Photo: Perou

By Arvo Zylo

The first thing to know about lead musician Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is that s/he (the preferred non-gender identification) is a combination of two people who address themselves as “we.” Breyer P-Orridge had a longstanding, fruitful and intimate relationship with a woman named Lady Jaye. In search of a way to consummate their love for each other and unsatisfied with simply saying “till death do us part,” they wanted to actually consume one another. And, in essence, they did. They went to plastic surgeons and exchanged each other’s skin, made each other’s cheekbones look alike, got breast implants for the same size cup, and so forth. Since Lady Jaye passed on from stomach cancer in 2007, Breyer P-Orridge considers h/erself an embodiment of both people, and to some extent, a connection to Lady Jaye’s place on the other side. Breyer P-Orridge and Lady Jaye called their project “Pandrogyne,” and part of the intent was to transcend the trappings of the body and to nullify the concept of gender. Some people consider themselves to be a man stuck inside of a woman’s body, or a woman stuck inside of a man’s body, but to Genesis, s/he is simply “stuck in a body.” It’s not transgender as much as it is post-gender. Read the rest of this entry »

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There’ve been a few reissued producer-focused instrumental albums during the digital age. A huge percentage of those sport Lee Perry’s name. Dilla’s become a more sought-after commodity since his death, but Pete Rock’s “PeteStrumentals” may be the pinnacle of hip-hop production, Beatminerz be damned. Despite being best known for “T.R.O.Y.,” a New York corollary to Common’s “I Used to Love H.E.R.,” Rock’s spent more time estranged from C.L. Smooth, the partner he rose to fame with in the early nineties. Read the rest of this entry »

Bobbito/Photo: Joe Conzo

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“Kool Keith asked me to rhyme and so I kicked it,” Bobbito Garcia says on the 1993 eponymous Cenobites album. Granting Kool Keith, one half of the Cenobites along with Godfather Don, a platform during the waning days of his affiliation with Ultramagnetic MCs, wasn’t a move based solely on being a fan. Bobbito, who’d been a part of a well-received hip-hop radio show as well as a live fixture on the NYC scene, saw an opportunity to raise up the reasonably obscure and tout it as industry standard. Underground rap stuffs, especially during the early nineties, functioned as incubation for various approaches to the music which would eventually wind up making radio-ready acts a boatload of loot. Read the rest of this entry »

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Into its third decade as electronic provocateur, Brit-based Plaid has constructed a towering catalog detailing the genre’s ins and outs with little concern for accepted practices. Prior to Andy Turner and Ed Handley issuing this year’s “Scintilli” on the venerable Warp Records, a significant portion of the aughties involved Plaid engaging with some sort of soundtrack work. “Greedy Baby” was released as a CD/DVD package a few years back; then the duo moved on to scoring a Japanese drama. There’s been a pretty thorough consistency over the course of Plaid’s recorded output regardless of the medium in which each beat’s meant to be dispensed. Read the rest of this entry »

Cut Chemist/Photo: Mr. Mass

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Deciding whether Cut Chemist is better known for his association with Jurassic 5, DJ Shadow or Ozomatli is a difficult proposition. Regardless of the answer, being at the forefront of beats for more than a decade’s allowed the L.A.-based performer a huge and wildly variegated audience. Instead of focusing on continued production of work for others to use, Cut Chemist’s endeavored to mix a wealth of disparate, funky cuts into sundry mixes. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Rapture is coming your way, and you better be ready to dance. The New York indie rockers pioneered dance-punk in the early 2000s under the producer’s eye of a pre-LCD Soundsystem James Murphy, with songs like 2002’s “House of Jealous Lovers.” They were at the forefront of experimenters that melded house and disco influences into rock songs, interspersing vocal hooks and guitar riffs with synth, cowbell and saxophone, looping and mixing them together with a hefty dose of funk. When they sing “People don’t dance no more” on their 2006 single “Whoo! Alright, Yeah… Uh Huh,” they’re throwing down a challenge.  Read the rest of this entry »

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The lonesome recording artist Jimmy LaValle, a.k.a. The Album Leaf, is set to bring to life his ambient, dreamy electronica soundscapes at the Bottom Lounge with the help of a live band. The intricate pieces that LaValle creates on record are not simply reproduced straight from the studio, but rather added to and re-imagined with the help of the three musicians that tour with him. The songs are kept sounding fresh so that they may continue to evolve regardless of the fact they have been committed to record. Read the rest of this entry »

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Electric Picnics at Millennium Park have been going swimmingly this summer. Who knew that a little bit of twitch with your ham sandwich could be so enjoyable? Helping to round off the summer series is a celebration for the twentieth anniversary of Rephlex Records. Richard D. James, better known as Aphex Twin and the founder of the label, has been lying low for the past few years. While he hasn’t released anything personally, his label has been churning out records from other artists, including Squarepusher and Kevin Martin. Rephlex must be feeling extra celebratory, as they’re having a party for each decade that it has been around: one at Pritzker Pavilion and the other at the Empty Bottle. Read the rest of this entry »

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It wasn’t easy for Mexican alt-rockers Zoe since their 1994 inception. Like many indie bands, they took the DIY approach until they were discovered by a major label four years later—which subsequently dropped them—leaving them to fend for themselves until they finally got a distribution deal from Sony Music in 2000.

In the meantime, they made their name by playing in Latin alternative festivals and opening for established names like Gustavo Cerati (formerly of Babasonicos) and Franz Ferdinand—which helped broaden their fan base and led them to semi-superstardom in Latin America. Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone who attended the Pitchfork Music Festival may remember the cheerful, intoxicating music of Baths, otherwise known as Will Wiesenfield. Baths is Wiesenfeld’s day job, generating buoyant and crisp beats worthy of dancing, while Geotic is very appropriately the night job, as the sound is much more demure and dark.

During the Pitchfork Music Festival, we asked Wiesenfeld to explain his style to people who hadn’t heard it. “I have a sentence!” he exclaimed, laughing at his ready explanation. “I say it’s songwriting from an electronic perspective, in that I’m incorporating very standard things like verse-chorus-verse and human subject matter and that sort of thing, but that the palette of sound is much different than a normal song.” That palette varies between Baths and Geotic, but with the latter, the sound is undeniably ambient. Read the rest of this entry »