Thrill Jockey Records

Q&A: Bettina Richards of Thrill Jockey Records On The 20th Anniversary Of Her Label

The iconic and staunchly independent label Thrill Jockey Records may be Chicago-based since the mid '90s, but its roots lie here in New York and along the grimy Path train tunnel where Hoboken stands. Two decades ago, L.E.S. resident Bettina Richards founded Thrill Jockey while working the rounds at ... More >>

This Week's Five Best Concerts: Pistol Annies, Thrill Jockey, Austra, And More

If you're thumbing through the print edition (God bless your soul), it's hard to miss the three pages of recommended events that open the issue. Because the internet makes those a little less obvious, here are our five picks for concerts this week. Tomorrow, the Pistol Annies come to Midtown's Term ... More >>

Sound Lab

Tortoise play Thrill Jockey’s anniversary party

Q&A: Greg Fox On How A Rasta Alien In A Yellow Adidas Tracksuit Handed Him The New Guardian Alien Record While He Was Meditating In A Van On Tour

Greg Fox, drummer extraordinaire for the sonic-spiritualist psychers Guardian Alien, is chowing down on grub at Cong Ly on Hester Street, and with the exception of a small dose of displeasure regarding the econo cuisine ("Weird. I feel like they used different noodles today or something"), the vibes ... More >>

Q&A: Chicago Underground Duo's Chad Taylor On Improvising, The New York And Chicago Jazz Scenes, And Leaving Thrill Jockey

Chicago Underground Duo's defection from their longtime label Thrill Jockey to the fledgling New York-based Northern Spy imprint—after fifteen years and some seven albums of visionary experimentalism gleaned from Windy City improv and post-jazz sonics—is actually a reunion of sorts. In ... More >>

Q&A: Dave Shuford On The Bargain Bin, Writing Urban Country Music, And His New Band Rhyton

Dave Shuford has been ingrained in the New York City soundscape for decades as part of the experimentalist collective mutants No Neck Blues Band, which ruled both downtown's now-departed avant-garde roost The Cooler and their Harlem practice pad the Hint House. In recent years, less activity on th ... More >>

On Mirel Wagner and the Alleged Death and Apparent Spread of Freak Folk

Scattered cosmic dust

Greg Fox Breaks Free from the Drum Circle

Q&A: Trans Am's Nathan Means On Playing And Reissuing 1999's Futureworld, Being A Part-Time Band And Re-Recording Their First Album

In the mid-'90s, before getting saddled with the term became a dirty word, Trans Am was one of the core members of the post-rock scene. While their label and scenemates in Tortoise meticulously concocted easy-listening fake jazz tailored for indie brainiacs, Trans Am played the part of the prog-obse ... More >>

Live: High Places Play It Cool At Tammany Hall

by Erin Rioux ​ High Places Tammany Hall Saturday, August 13 Better than: Listening to The Weeknd's record for the fourth time on repeat. The Los Angeles-via-Brooklyn duo High Places launched into their set on Saturday night with "Year Off," the first single off their forthcoming LP Origin ... More >>

Download: Mountains' Bubbly "Thousand Square"

Jon Leone​Meditative blisscrafters Mountains are Brooklyn's finest young purveyors of pillowy drifts, true masters of the airy drone. Over six fantastically fluffy years, Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp have explored different combinations of otherworldy hum and fluttery post-Fahey acoustic ... More >>

Q & A: Come's Thalia Zedek and Chris Brokaw On Van Halen, Chavez, and Reunions (Including Codeine!)

​ The prospect of post-blues dirge shredders Come reforming with all four original members didn't exactly trigger an earth-shaking ruckus akin to what ensued when Guided by Voices and Dinosaur Jr schlepped their "classic" lineups on the road. But the reunion of singer/guitarist/badass Thalia ... More >>

Download: Metallic Math Rockers Liturgy's "Generation"

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent. ​ Brooklyn black metal astral-projectors Liturgy have been the perfect blend of gut-grinding aggression and hypnotic ecstasy ever since their transcendent debut Renihilation--an album that one of th ... More >>

Download: D. Charles Speer Goes Greecian With "Markos's Cave"

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent. ​Brooklyn picker D. Charles Speer has spent years traversing various avenues of the transcendent -- he's been a member of art-folk avant-pileup No Neck Blues Band, Southern-fried strummers Suntanama, ... More >>

The Boredoms' 2007 77BOADRUM Performance at Brooklyn Bridge Park To Be Memorialized on DVD

We're on record as feeling a bit grouchy about the way a magical, one-time-only Brooklyn evening got turned into a franchise by Japan's Boredoms. Once, 77BOADRUM--77 drummers on 07/07/07, playing for 77 minutes starting at 7:07pm in Brooklyn Bridge Park--was touted as a singular event, never to be ... More >>

Arbouretum+Pontiak

Trans Am

NPR Remembers Jack Rose

Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography​It was a little bit more than three months ago that Philadelphia guitarist Jack Rose died suddenly at the age of 38. Over the weekend, NPR did a story on the departed musician that drew heavily on an interview reporter Joel Rose--no relation--had done with the g ... More >>

The Unsound Festival Gets Way Out

Poland's finest annual fete heads to NYC

High Places, Spooky House Jams, "On Giving Up"

Really loving the woozy depressification going on with these guys. Photo by Katelyn Reeves.​Wow, word was that Mary Pearson and Rob Barber were doing something completely different for High Places vs. Mankind (out in April on Thrill Jockey) and October's "I Was Born" was pretty ethereal and da ... More >>

"A Valentine for Jack Rose" Slated for Issue Project in February; Download New Song "Woodpiles On The Side Of The Road"

​Last month, the Philadelphia guitarist Jack Rose was felled by a heart attack at the appallingly young age of 38. He was in his creative prime. Now comes the welcome word that Thrill Jockey will be releasing Luck in the Valley, the last album he recorded before his death, on February 23rd. It ... More >>

Future Islands+Javelin

RIP Jack Rose

​His Kensingston Blues was the record I listened to most in 2005. That year I remember seeing him play in various small venues in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, the temperature in the room always a little bit too high, the longer more hypnotic stuff like "Calais to Dover" and "Cathedral et Chartre ... More >>

Video Premiere: White Hills, "Dead"

The psych/garbage/space rock trio White Hills fall into that Brooklyn corner where the songs are long and aliases abide--like their close affiliates Oneida, White Hills' Dave W. and Ego Sensation underpin oozy post-psych moans with busy, virtuosic rhythmic scaffolding. "Dead" was recorded at Oneid ... More >>

A Patient High Places Save Their New Song/Video for Halloween

Your new-look High Places: sing-y, bassoon-y, spooky. "I Was Born," the single, is out today on Thrill Jockey; above is the duo's self-made video for the song, which is suitably scary and features what is either a nearly unrecognizable Mary Pearson or, alternately, an entirely different person. Th ... More >>

SAVORY SOUNDS

There are folksters in the checkout aisle

High Places Relocate to Los Angeles, Join the Smell Club

This is what happens to your face when you forsake Brooklyn Because it's important to know which blog luminaries you'll run into at the next Market Hotel show, we're here to tell you that High Places, thee of elementary-school performances and "winsome exotic-onica," are no longer a Brooklyn band, ... More >>

Interview: Howe Gelb a/k/a Giant Sand

Hugs and Kisses #38: New Bloods' Kill Rock Stars Record

2007 Jazz Poll Ballots: A-O

New releases, reissues, debuts, and more—each critic's picks

2007 Jazz Poll Ballots: P-Z

New releases, reissues, debuts, and more—each critic's picks

The 2007 Jazz Poll

This year's finisher's

Live: Tunng at Union Hall, 10.23.07

The Raw Power of a Fresh Start

Pleasurable epitaphs, avant-garde daring, and wonder-filled immigrant songs

Summer's Here Kids

Sweltering jams for the imminent doldrums

Noise from the Front

For the week of May 30-June 5, 2007

Noise From the Front

For the week of November 8–14, 2006

All in the Family

Confused teens, confused thirtysomethings, and old jazz guys enjoying their dotage

DJ Kicks

Nine sane and rewarding life choices we promise you will not get punished by God for

Updates, Not Throwbacks

Gypsies and Jews, Afro-Cubans and avant-gardists, led by two smashing piano players

The Caribbean Tinge

Thoughtful, passionate jazz musicians feel around a big world, and an old one as well

Anti-Gravitational Boots

Some very rough guides to living in a nation that won't share and will never be the same

Music

Music

Vibrators

Pazz & Jop Preview

Music

Music

Hat Tricks

Chopping Timbre

The Art of the Indie-Rock Remix