Music
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One Man, Two Musicians
Kevin Gift is a classical pianist. In some circles, however, he’s known as electronic musician Wendel Patrick. This is no ordinary stage name, however.
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Terra Naomi
Terra Naomi, a friend of The Rumpus, just released a new song, Vicodin, online for free. Professionally trained in opera at the University of Michigan, the Internet propelled Terra to fame. Three years ago, Naomi’s YouTube music videos went viral…
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The Definite Article
The Juan MacLean finally have a new album out. A much-anticipated garden of electronica songsmithing, The Future Will Come is tremendous, careful, and sleek; it will blow your little mind-feet! The Juan MacLean is touring with The Field (What’s the…
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Dictionaroke, and Other Sing-alongs
Nancy Friedman writes: Dictionaraoke: A musical form in which an instrumental (karaoke) version of a song is accompanied by online dictionary-pronunciation audio files.
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Can’t Tell Me Nothing
The Rumpus doesn’t really do Kanye West. It doesn’t hate him and it doesn’t love him. It just doesn’t go there. But when the self-proclaimed “voice of this generation“— in an interview for the release of his book, no less…
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The beat goes on – Remembering Elvin Jones
Elvin Jones, one of the most influential jazz drummers, most known for his work with John Coltrane, died this week five years ago, on May 18th, 2004. Adam Mansbach, who is recently well known for his novel Angry White Black…
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The Piano’s Been Drinking Decaf
I’ve heard lots of wild rumors about the musician Tom Waits over the years. The best one was that his career was an abysmal failure until he was stabbed in the throat in a bar fight, changing his voice —…
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The Freak of Araby
Sir Richard Bishop is a lot of things to a lot of people. He’s a gentleman! He’s a post-punk Guitar God! Now the half-Lebanese indie instrumentalist is about to release an expansive little record on Drag City called The Freak…
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On Cat Power: It Must be the Colors
When I first started listening to Cat Power’s music, I was still with a man I very much loved. He played music, he was a music man, and for four years, I depended on him for all my music.
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Nordic Track
My friend Margaret has some good ideas, like DJing a monthly night of Northern indie pop. She might call it Nordic Track. That’s a perfect name, indicating how we would skate to Jens and Beyond. Maybe it will happen someday.…
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #1: The Gregory Brothers
The Gregory Brothers, a Brooklyn-based quartet, remix speeches and news clips using an audio processor called Auto-Tune to create catchy musical news mash-ups that Rachel Maddow dubs “newsicals.” By auto-tuning the voices of politicians, pundits, and TV journalists like Katie Couric,…