Tone Freq Studios captures pristine acoustics and emphasizes analog warmth, creating a tactile space that values collective experiences over the convenience of digital recording methods.
People all saw that there is something new is being attempted here that you've just got to see. I think that is its own reward. In an era where New York's storied Met Opera has faced layoffs, pay cuts, postponed productions, and a controversial financial agreement with Saudi Arabia, forward-thinking artistic direction becomes essential for survival.
Pitchfork is honored to host one of our favorite bands- Mandy, Indiana-to kick off our inaugural reader Q&A series. Starting right now, you can post your questions for guitarist and producer Scott Fair, and synth player Simon Catling to talk about their outstanding record, Fair's solo project set dressing, or whatever else you want to ask them about the joys and difficulties of music, Manchester, and making art.
Things begin promisingly enough with the darkly powerful Going Up and All That Jazz from 1980's Crocodiles, the first of the terrific four-album run which blended psychedelia, post-punk and classic songwriting to turn the Liverpudlians into one of most hallowed bands of the decade.
I want people to go on a journey. Some people say their inner child is being healed - my music is doing something for people. So when I'm writing the new music, which is nearly finished, I'm picturing things like Coldplay and Massive Attack shows where they have elements of organic human music, real vocals, and no autotune. That's where I'm going.
We tend to think AI music tools are just gimmicks for social media creators, or that they're limited to basic beats. But it's hard to dismiss them when companies like Google, Meta and Stability AI are pouring resources into generative audio models that can produce full compositions in seconds.
I have written before that while women are gloriously surging in academic, social, and career achievement, many young men are flailing. Pop culture pieces as well as academic dissertations are replete with accounts of male aimlessness and resultant disaffection and disengagement. They point out that the growing achievement gap and resultant maturational/responsibility gap between men and women are making young men progressively less and desirable to modern young women.
She's a wonderful person. So that was half of the quest, can we find somebody that's gonna be really fun to be with? She's really a lovely person. She laughs easily. She felt immediately comfortable. I think she was quite nervous in those first few days... But she worked really hard. She prepped for it. She had five songs, and we went through those songs. But by the fourth day, Ged and I, we talked and we weren't quite sold on it.
It's purely a creative space. There are no deadlines. There are no have-to's. It's just something I do for me. When you design a recording studio, the first thing you want to do is treat the room to make sure the sound is good, so you're getting an accurate depiction of the music as it was played or recorded.
When a stranger smiles at you, you smile back. That is why, when Sir Ian McKellen ( The Lord of the Rings, X-Men, Amadeus) walked on the stage in front of me, looked me straight in the eye, and smiled at me, I smiled back. It was the polite thing to do. It was also completely unnecessary, because McKellen was not actually on the stage in front of me. He smiled at me through a pair of special glasses.
Other Dimensions in Sound is our Friday music series curated and hosted by Boohaabian multi reed player extraordinare David Boyce. Each week David will be inviting different musical guests to join him in our galeria for a night of sonic sustenance. This month: fiery Filipino-American guitarist Karl Evangelista performs the entirety of Sonny Sharrock's "Guitar" album - solo, as intended. The trio of Ari Brown, Elango Kumaran, and David Israel Katz joins.
The first, "JCMF," is a rebellious song about Jesus punishing those who are cruel and helping the children upon his return, while the second single, "No More Darkness," calls for a return to the light and a pursuit of goodness. In a press release, Sparhawk explained that "JCMF" is an older track that he's played on the road for the past year.
Designed by Korean up-and-comer Woojin Yang, Everglow is a handheld mini-keyboard that fits into any bag. The "musical sketchbook" of sorts allows artists to quickly jot down ideas when they're not in front of their instruments or computers. The sleekly-designed device comes with a generative AI-based sound system that allows them to iterate and develop a song on the spot, not just transcribe the initial tune.
As the CEO and co-founder of the generative AI music company Suno, Shulman currently finds himself in the exhilarating if perhaps unenviable position of being simultaneously regarded as the architect of music's future and its executioner. Suno, which was founded just over two years ago, allows users to create entire songs with just a few text prompts. At the moment, you can't prompt it with the name of a specific pop star
In the five years that they've been active, it sometimes seems as if Purelink are dissolving right before our eyes. They've never again released anything quite as corporeal or propulsive as their debut EP, which paired visceral dub techno with rolling drum'n'bass. On their 2023 debut album, , glitchy drums crackled in a pastel haze, and last year's was even more ethereal; the trio's individual identities melted together under cover of amorphous arrangements that suggested fogbanks, blizzards, and other zero-visibility conditions.
I'm jumping around the stage like a rabid monkey, rapping my song, and I'm taking breaths, and my DJ is filling in the other parts of it - I even told them when I saw the rough cut, I was like, You guys got to work on that sync. It's off. So it was just a syncing issue that they had, and I know they tried to get it right. It was very difficult.
Musician and visual artist Dan Reeder is one of the longest signees to Oh Boy Records (which John Prine signed him to), and more recently artists like boygenius (who covered his song "Stay Down, Man"), Jeff Tweedy and Wilco, and Joshua Ray Walker have revealed themselves as fans; he also performed during the first ever Newport Folk Festival edition of Jack Antonoff's Ally Coalition Talent Show last year, where he was joined onstage by Waxahatchee, Weyes Blood, and Bleachers.
The 2026 edition of NYC Winter Jazzfest wrapped up on Tuesday (1/12) with a special reimagining of Miles Davis' classic 1970 album Bitches Brew at Le Poisson Rouge, to celebrate Davis' centennial year. The evening, which was also dedicated to the late Bob Weir, began with a discussion of the album between Adam O'Farrill and Lenny White, who drummed on the original recording at age 19. He mentioned how Davis liked to cook, and directed White to be the "salt."