The self-released indie rock band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were celebrated by the blogosphere, then shunned. They’re back with what may be their most masterful record. But will listeners notice this time around? In the summer of 2005, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah emerged and became a case study in how to succeed as […]
One of the most crowded booths at the year’s AES convention was also one of its smallest. Almost everything about these few dozen square feet, nestled deep in back rows of the trade-show floor, was memorable: From the single microphone on display, to the rigid black business cards, to the perpetual queue of onlookers, and […]
Avid surprised many of their users with the recent release of Pro Tools 10. It came not even a full year after the announcement of Pro Tools 9, an update that had brought significantly more power to native systems. Although version 9 was one of Pro Tools’ most expensive upgrades to date, it was fairly […]
We already know that a lot of Christmas music is terrible. That’s not a problem. What is a problem is when a few potentially awesome albums promise to raise our spirits only to let us down. Al Green – White Christmas Al Green, soulfully singing about Christmas? Excellent! This just might be counter-intuitive enough to […]
(Or at least, 20th Century America) Every culture that has developed far enough from the equator to take the idea of “four seasons” seriously, has developed some kind of festival of lights. In America, perhaps moreso than anywhere else, we’ve succeeded at melting some of the best aspects of the world’s traditions into an amalgamation […]
Loho Studios has lived two lives. From 1983-2007 it evolved from a downtown rehearsal space to a world-class recording studio, hosting living legends like Willie Nelson, Patty Smith, Joan Jett, Yo La Tengo, Art Garfunkel and Joey Ramone. Following this 25-year run it disappeared from the market completely, presumably moth-balled or auctioned off in pieces […]
Do you ever think about what NYC street musicians are like when they go home, or do you just imagine that they sleep in the subways? Forget the hugely skewed Joshua Bell experiment of 2007. If you’ve traveled the country much, you may have noticed that here in NYC, we’re lucky enough to have some […]
From a distance, you might mistake Dennis Fink for a trucker, a contractor, or a retired lumberjack. He’s a tall bear of a man who wears clean, faded blue jeans and beat-up work boots, with a thick shock of grey-blond hair that reaches his collar. If you never had the chance to speak to him, […]
