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Towards the end of The XX‘s set, Kim woke up confused.  She was half asleep and must have still been lost in a dream, because she was talking nonsense.  She tried to prop herself up and people were stomping and moving all around her, so she had to make like a recently birthed giraffe and get to figuring out how to walk with the quickness.  I got her up and we started moving out of the crowd, but it seemed like she was doing even worse.   She was having some trouble breathing and, as is often the case with panic attacks, it was difficult to figure out if she was actually physically sick or if it was just an anxiety issue.  It was clear that she wasn’t feeling well, but didn’t want me to miss the festival. “We are going back to the tent, now. I don’t want to talk about it… c’mon.” (more…)

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Baby Dee is a fascinating individual.  For some, there is a novelty in the fact that she’s transgender, which they’ve allowed to overshadow her work as an artist.  For others, her musicianship takes center stage over any personal identity that Baby Dee might have.  In reality, the work is far too revealing, honest, and personal to ever be completely separated from the person who created it.  In our approach to any interview conversation that we try and conduct on this site, there is a belief that the humanity of the artist and the exploration of them, their history, insights, and experiences as an individual on this planet should always remain a focus, beyond just the art that they create.  The “why” is more important for us than the “how”.  Even more important is the “who”, because from there the why will expose itself.  These concepts became especially relevant in our recent encounter with the Cleveland-born pianist/harpist.

It’s true that Dee continues to build a catalog of deeply engaging and beautiful music, and that is something that we, in no way, wish to discount.  We hope to open the door for you to explore her work further, but the sounds and feelings presented in her work are things that you can continue to discover slowly, in your own time.  I feel that our job in a piece like this is to attempt to truly help introduce you to the soul of  the person behind the work.  Baby Dee is a fascinating individual, but I think the point here is that, with or without her affiliations with various other artists, being transgender, or even her abilities as a musician, her unique character and quality as a person would still sustain her as such, regardless.  We trust that, after viewing our video interview below, you will see her in the same light as we do.  Her talents as an artist are undeniable, but music is little more than a simple medium to manifest and display the immense levels of truth and personal ideals which she holds inside. (more…)

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I spent a good part of this morning unsuccessfully looking for an old black & white Halo Benders promotional photo from the mid 1990s.  I’ve been working the same type of hustle that I am now for half of my life and, when I was in high school, I spent the majority of my focus on getting companies to send me free shit for my marketing program’s “trade show” projects.  The Calvin Johnson founded, K Records was one of the most helpful and provided me with tons of merchandise and materials, including that Halo Benders photo, which was intended to hype the group’s sophomore effort, Don’t Tell Me Now (1996).  Two years prior, when Johnson (Beat Happening) first started the side project with Doug Martsch (Built to Spill), I had begun hearing the song “Don’t Touch My Bikini” on the local community college radio station.  Both keeping with and ending their pattern of dropping a new album every other year, Halo Benders released their final album, The Rebels Not In, in 1998.  That release contained “Virginia Reel Around the Fountain“, a song that is still a regular feature on Built To Spill set-lists to this day.  Calvin hopped on stage with BTS for a few random cameos throughout the following decade and the group reunited with a slightly altered lineup for a pair of shows in Boise, Idaho.  There have even been some random non-confirmed rumors of a possible new album and/or comeback but, for all intents and purposes, The Halo Benders were a Nineties band.  At one point or another during that initial run, the side-project even made an infamous, yet rarely seen, appearance on a quintessential 90‘s television program.  Thanks to today’s technology, the footage from that fiasco is just one more thing that has managed to resurface in our current times. (more…)

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Italy has a long rich history in the fine arts.  It is the country credited with the birth of the Renaissance movement and home to world famous venues such as the Vatican Museums and The Uffizi Gallery.  It’s a legacy that deserves every bit of respect that it garners, but there is a great amount of people who feel no connection to these ancient works and even more people who feel distanced by the term “art” in general.  Art is a class that you take at school; something coupled with “Literature” on a Trivial Pursuit game card.  It can become more of something to understand intellectually than emotionally.  For the last 30 or 40 yrs, the  Pop Surrealism, Lowbrow, Graffiti and Street Art worlds have challenged these constrictive ideas of what art is and who it’s for.  These are also the selected art-forms that Milan‘s Matteo Donini has been dedicated to showcasing since opening The Don Gallery in 2008.  This month’s exhibit at The Don, New Idols, is a refreshing venture into pop-culture by a young Milanese sculpture  by the name of Francesco De Molfetta. (more…)

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When the last album was released from the Sri Lankan/British superstar, Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam (aka: M.I.A.), I found myself sitting alone at a local bar and sucking back a full pitcher of Mac and Jacks African Amber ale to my head.  I had been working a lot at the time and had heard that the local spot was doing their own version of a CD release/listening party for the album with some little giveaways.  I decided that I would take that opportunity to go down there by myself, drink a pitcher of beer, and check out the new tracks.  Hardly anybody showed up and, although I didn’t win the album itslef, I did go home with a boxload of KALA stickers an shirts that they were unable to dump off on anyone else.  This resulted in one of our first giveaways that Monster Fresh had ever held.

Sean Prince and I had gone to seen her perform a couple of years prior as the opening act for LCD Soundsystem.  That show took place at the Showbox in Seattle, a venue that both acts have likely outgrown by this point in their individual careers.  The whole show was pretty amazing, but it was actually more of a back up plan for us, as her previous performance at Chop Suey had been canceled due to the usual problems surrounding the artist: Green Card issues and the fear of potential terrorism.  These days, it seems like LCD Soundsystem has gotten fairly huge and M.I.A. has, by all accounts, become a legitimate “superstar“.  The irony of someone like myself writing reviews about anything related to pop-culture is that I am pretty much oblivious to what is or is not popular these days.  I can go to a show thinking that an artist is “underground“, whatever that means, only to find out that the venue is completely sold out.  Then, I can go to a show with the fear that it will be packed and only find 6 people in the audience.  I didn’t realize that M.I.A . was so fucking huge until I saw her performing with Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, T.I. and Kanye West, while she was pregnant at last years Grammy Awards.  My frame of reference was coming from a time when both she and LCD had only just released their first albums.  LCD Soundsystem‘s 3rd studio album is set to drop next month in the UK and now, Arular herself is letting out some samples of what her own latest effort is going to sound like as well. (more…)

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Earlier this month I began hearing the name “Garage A Trois” thrown around again, which is a band that I wasn’t sure was even still in existence.  The original lineup was comprised of Charlie Hunter (8-string guitar), Skerik (Sax), and Stanton Moore (drums) and was spawned from the recording sessions for Stanton‘s first solo effort, All Kooked Out (1998).  During the sessions, Skerik and Hunter, who were featured on the release, ended up laying down enough extra material with Moore to release a completely separate EP as a trio.  The material, mostly improvised freak-out jazz, was recorded live without overdubs and eventually became the album Mysteryfunk.  In April of ‘98, the trio performed as “Moore and More” for the All Kooked Out record release party in New Orleans, but the group didn’t enter my radar until another New Orleans performance 2 years later.  That show featured GAT being slightly overshadowed as the opening act for the debut performance by another “super group”, Oysterhead (Trey Anastasio/Les Claypool/Stuart Copeland).

Since their inception, the group has gone through a few changes and, with the eclectic and always collaborative band members, it’s often been difficult to even discern what constitutes the use of one band moniker from another.  In 2007, Charlie Hunter decided that, with his family responsibilities and touring, he was spreading himself too thin and could only focus on his main project, The Charlie Hunter Trio.  He took his 8-string guitar with him and, after trying out various temporary members, the remaining members unanimously decided on Marco Benevento‘s organ and electronic sounds to fill the huge  gap that had been left.  The last, and first, time that I saw GAT was in 2003, during their tour to promote their sophomore release, Emphasizer.  By that point they had added Mike Dillon on vibraphone/percussion, already making the “TROIS” element in their title obsolete.  They were a tight unit with matching jumpsuits and video effects.  That same year, I was introduced to the Benevento/Russo Duo through a performance at Seattle‘s Bumbershoot festival, in which they brought Skerik out to perform with them.  About 7 years prior, I caught Skerik performing with his outfit Critters Buggin on that exact same stage.  In 2008, Mike Dillon also became an official member of the Critters Buggin crew.  In addition to these acts, Skerik and Dillon perform together as part of Les Claypool‘s Flying Frog Brigade and Fancy Band projects, as well as in The Dead Kenny Gs, who’s logo was created by Claypool.  The DG’s, whom Benevento has joined on stage, is a trio made up of Dillon, Skerik, and a rotating third member.  For a while, the spot was filled by Brian Haas of Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, but is currently being manned by Brad Houser from Critters Buggin.  This essentially makes the group a “Critters Buggin Trio“, a name under which they have also performed.  The Marco Benevento Trio, in fact, was made up of former-Jacob Fred member Reed Mathis and Critter’s Buggin drummer, Matt Chamberlain.  Confused yet?  You should be…. and I’ve given you the super stripped down version, without even mentioning Crack Sabbath, The Taint Septet, Coxygen, Tuatara, Go Go Jungle, Robert Walters, or any of the other endless twisted associations between the individual musicians.  I’m just going to assume that, if Stanton Moore is involved, then it’s “technically” a Garage A Trois event.  That and the fact that GAT has just released Power patriot, a new album of material, which they recently showcased during a handful of promotional dates. (more…)

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