No matter whether you buy into the Holloys’ mythology*, the Los Angeles band’s chief mystic and bottle washer Jim Brown has been recalibrating sonic weights and measures for eight years now. (* “Holloys” are intelligent energy frequencies that propel the band’s music from a place called Lake Land to a place called Everything, i.e. Earth […]
When he fronted the lamentably overlooked Mere Mortals, Axel Steuerwald fashioned tunes that seemed beamed across the Atlantic from Manchester and sprinkled with garage-rock fairy dust. His new quartet United Ghosts, founded with Sha Sabi, build on that approach – driving Euro dance rhythms, hazy guitar and synth textures and boy/girl vocals straight out of […]
Today is the seventh anniversary of the passing of John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, known to the music world as John Peel, the legendary English DJ and tastemaker who died in 2004 at age 65. Last week, a Los Angeles DJ and promoter who keeps the Peel flame burning, Part Time Punks’ Michael Stock, did a […]
Three years and more than 3,300 posts ago, I launched Buzz Bands LA as way to stay busy after my employers politely told me they no longer needed my services. I had no illusions that, in a blog world populated by younger, faster, tech-savvier talent, very many people would care. So color me flattered that […]
Top of your Tuesday: ‣ Buzz Bands LA’s Three-Year Anniversary party goes off at the Echo, with Everest headlining and support from Hands and Death to Anders. More details in the next post. ‣ Tom Morello, d/b/a The Nightwatchman, hits the Troubadour behind his new album “World Wide Rebel Songs.” ‣ Atlanta quartet Gringo Star, […]
Guitar rockers making mind-bending electro – “Stitches,” the first single from the Polinski album “Labyrinths,” features two of them. Polinski is the nom de tune of Paul Wolinski of U.K. math-rockers 65daysofstatic, and the phased vocals on the track belong to Jonathan Bates, the Mellowdrone main man whose own foray into electro, as Big Black […]
Yuna first picked up at guitar at the age of 14, but it wasn’t until she was in the midst of studying law that she began to hone her songwriting craft with performances in the public eye. Now, the 24-year-old Malaysian singer is making herself at home in L.A. while she brings some of those […]
Bradley Hanan Carter sings with the weight of a guy who’s wrestled some demons, or at the very least covered a lot of miles. The latter, in Carter’s case, is inarguable – he’s the former guitarist/backup singer in the New Zealand rock quintet Steriogram, largely idle (except for a digital album in 2010) since 2007, […]
In the battle between original sin and disco, there are no losers. At least, when said fight is orchestrated by Alex Lilly and Bram Inscore, the multi-instrumentalist art-schoolers whose wry take on electro has been realized in the new project Touché. Longtime friends Lilly and Inscore are familiar faces on the L.A. scene; Lilly for […]
[Thanks to Seraphina and Trina for holding down the fort while I was on vacation. Big week ahead, starting with Bill Wyman’s 75th birthday today …] Monday madness: ‣ Gold Panda, the U.K. producer whose career took off in 2010 after the release of his debut “Lucky Shiner,” visits the Echoplex. He has a mixtape […]