Alejandro Escovedo salutes Lou Reed

Alejandro Escovedo and crew ripped through Waiting For The Man at Austin's Continental Club.

Whaddya mean you don't know The Swanks

Spirit Family Reunion & Hurray For The Riff Raff @ The Horseshoe, tonight

Stream Calibro 35's dope new crime funk opus

Calibro 35's Traditori di Tutti was just issued by Record Kicks on clear vinyl. 

Remembering Austin Peralta on his day

Caitlin & Henry vs. Nancy & Lee

Henry Wagons joined Caitlin Rose for a sweet duet of Summer Wine in Melbourne last night.

Lindi Ortega @ the Great Hall tonight

Happy Birthday Dale Crover!

The Melvins' Dale Crover, Aberdeen High School 1985

See Jacco Gardner @ The Garrison Tuesday

One For The Weekend: Katie Bulley

"Chasing" is off the Lone Wolf solo debut of Hamilton's Katie Bulley who plays The 'Shoe Dec 2.

LINKS
site http://www.katiebulley.com/
bandcamp https://katiebulley.bandcamp.com/

Don't miss Alice Russell @ The Garrison, Friday

Brit soul belter Alice Russell will be the standout performer at Uma Nota this weekend. 

Fuzz vs. King Crimson

The 21st Century Schizoid Men of Fuzz rock Parts & Labour tonight.

Happy Birthday Sugar Pie De Santo!

New Day TV host grills Moondoggies about studio choice and album title

Alejandro Escovedo's San Antonio Rain

Whaddya mean you don't know Vogel

Swiss subversive Robert Vogel's 1980 single for Recommended features the dope "Guten Morgen"

Zacht Automaat 2xLP Release Party @ Grasshopper Records, Saturday

Slim Twig will be DJing upstairs with Carl Didur's ZA installation running downstairs.  

.

LINKS
FB event
Calico Corp. label
Weird Canada: Carl Didur on Zacht Automaat

Goblin @ The Opera House, Friday

Goblin have had some line-up changes since 1975 but their sound is no less creepy.

Jandek's Halloween treat for Minneapolis

The show will be filmed for the Jandek documentary Tuning The Pulse.

LINKS
Tickets for Jandek at the Cedar Cultural Center
Tuning The Pulse documentary

Remembering Harvey Pekar on his day

Harvey Pekar was the star of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations episode on Cleveland.

Crystal Stilts @ The Horseshoe, Tuesday

Hanni El Khatib @ The Horseshoe tonight

Check out Hanni El Khatib's rip through "Family" on The Late Show with David Letterman.

One For The Weekend: Archie Shepp & Bernard Purdie

"Back Back" was cut in NYC on February 17, 1969... where's the rest of the session?

Hear Black Milk's No Poison No Paradise at The Drake, Wednesday

Black Milk discusses his new album via Skype at the Drake in advance of his Mod Club show Oct 15.

Known for his progressive and boundary-pushing style, Black Milk's anticipated new No Poison No Paradise finds the always on-point Detroit producer/MC going back to hip hop basics. While 2010's Album of the Year was an album of dense and heavily layered sounds, the new record will have a more stripped-down approach, relying on sample driven beats to support much more elaborate narratives. 

The decision to move operations from his D-town home base played an important role in his recent burst of activity which resulted in the Record Store Day release of his vinyl-only  instrumental set Synth Or Soul  – the first in a collaborative series of EPs with illustrator Upendo Taylor called Fuzz, Freqs, & Colors – and his forthcoming album (due October 15) both on his new Computer Ugly label. 

"Recording outside of Detroit for the first time put me in a place without instant access to a lot of the musicians, engineers, emcees and singers that I usually collaborate with," Black Milk explains, "just me in a room with my equipment and my thoughts." Although he did have a few guests drop by for a visit during the sessions, namely Dwele, Robert Glasper and Black Thought from The Roots. 

"I wanted to focus more on storytelling and having a collection of songs with subjects that tie into one another,"  he continues, suggesting  that No Poison No Paradise is very much a concept album which functions as a series of dream sequences drawn from the subconscious mind of the fictional character Sonny Jr. 

In the track Perfected On Puritan Ave. (below),  Sonny flashes back to a time when he and his childhood friend are playing basketball and aspiring to be NBA stars or rappers then flashes forward to find Sonny living some of his childhood dreams. Along the way, Black Milk also touches on the experiences of some of Sonny's peers, weaving and bobbing in a non-linear narrative. "Just like a dream, the scenes are always changing and sometimes feel random and inconsistent," he explains. "It's a mixture. Some songs and stories are told from Sonny's older self, some from his younger days, and some from a third person perspective." 

Though not a direct first person account of his own life, the themes Black Milk explores on No Poison No Paradise arose from the experiences he had growing up in a working-class Detroit neighborhood as well as the internal conflicts of maintaining inspiration and integrity as a musician.

For more information about the No Poison No Paradise listening party at the Drake Hotel on Wednesday (October 2) from 6 pm to 10 pm and/or to RSVP,  go here