Top New York Music Stories

Music Features

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  The End of the Lower East Side's Last Great Rehearsal Space
  By Spencer Wilking

  Much of Manhattan is a secret city, and few secrets are better than this: Below venerable dive Max Fish, behind grated steel doors that often vibrate with noise, is an old brick-walled basement... More >>

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  Hanni El Khatib Is Sexy, Raw, and Dangerous
  By Black, Christina

  It's barely opened and there's already a pretty good crowd milling around the massive patio behind HVW8 gallery off Melrose. Rife with dirtbags and the women who love them, the crew has clustered... More >>

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  Jeff and Tim Buckley Live!
  By Calum Marsh

  Despite what its title suggests, Daniel Algrant's new drama, Greetings from Tim Buckley, concerns itself less with salutations than pointed farewells, the singer-songwriter not so much present as... More >>

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  Ghostface Killah and Adrian Younge Produce an Album That's a Movie
  By J. Pablo

  Rappers get to tell more detailed stories. They have a higher wordcount. They can fit War & Peace into 16 bars where other genres only have room for a fairy tale. And no rap artist takes more... More >>

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  The Sad Tale of Beast Coast Architect and Pro Era Emcee Capital STEEZ
  By Phillip Mlynar

  Jamal Dewar tweeted the words "The end" on Dec. 23, 2012. The next day he took his own life. He was 19. The news of his passing spread rapidly when his friend Jovaughn Scott tweeted his... More >>

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  The Making of Mykki Blanco
  By Jenna Sauers

  "Who fucks up two full rides?" Michael Quattlebaum Jr. is sitting in the kitchen of his manager's apartment in Williamsburg one cold Sunday morning, drinking a beet juice and wearing sweats. The... More >>

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  King Kurt (Vile)
  By Brian McManus

  About 100 kids line a tiny alley in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia, clapping and waving on cue. In the middle of them all, a rail-thin hesher with shoulder-length hair. He's wearing a... More >>

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  Waxahatchee's Katie Crutchfield Is No Longer Languishing in Grief
  By Elliott Sharp

  Katie Crutchfield, the 24-year-old Alabama–born, Philadelphia–based musician who's the creative force behind Waxahatchee, ditches our first interview. She apologizes for the... More >>

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  Billy Gibbons's Moving Sidewalks Are Back in a Flash
  By Brett Koshkin

  Forty-three years after forming ZZ Top, Billy Gibbons is trying to unlearn almost everything he knows about music. Everything except the psychedelic foundation he laid with his former group, the... More >>

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  Spring Arts Guide: The Once and Future Ratking
  By Jackson Connor

  Patrick "Wiki" Morales, frontman of the Harlem hip-hop group Ratking, is dressed in a baggy T-shirt and jeans, sitting at the Pakistan Tea House in Tribeca. He's with his bandmates, producer Eric... More >>

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  Spring Arts Guide: Wadada Leo Smith Brings His Epic Ten Freedom Summers to Brooklyn
  By Seth Colter Walls

  It's not unusual for a working musician to think that critics ought to be ignored. But in the annals of icy press relations, the fearlessly independent composer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith... More >>

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  Spring Arts Guide Picks: Music
  Edited By Seth Colter Walls

  DJ Spinn & DJ Rashad, Afrika Bambaataa May 23 The Red Bull Music Academy, a series of concerts, club nights, talks, and films, runs from April 28 to May 31 all over town, and it means business.... More >>

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  Tyondai Braxton's HIVE Mind
  By Jonah Bromwich

  Tyondai Braxton has never lacked for ambition. The former Battles frontman, who in recent years has collaborated with such luminaries as Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet, has always had an eye... More >>

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  Marc Spitz's Poseur Remembers a LES That No Longer Exists
  By Andrea Domanick

  At 43, rock writer Marc Spitz acknowledges he's a little young to be publishing a memoir. He chuckles, conceding that "Yeah, your sixties does seem to be the accepted time to put out a memoir,... More >>

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  The Mystery of Shuggie Otis
  By Jeff Weiss

  Where was Shuggie Otis all these years? Had he been making music? Was he cloistered in Northern California or hiding in plain sight in Los Angeles? Was his mind mangled from drugs, booze, or... More >>