Current

Category

From The Blinds Presents – “Three Blind Men: The Blind Bracket Challenge”

The premise is simple: a bracket of some of the greatest Rock albums of all-time. The inspiration is also pretty simple- it all started at the end of this year’s March Madness; the epic three-week clash between the best in NCAA basketball. March Madness engenders a certain amount of grandiose ambition in the simple folks like me who are drawn to the idea of a single-matchup where the picks are difficult, the results often unexpected, and the competition as fierce...

Top 20 + Brief Reflections on 2017

One way of describing 2017 is it was a remarkable year in the barest sense – meaning that despite all of the darkness, bigotry, abuse, and scandal, it was nonetheless still a year worth many remarks. Hey, that’s better than saying it was an unremarkable year not worth mentioning. Popular culture was galvanized by the sweeping hand of the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter to such a large degree that it engulfed the public consciousness. The power of the...

Sonikseek: Toronto Gives Us the Future of Pop with MorMor

2017 was a year that confirmed what many of us already knew: Rock music is losing ground in the world of pop music relevancy. We saw it happening in 2016 as the Knowles sisters dominated the “best album” polls and artists like The Weeknd, Frank Ocean, and Chance the Rapper grew in popularity. Some expected a rebound in 2017, and yet the most compelling music of this past year once again came from the Soul/R&B/Rap veins of popular music. Kendrick...

Guest Playlist: 2017 Discovery

  Greetings all, it’s a new year and time for the first ever guest playlist! That’s right, I Johnny Lobo, am here to present a curated playlist created to showcase the songs I discovered throughout 2017. Bear in mind, not all the songs on the playlist were created in 2017. In fact, some are from much earlier. However, my idea was to pull together “the favorites” – the ones my lucky ears just happened to hear for the first time last year. ...

The Last Rays and Skeleton Shadows: Best Late Fall Records

These are the days of odd shapes and acute angles. It’s not summery bliss anymore, now it’s wonder and melancholy. We wear our knit sweaters and drink steaming beverages, watching the air form from our breath with mild curiosity. The air is musty and half bitter with the smell of damp leaves on the ground- everything glitters either from a soft frost or the waning light. Those warm sunny days are over, and whatever you wanted to make happen in...

Sides of a New Artist and Tyler the Creator

How many cars can I buy till I run out of drive? How much drive can I have, until I run out of road? How much road can they pave, until I run out of land? How much land can it be until I run in the ocean? I don’t know if this is just me, or if there’s a whole camp of people out there who feel the same way, but I stop listening to an artist after their...

Double Bingo, Life in Music, and New Shoegaze

“Lady Daydream” by Mr Twin Sister. “Just because I’m losing, doesn’t make me a loser” When life hits us with the good, it happens a couple times over. That’s why people often say, “good things come in pairs”. Yet we all know there’s the flip side…..that when life hits us bad, it usually comes in a series of unfortunate events or circumstances. It’s one of those undeniable lessons in life that we learn for better or worse. One thing I...

Get Your Shazam Ready, It’s ‘Master of None’

There are a few movies out there where I had my Shazam on standby at all times – it was just one great track after another. I remember just holding my phone in my hand the whole time, my finger hovering over that Shazam App waiting for the next song. In recent memory, there was Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof (2007), which is probably his worst feature film yet features some of his best music choices. From that slow-burning movie I...