Brian Eno is an iconic and omnipresent pioneer in the world of ambient music, but he's gained real staying power while working behind the boards. He's produced albums for some of modern music's most influential artists, including Devo, David Bowie, U2, Coldplay, Peter Gabriel and Talking Heads.
Anthony Fantano
Memes just show that people are engaged about something. A meme is just a little inside joke for a group of people that care about a certain thing.
If Death Grips isn't the fourth horseman of a hip-hop apocalypse, its music at least tests the genre's threshold of extremity: The trio's abrasive, jittery style teeters on the edge of palatability, and plays toward a morbid curiosity to which many listeners won't succumb.
For artists, looking back in time for ideas is commonplace, but there's an overwhelming sense of '70s and '80s nostalgia in California musician Ariel Pink's music. It's impossible to separate 'Round and Round' from the anachronism, and there's no loving one without loving the other.
Music can provide a much-needed break from life's harsh moments, but Eddy Current Suppression Ring has no interest in creating a sonic fire escape for the distraught. Instead, the band embraces the real world, wrapping its arms around the beautiful and the ugly alike.
Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar sounds decades older than he is, and it's not necessarily the wear and tear that comes from a rough life; instead, his world-weariness seems to result from years of soul-searching.
At the end of the day, I would love for the artists that I give positive reviews to to continue coming out with music. That's ultimately what I want as a fan.
Of Montreal's early releases were loaded with playful but confessional acoustic tunes, but the band soon embraced glam-rock's freakier side on albums like 'Hissing Fauna Are You the Destroyer?' and 'Skeletal Lamping.' It was a shift fans might not have tolerated if it weren't for frontman Kevin Barnes' catchy, personality-driven songs.
I don't really think reviewing music is something you're going to get famous doing overnight.
As soon as I was getting YouTube comments and hit 100 subscribers, I was thinking 'maybe there's something to this. I could keep going. I don't know how far I can really push it just reviewing random indie bands on YouTube, but it seems to have more gas in the tank.'
A formidable game of 'Name That Influence' could be based on the music of the seductive rock duo Girls: The band's first single, 'Hellhole Ratrace,' would barely reach its opening words before screams of 'Elvis Costello!' and 'Wreckless Eric!' drown out the music.
On its self-titled debut, Happy Birthday flirts with several flavors of love, and 'Girls FM' is where taste gets confusing.
After a casual listen, it might be easy to lump Rocky Votolato in with the downtrodden likes of Conor Oberst and Elliott Smith. But his songwriting is a bit more triumphant than theirs: Votolato would rather pull himself out of a gutter than wallow in it, focusing instead on the victory before the misery.
In music, trends are always rising and fading in popularity, but nostalgia never dies.
Rather than highlighting music's differences, Kids & Explosions' Josh Raskin mixes songs together based on their surprising common ground, making them blend rhythmically and melodically.
Amon Tobin has been producing electronic music since the mid-'90s, and was a key figure in the rise of drum-and-bass. He's also written some of the genre's most compelling tracks, in the process delving into jazzy breakbeats and bass lines.
Jesu's walls of distortion are uplifting in comparison to those of its doom-driven contemporaries. The band's 2009 album 'Infinity' has its bleak moments, but that album's single 49-minute song resolves into something inspirational and grandiose by the time it's over.
Sounding like a toned-down Sufjan Stevens - or an even more toned-down Arcade Fire - Seabear's quiet execution gives its music a breezy quality. It's a sonically lush whisper, sharing secrets with anyone curious enough to listen.
The group disbanded prematurely in 1983, but its records made a sizable mark: Mission of Burma became a band's band; leaving noticeable impressions on the likes of Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo.
A lot of bands change, and a lot of bands break up, but only a few grow.
Since reuniting in 2002, Mission of Burma has become the triumphant story of a band that time forgot.
King Khan and the Shrines may look and sound bizarre, but don't feel left out; it's not an exclusive club.
The Internet has essentially democratized the music industry in terms of what is popular and it's democratized the music journalism industry as well.
Four Tet, a.k.a. Kieran Hebden, is a U.K. electronica artist whose diverse tastes have helped fuel a lengthy discography.
Tame Impala's music revisits a time when guitar effects and studio tricks were music's newest frontiers; when rock was barely old enough to drive and violently threw conventional ideas out the window.
Anybody could put their thoughts on a record out there. I think the world of reviews and opinions is now very much a meritocracy.
Justin Broadrick's career isn't widely celebrated, but it's still shockingly uncompromising. From his place at the beginning of grindcore with Napalm Death to his role in Godflesh's expansion of industrial metal, the U.K. musician specializes in artistic hairpin turns.
Short-sighted music fans might scoff at the revivalism of, say, Ariel Pink, but plenty of acts have built healthy careers around the art of bringing back the past.
Stay adventurous with that musical taste.
Electronics, samples and vocals are all fed into The Log.Os' music, and a fresh take on soul comes out. The band's songs splash around in the same gene pool as neo-soul artists like Erykah Badu, but they reach forward to pull ideas from glitch-hop producers such as Flying Lotus and Prefuse 73.
Rock and ambient music might as well reside on opposite sides of the galaxy, so it's almost shocking when a band like Deerhunter melds the two so effectively.
Occasionally, I'll want to cover something that's outside of my audiences' tastes or interests. Every week or so I have to try and cover at least one or two of those things to keep my sanity. If you're only reviewing what is in the top album spots on Apple Music every week, you can get kind of jaded.
The 11-minute 'Colouring of Pigeons' takes The Knife's experimental, cerebral side to new heights.
I'm not that famous.
Girls' strength lies in its diversity, and its members have walked in a lot of borrowed shoes to make it that way. 'Solitude' is a bold and sweet example of inspiration trumping originality.
Holiday Shores' ambition far exceeds its members' recording budget. The band's boyish vocal harmonies wash in and out with the tide, and reverb radiates from the guitars like heat off a sun-baked parking lot.
For more than 15 years, Mogwai has built a reputation on its monstrous ambitions for rock music.
Garage-rock eccentric King Khan may be from Montreal, but his heart is almost a thousand miles away, throbbing from Atlanta to Castle City, Mont., until it hits cardiac arrest in Kalamazoo. Khan and His Shrines warn that this so-called 'Land of the Freak' is where only the strong survive, but it's a strength that can't be measured in muscle.
With its breezy guitars and sweet backing vocals, 'Norway' blows away any semblance of Beach House's previously bleak approach to pop.
I've never spent any money on advertising.
The U.K. trio Let's Wrestle doesn't make music for its art, but for its attitude.
I've obsessed over a lot of bands in my time, and I'm sure I'll become infatuated with a lot more in the future.
We're muddying the waters when we are having a discussion about what's going on on YouTube and Twitter and whether that's a matter of free speech. These are private platforms and they're allowed to decide what should and should not be on its platforms. It's not an issue of free speech.
Tightly embracing guitar effects and tape loops, Mission of Burma made sound an important commodity in rock 'n' roll, and its members carried that tradition into their first album after a 19-year hiatus, 2004's 'ONoffON.'
The TV show 'How It's Made' brings the intricate details of assembly lines to numerous North American living rooms. But if the series were to ever branch into exposing the secrets of music production, Colin Stetson's 'New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges' would make for a mind-bending episode.
If you want to truly take in the subtleties and detail of your favorite records, then enjoy them the same way you would a movie. Make music an event, not a side dish.
The Soft Pack's self-titled full-length debut is straighter than black coffee, and twice as bitter: Frontman Matt Lamkin isn't afraid to fly his philosophical flag and face hard realities.
Formerly known as The Muslims, The Soft Pack brings a lot of swagger to its garage-rock sound. There's a load of gimmick-free confidence in the band's hooks, as its distorted guitars and driving drums demonstrate that less can be more.
Holy Ghost! wears its influences proudly: Look no further than the duo's video for 'I Will Come Back,' a shot-for-shot remake of the music video for New Order's 1983 single, 'Confusion.'
The personality and songwriting of Holy Ghost! trumps the originality card any day.
