Listen! Listen to two tracks from Katharine Whalen’s new album Dirty Little Secret. If you cannot see the music player below, click here to download the free Flash Player. On the third Saturday of every June, the annual Hog Day Festival descends on the sleepy town of Hillsborough. Drawing up to 35,000 revelers (about seven […]
Brian Howe
Posted inNews
The Coup
Beyond the oft-tentative social consciousness of Kanye, Mos Def, The Roots and Common–the cast of Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, basically–mainstream hip hop isn’t amenable to activism, unless the cause is flagging coke sales or subsidizing a new ice-grill. Boots Riley, emcee and producer for Oakland’s The Coup, makes no bones about his allegiances, and he’s […]
Posted inMusic
SoundScape Movement Fest
A nude, imperiously bald Bulgarian in high heels reads poetry. A woman plays a xylophone concealed beneath a voluminous hoopskirt. A man uses a miked and modified tape measure like a Chinese ribbon, weaving a dense tapestry of sound and motion in the air. Dancers in domino masks struggle against an amorphous duet for box […]
Posted inMusic
What’s that noise?
When Washington, D.C.’s Orthrelm played at the Wetlands Dance Hall in February, their guitar-based, prog-rock brutalism seemed quaint compared to the local opening act, a collaboration between Boyzone’s Ryan Martin and Chuck Johnson (aka Pykrete). If Orthrelm’s sleek engine clung to the tracks by two wheels, then Martin and Johnson represented this same vehicle coming […]
Posted inMusic
Voxtrot at Local 506
I’m new at the Independent, so you’ll have to just trust me when I say that after seven years of music crit, I’m naturally a little jaded. But occasionally a band comes along that burns off the fog like early morning sunlight. Austin’s Voxtrot is one of those bands, and their show at the Local […]
Posted inMusic
Sorry About Dresden
Not having played a show in over a year, Sorry About Dresden showed traces of rust: A certain hesitance occasionally clouded the structural pivots of their nervy pop-punk/indie rock hybrid. But the assembled faithful weren’t there for polished presentation: It was Dresden’s explosive energy that drew them in, an energy that roiled all the more […]