Ellen Allien LISm (Bpitch Control) I have been reading Albert Camus’s The Plague for the fourth or fifth time. It is one of my all-time favorite books and, given my tendency to slip into a funk in the springtime, on the short-list of books I pick up when I am wallowing in the mire of depression. Let...

The Howling Hex The Best of the Howling Hex (Drag City) I take my son to kindergarten each morning in a twelve-year-old, salvage-titled CR-V that, incidentally, is missing a muffler. It is a noisy fifteen-minute drive. As if to add insult to injury, the stereo only comes out of one of the speakers. Occasionally,...

Apparat Krieg und Frieden (Music for Theatre) Mute Apparat’s new album sounds like a soundtrack. And so it is, for a stage production of Krieg und Frieden, or as most English speakers know it, Tolstoy’s War and Peace. After scoring the production, Apparat, whose real name is Sascha Ring, decided...

The Pinkerton Raid The Pinkerton Raid (self-released) I am not comfortable with my spirituality, and I am not comfortable with my sensuality. Combine the two, and my first instinct is to crawl back into my Cancerian shell like the late June baby I am. I do not feel compelled to raise my hands or clap...