Getting the Band Back Together: Players Orchestrating Worlds By Jonathan Fenn • March 13th, 2024 The reason bringing musicians together works so well as a gameplay trope, is that it capitalizes on connection and creativity at its core in a mechanically satisfying, and often narratively significant way.
Rookie of the Year Atomic City: U2 Go Nuclear at the Sphere By Matt Marrone • March 7th, 2024 If I lived in Las Vegas, I wouldn’t be writing this column at all, because I’d be at the show. Again. (And then again.)
Noise Complaint Militarie Gun Rings the Bell By Ben Sailer • February 27th, 2024 A punk song appearing in a Taco Bell commercial forces Ben to hit the drive-thru while reconsidering the gatekeeping attitude of his youth.
Feature Excerpt Made With Love: Anime Mashups and Their Creators By Justin Kim • February 23rd, 2024 They’re not just shitposts!
Noah's Beat Box Museum Piece By Noah Springer • February 15th, 2024 A pilgrimage to “The Culture: Hip Hop & Contemporary Art in the 21st Century” at the St. Louis Art Museum.
Beyond Structures Clockenflap 2023 Day 3: Running Youth, Otoboke Beaver, 9m88 and more By Khee Hoon Chan • February 9th, 2024 It’s day three of Clockenflap – and the final day of what is shaping up to be one of my favorite festival experiences.
Beyond Structures Clockenflap 2023 Day 2: Atarashii Gakko!, Omnipotent Youth Society and more By Khee Hoon Chan • January 30th, 2024 After grabbing an exorbitant hotdog from the festival grounds, which I paid around USD25 for, I continued on to some of the day two acts.
Noise Complaint Age, Angst, and Paint It Black By Ben Sailer • January 26th, 2024 On their latest album Famine, long-running hardcore punk band Paint It Black prove that righteous anger has no age limit.
Beyond Structures Clockenflap 2023 Day 1: Uchu Yurei, Wang Wen, Envy, Yoasobi By Khee Hoon Chan • January 22nd, 2024 Clockenflap 2023 was three beautiful days long, and here are the highlights of the festival’s opening day.
Noah's Beat Box Hip Hop at Fifty By Noah Springer • January 9th, 2024 After stepping back from the contemporary, Noah reflects a bit more on the different eras of hip hop and what they mean to him.
Rookie of the Year Lana Del(’s) Rey By Matt Marrone • January 4th, 2024 The spirit of the Newport Folk Festival is all about the music, from the morning sets to the closers, not all about Lana.
First Quest: The Music By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • December 11th, 2023 There is always some new relic to haul up from the pits of the earth.
Casting Deep Meteo Grails Scores the Theater of the Mind By Levi Rubeck • December 8th, 2023 More than curtains cut for mood or ambience, Anches en Maat begs the listener to simmer in their own headspace for a while.
Beyond Structures World’s End Girlfriend Composes Requiems For The End of Days By Khee Hoon Chan • December 7th, 2023 The music of World’s End Girlfriend, thankfully, resists the dichotomy of heightened emotional stakes versus the subdued lull of post-rock. Thus his melodies hardly, if ever, collapse under their immensity.
Past Presence Jenny from Thebes Review By Emily Price • December 5th, 2023 Jenny from Thebes is trying harder than maybe any previous album to create a specific place, but it still feels unmoored, somewhere between Greece and Austin.
Noise Complaint On the Outside Looking Into Christian Hardcore By Ben Sailer • November 29th, 2023 Ben wonders what happened to all the Christian hardcore bands that once dominated VFW basements and Hot Topic shelves, and lands on a conclusion that reveals his own ignorance.
Noah's Beat Box Vamps – Otherwise By Noah Springer • November 9th, 2023 Repetition and transformation.
Casting Deep Meteo Indeed Forever By Levi Rubeck • October 5th, 2023 Pleasure Forever cut something fresh from the bones of punk without losing themselves in the theatre-kid treacle of cabaret core or acid-soaked psychedelic silliness.
Rookie of the Year The Newport Pork Festival By Matt Marrone • September 12th, 2023 Matt joins the 10-Timers Club at the Newport Folk Festival and is rewarded with a tasty treat.
The Burnt Offering The Music and the Dice By Stu Horvath • September 11th, 2023 Like any live performance, a tabletop roleplaying game’s greatest power resides in the moment, experiencing the event as it happens.
Noise Complaint Nu-Metal Might Be Good, Actually? By Ben Sailer • August 29th, 2023 Ben recalls a time he talked shit about a Korn cover band and is forced into several personal epiphanies.
Feature Excerpt Odes of the Boomershooter By Holly Boson • August 23rd, 2023 “If we’re entering an age of renewed zeal for nu-metal, I think Slayers X deserves to be mentioned within the first breaths of the conversation.”
Concert of the Summer with Mother Badu By Brea Shanice • August 10th, 2023 With velvety and spellbinding vocals, Ms. Badu proves she doesn’t need to be titled Queen when she has clearly come to reign as Mother Supreme.
Casting Deep Meteo Why Does it Hurt By Levi Rubeck • August 10th, 2023 Singer, guitarist and illustrator as well as a devoted friend, uncle, brother and more, Rick Froberg’s contributions to music and art have rippled across the world.
Noise Complaint 12 Records I’ve Made the Time to Listen to So Far in 2023 By Ben Sailer • August 3rd, 2023 Feeling that 2023 is flying by too quickly, Ben stops to reflect on the music that has provided his soundtrack for the year to date.
“You Just Have To Start!” An Interview with Marskye (AKA Ramsey Kharroubi) By Elijah Beahm • July 18th, 2023 Marskye hopes that with the growing appreciation for music, that more players recognize how integral composers are in creating their favorite experiences.
Noise Complaint Learning the Hard Way With Lucero By Ben Sailer • July 6th, 2023 Lucero’s music has always had two speeds: “I’m going to party hard” and “I shouldn’t have partied that hard.”
Past Presence The Wake of the Wake By Emily Price • June 30th, 2023 Folk-punk, increasingly experimental band AJJ is best listened to when you randomly remember them, like a book of poems you skim through annually and then put back on the shelf.
The Beat Box Noteworthy Hip Hop – June 2023 By Noah Springer • June 28th, 2023 It’s half-way through 2023 somehow, so it’s time to round up some notable releases from the first half of the year.
Feature Excerpt Don’t Hurt Girls When You Dance (Or Any Other Time) By Juno Stump • June 23rd, 2023 I don’t know if Kurt Cobain would still be here today if he had the ability to inject estrogen instead of heroin, but I know his journal pages carry the same pain as me.
Always Autumn Last Night I Went to a House Show By Autumn Wright • June 13th, 2023 Folded arms, cold gazes, straight couples dressed like they wanna be at a club in Williamsburg, which is to say “Kind of gay, but don’t be mistaken.”
The Burnt Offering The Kosmische Cosmos By Stu Horvath • June 6th, 2023 Electronic music is thoroughly modern music. And the truth about the folklore that these sorts of projects score is that it’s thoroughly modern folklore.
Noise Complaint Black Metal Mythmaking, Gatekeeping, and Points In Between By Ben Sailer • May 31st, 2023 Black metal musicians have long used secrecy and controversy to generate notoriety.
Noise Complaint Calling In a Noise Complaint By Ben Sailer • April 26th, 2023 After four and a half years of writing the Collision Detection column, Ben starts something new by going back to something old.
The Beat Box Enter the Wu-Tang By Noah Springer • February 24th, 2023 2023 marks the 30th anniversary of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and something like the 18th anniversary of Noah listening to it.
Always Autumn A Golden Halo That Could Be the Sun Part I: Whose Apocalypse Is This? By Autumn Wright • February 9th, 2023 What does the beauty of a world born anew look like from the depths?
Rookie of the Year No Rules Newport By Matt Marrone • February 3rd, 2023 Something happened at the most recent Newport Folk Festival – Sylvan Esso debuted their as-yet-to-be-released and previously-unheard album, No Rules Sandy – for the first time.
The Beat Box Noteworthy Hip Hop – January 2023 By Noah Springer • January 24th, 2023 A little wrap-up of potential classics Noah overlooked last year.
Working for the Knife (and Being the Knife) By Sara Khan • January 12th, 2023 When I see Mitski for myself, I am tip-toed, leaning this way and that, reaching for an angle to see her over that glowing phone screen-sea.