November 15th, 2011 | 6:00 pm | Tim Sendra
This week the Swedish pop duo Korallreven release their long awaited debut album An Album by Korallreven on Acéphale records. "Long awaited" because it's been ages, well, two years, since their first single "Loved-Up" hit the airwaves and caused lovers of synth-y and dreamy, warm and sweet electropop (as made by the Tough Alliance, jj, or Panda Bear to name a few) go to all mushy. A few other just as amazing singles have come out since then and happily, they are all on the record. To celebrate the release, we asked half the duo, Marcus Joons, to send along a list and he sent us a travelogue of locales around the globe that have deep meaning for him.....
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November 16th, 2011 | 1:30 pm | AMG Staff
Each year of the late '60s seemed absolutely pivotal to the growing importance of pop music -- especially from the vantage point of the burgeoning teenage demographic. Still, 1966 was special. It was the year when the fusion of pop and rock crested, even if the music hadn't gone Technicolor just yet (as it would in 1967). Rock artists who had debuted at the beginning of the decade were reaching cultural apotheosis with their most innovative work: Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and "Good Vibrations" single, the Beatles' Revolver, and the Rolling Stones' Aftermath, along with Phil Spector's epic production on Ike & Tina Turner's "River Deep - Mountain High." And for those who had taken their leads from those older artists -- bands like Jefferson Airplane, the Byrds, Simon & Garfunkel, Buffalo Springfield, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Love, Pink Floyd -- pushing the boundaries became their primary obsession for years.
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Classical music is not only the art music of western culture, but in a narrower sense, it is the music of a specific time period in Europe, roughly the late 18th to the early 19th century, an era dominated by Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. But it takes more than three geniuses to make a musical age, and there's much unknown music to be discovered in this elegant period.
