James Mtume and Stanley Crouch Debate Miles Davis
Mike McKinley
November 18, 2010
Fascinating discussion/debate between critic Stanley Crouch and composer/percussionist James Mtume -- who played with Miles from 1971-1975.



Explode Into Colors: Not Your Average West Coast Drum Circle
Evangelos Dimitriadis
November 15, 2010


I am a maniac when it comes to music‚ I have accepted it. I'm all over the place with my taste‚ and I like it that way (I can't help it and I don't want to). Recently in my adventures of finding something new for my head I came across Portland, Oregon's Explode Into Colors. The female trio of Claudia Meza‚ Lisa Schonberg‚ and Heather Treadway sadly enough have stopped performing under this guise though... According to their Myspace:

"Explode Into Colors ended on 6/5/2010. They will all continue making and doing and are extremely grateful for all the support and interest this project has received. Thank you."

And that's a damn shame. Together‚ they made some serious tribal-psychedelic-noise rock. Here is the song "Sharpen the Knife" and a cool live video for you to get a sample of what they were all about. Hope to see them play again one day. Until then you may check out Lisa Schonberg's new group, STLS.



Akron/Family Announces: S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT
Mike McKinley
November 11, 2010
Good news from Akron/Family - their new record will be out February 8th in the US. Read the highly entertaining press release (and check out a photo of the letter they delivered to the label) below. Never lose touch with your weird, folks. Enjoy the video too.

AKAK from Secretly Jag on Vimeo.

From Dead Oceans (full press release)
Finally, after over a month of unanswered emails and text messages, blown deadlines, and pleas to finish and turn in their new album, last week, a large brown cardboard box showed up at the Dead Oceans doorstep. It had "SHINJU TNT" scrawled across the bottom of the box in black magic marker, and the return address read only "AK, Detroit."

Opening it revealed a sincere but poorly made diorama of futurist swirling spaces filled with toy astronauts and dinosaurs, four blown out song fragments on a TDK CDR in a ziplock bag, three pictures, a track list written in crayon, and a typewritten note from Akron/Family. A post-it on the bag declared that the band refused to send the full album to anyone but the vinyl pressing plant, for fear of leaking and possible lost revenues.

From the note and a short video that arrived days later, we've pieced together that the album was written in a cabin built into the side of Mount Meakan, an active volcano in Akan National Park, on the island of Hokkaido, Japan. It was recorded in an abandoned train station in Detroit with the blackest white dude we all know, Chris Koltay (Liars, Women, Deerhunter, Holy Fuck, No Age). Chris, on tour after finishing the record, commented: "This album will transcend the Internet."

Akron/Family spent the end of 2009 and half of 2010 exploring the future of sound through Bent Acid Punk Diamond fuzz and Underground Japanese noise cassettes, lower case micro tone poems and emotional Cagean field recordings, rebuilding electronic drums from the '70s and playing them with sticks they carved themselves. Upon miraculous resuscitation of the original AKAK hard drive, the album layers thousands of minute imperceptible samples of their first recordings with fuzzed-out representations of their present beings to induce pleasant emotional feeling states and many momentary transcendent inspirations.

This album is titled S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT. We have no idea what that means. Below is a photo of the note found in the brown box delivery with the song list, video, and an mp3 of the song fragments retrieved from the TDK CDR, relics of a new tomorrow and a brighter Akron/Family filled future. These are the beginnings, hell or high water you'll find S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT in stores in the U.S. on February 8, and March 14 in the U.K.

Listen: SCI's "Barstool" from Rhythm of the Road - Vol 1
Mike McKinley
November 9, 2010
String Cheese Incident's Rhythm of the Road - Volume 1, Incident in Atlanta 11/17/00 is out today on SCI Fidelity Records.

I've never been the biggest SCI fan. I saw a few good shows back in the late 90s and early 00s, and then I trailed off for a few years. But this band has a wonderful way of piquing my interest just enough and then bringing me back, at least one-foot-in back. Their 2005 Malcolm Burn produced One Step Closer is one of my favorite records of the 2000s. When I tell people that they look at me like I have two-heads, "SCI made a great studio album?" You bet your ass they did -- Malcolm Burn doesn't fuck around.

The studio album stigma is no surprise as SCI came out of the jam world, where it's all about the live performance and the collective experience. "Incidents," as the band and audience refer to them, are always shooting for something big and unique. They've always set out to do something special and create some magic at their shows.

You can hear it on this first release of the new live series Rhythm of the Road. It's hard to explain how amazing and fresh this show from ten years ago sounds -- it's such a pleasant surprise. The band is dialed-in -- they're super tight, confident and focused. They were in thick of being completely in tune with each other and their audience. You can feel the energy of the room listening to this recording. They make 15 minutes of improvised music go by in a flash, they throw in surprises like Zeppelin's "Ramble On" and stretch out Coltrane's "Impressions" into some interesting territory. They also have banjoist Tony Furtado sit in a bunch. It's a band and audience firing on all cylinders in Hotlanta. Here's "Barstool" -- a sample from the first set:

String Cheese Incident - "Barstool"



Show setlist:
Set 1: Smile, Joyful Sound -> Orange Blossom Special*, Barstool, Pygmy Pony, Missing Me > Ramble On

Set 2: Outside And Inside, Impressions -> Glory Chords Jam -> Midnight Moonlight*, This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) -> Miss Brown's Teahouse, Wake Up, Black Clouds*

Encore: The Old Home Place*, Shenandoah Breakdown*, Shakin' the Tree*

*featuring Tony Furtado on banjo and guitar Videos: Rubblebucket‚ Free Energy‚ Art Blakey...
Mike McKinley
November 6, 2010
Free Energy's Power Hour - Episode II... I don't know what this is‚ but it's awesome: "...people think there's something wrong with their car‚ but it's just the tape."



Rubblebucket's "Came Out of Lady" - great new video...



And just in case you forgot how sick Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers are‚ here's "A Night in Tunisia" from 1959. Be a messenger...

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