Low Culture Podcast: Alice Coltrane’s Journey In Satchidananda

In this month’s pod, John Doran and Luke Turner discuss Alice Coltrane’s 1971 classic of personal, spiritual and musical transformation and transcendence

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Cyrus Pireh – Thank You, Guitar


Cyrus Pireh

Thank You, Guitar

Released on Bill Orcutt’s Palilalia Records label, the Oak Park, Michigan, guitarist takes his country chops on a wild and fuzzy ride

Thank You, Guitar by Cyrus Pireh

It must be said off the bat that this reviewer is no connoisseur of guitarists who shred. There are, of course, the obvious deterrents: the preening heavy metal cliches for one. But shredding is not confined to this genre, one only had to witness the ultra talented James Sedwards (of Nøught/Thurston Moore’s band) play to a roomful of dropped jaws, to see and feel what it can be like. Pireh has created a fascinating album, one that feels like bluegrass played in loops, like developing thought channeled through experimentation.

I was, too,…

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Moderate Chaos: Jerskin Fendrix Interviewed


Jerskin’s second album Once Upon a Time… In Shropshire is a novel album of country death songs, country life songs and country love songs. But why did it take so long and how does it fit in with his growing reputation as a composer for films? Words by Robert Davidson. All photography by Tim Gutt. CW: Contains mention of suicide

Once Upon A Time… In Shropshire by Jerskin Fendrix

Five years ago everything was changing for Jerskin Fendrix. His debut album Winterreise had garnered acclaim from those paying attention. Its spatial and temporal criss-cross of lyrics and genre-hopping compositions told the story of his first serious break-up and created a well of gravity that pulled Instagram stories, a sincere supplication to morph…

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source https://thequietus.com/interviews/jerskin-fendrix-interview-2/

Lyra Pramuk – Hymnal


Lyra Pramuk

Hymnal

Inspired by dancefloors and slime moulds, the latest album from the multidisciplinary American artist is as opulent and heady as the music mushrooms themselves might make, finds Antonio Poscic

Hymnal by Lyra Pramuk

About three years ago, musician and former biologist Tarun Nayar kickstarted a supposedly novel musical fad on TikTok. By sticking electrodes into mushrooms, he collected the mycelia’s bioelectrical signals and used them to excite modular synthesizers into oblique ambient music. This sort of algorithmic composition had already been done before with greater success – Mileece I’Anson’s poignant botanical experiments come to mind among many others – but Nayar’s framing struck the social media jackpot with an increasingly eco-aware public. Aesthetically, the music was drab, the result of a…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/lyra-pramuk-hymnal-review/

Everything Wide Open: An Interview with The Messthetics


Ahead of their show at Milan’s Siren Festival next month, Stevie Chick speaks to The Messthetics as he charts their story so far, from its roots in the relentless rhythm section of Fugazi to the recruitment of bravura guitarist Anthony Pirog, and new lightning-in-a-bottle collaborations with James Brandon Lewis

Photo by Shervin Lainez

From his home in Washington, DC, where guitars hang off every visible wall, Anthony Pirog is trying to explain The Messthetics’ polymorphous spree of sound. A humble guitar virtuoso raised on surf music, Sonny Boy Williamson, psychedelia and Sonic Youth, Pirog played blues and jazz in high school, went on to study at Berklee, was seduced by the improvisations of Derek Bailey, John Zorn and Ornette Coleman, had a…

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Columnfortably Numb: Psych Rock for June by JR Moores


JR Moores dives deep into his pond of puns for our latest roundup of psych rock, noise rock and post rock records

Birth (Defects), photo by Josh Sisk

As someone who’s written books about both the history of heavy music and the creative genius behind ‘We All Stand Together’, I was more than hoppy to discover the ideal Venn-diagram band for me: FROGLORD. They’re an amphibian-based conceptual project who perhaps ought to play hip hop but actually specialise in sludgy stoner doom.Realising the band were playing nearby, I stepped into my open-toad sandals and leapt straight to the venue. As I queued to leave my green hoodie in the croakroom, I noticed the tour bus had been parked round the back so…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/psych-rock/psych-rock-reviews-pelican-causa-sui-jeffrey-alexander/

Mary Sue and the Clementi Sound Appreciation Club – Porcelain Shield, Paper Sword


Mary Sue and the Clementi Sound Appreciation Club

Porcelain Shield, Paper Sword

Singaporean iconoclasts prove that hip-hop is (the) world(‘s) music

Porcelain Shield, Paper Sword by Mary Sue and the Clementi Sound Appreciation Club

It’s become almost a cliche to think of hip-hop as a global lingua franca, but that doesn’t mean that the fact of it is any less remarkable. That an art form born amid poverty and disintegrating social cohesion in isolated pockets of a single eastern U.S. city in the 1970s has become a cultural force capable of linking disparate people all over the planet in the second quarter of the 21st century is, frankly, astonishing. And so is the way that the musical dimension of hip-hop has proved resilient and…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/mary-sue-and-the-clementi-sound-appreciation-club-porcelain-shield-paper-sword/

Metaphoric Animals: Catherine Lacey Twists Fact and Fiction into a Raw New Reality


The latest book from the author of Biography of X is part memoir, part novel but speaks volumes about how it feels to end one life and start another, finds Orit Gat

Photo credit: Willy Somma

When I left my husband, I took a bottle of shampoo with me. And my laptop, but not my passport, or more than one change of clothes. All I thought was, out. But – proof that I never planned to leave – I had just bought a new bottle of shampoo a day or two beforehand, and I wasn’t going to give that, too, to my ex-husband. Apparently, there was a limit to what I was willing to give up.

Catherine Lacey has a similar experience with a…

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source https://thequietus.com/culture/books/catherine-lacey-mobius-book-review-review/

EXIT Festival to Leave Serbia After 2025 Due to “Financial and Political Pressures”


The team behind the event said they’ve had public funding cut after supporting student-led protests against the government earlier this year

This year’s edition of EXIT Festival will be its last in Serbia.

The festival confirmed the news yesterday (June 12) via Instagram, citing “financial and political pressures” as the reasons for the decision. These pressures, the team behind the event said, have arisen after they supported student-led protests against the government earlier this year.

“Public funding has been completely cut at all levels,” EXIT’s organisers said. “Under fierce government pressure, even some long-time sponsors were forced to end their cooperation.”

Festival director Dušan Kovačević added: “This is the hardest decision in our 25-year history, but we believe that freedom has no price. With…

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source https://thequietus.com/news/exit-festival-to-leave-serbia-after-2025-due-to-financial-and-political-pressures/

Seven Susumu Yokota Albums Set for Reissue in New Box Set


Skintone Edition Volume 1 is out on August 1

Seven albums by the revered Japanese ambient and techno music producer Susumu Yokota are to be reissued in a vinyl box set this August.

Skintone Edition Volume 1 features remastered versions of the albums Magic Thread (1998), Image 1983-1998 (1998), Sakura (1999), Grinning Cat (2001), Will (2001), The Boy And The Tree (2002) and Laputa (2003). It features 84 tracks by the late artist in total, and will also be released digitally and in a seven-CD box set.

“Yokota’s music evolved far too quickly for us to grasp at the time,” Gavin O’Shea, founder of the Lo Recordings label that is putting the set out, said. “Now, as we look back, we can fully…

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