Frequency of the Week No. 8: Gallows
This has been a pretty crazy month for new music. We’ve had killer new albums from everybody from Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Shlohmo to Hotel Books and Dance Gavin Dance. It’s been amazing, but it’s getting a bit hard to keep up with. If you aren’t really paying attention, you could miss a real gem. Like the new Gallows album, Desolation Sounds, which was released on April 13th on Bridge 9 Records. Funny thing too, it’s a great album, and Gallows is undoubtedly a great, albeit one with a somewhat unstable past. So instead of letting this actually very impressive release that may not match scale of the other big releases of the month fall by the wayside, we’re going to take things a step further, because to really understand the aggression present throughout Desolation Sounds, you really need the backstory of this cured but determined punk band from the UK.
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The Daily Frequency (4/20/15)
–Written by Kevin Madert
Today, a lot of things happened in the world of music. Here are some of them.
1. Moonrise Festival will begin selling early bird tickets this Thursday at 11AM EST. After a successful debut last summer, Steez Promo will once again put on the two-day festival (August 8th and 9th) at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, MD. You can check the official Moonrise Festival site for more information. Via Facebook
AltFreq Weekly Planner (4/19/15-4/22/15)
–Written by Kevin Madert
It’s nearly impossible to keep track of all the events going on in the area, so we’re here to let you know what’s happening in live music over the next few days. Watch out on Thursdays for the “Weekend Planner” where we’ll cover the most important 72 hours of the week.
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Review: Dance Gavin Dance – Instant Gratification
There aren’t many albums out there these days that have true staying power. Music has become disposable like most everything else. There are so many good bands out there putting out good music so rapidly that there is little reason to stay loyal to any one album for an extended period of time, lest you might miss the next remarkable flash in the pan. Not to sell the music short, of course, but it’s become so easy to record good music and make it accessible, that so many artists are putting out such highly quality music all the time. It seems like every week a new album of the year contender is released. Team this up with society’s collective ADD, and you get music that gets tossed aside like a day old newspaper.
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Show Spotlight: B.A.D.ASS Raves Presents Temple of Boom DC
Here in DC we’re very blessed as far as music goes. Aside from a plethora of shows happening on any given night, we have so many top tier venues to house those shows that we’ve become the envy of cities all around the world. Places like U Street Music Hall, Flash, Echostage, The 9:30 Club, the list is basically endless; any city would be lucky to have even one venue off that list, and we have them all. It’s really remarkable, but what’s even more remarkable is the talent; we have talent and innovators, people that continue to push the envelope show after show, people that will decide it’s too easy to throw a killer show at an internationally ranked venue. So, you know, why not throw a party in a parking garage near Gallaudet University, a school for the deaf?
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Weekend Warm-Up No. 16: Hip-Hop’s Golden Age
–Words & list by Kevin Madert
After developing quickly in the late 1970s and early 1980s, hip-hop hit what most music historians consider its pinnacle in the middle of the decade. With honed, intelligent lyricism, complex interior rhyme schemes, innovative production styles, and a steady diversification of subject material, hip-hop saw itself expand in explosive fashion. In Rolling Stone‘s accurate assessment, “it seemed that every new single reinvented the genre,” during the Golden Age, which persisted well into the 1990s.
This week’s warm-up is just as much a history lesson as a tool for the fabrication and proliferation of psychitude. You’ll hear intricate narratives detailing everything from the struggles of black youth in America (“Temperature’s Rising”) to the minutiae of everyday life (“The Jam”), not to mention the occasional chest-thumping soliloquy (“The Rep Grows Bigga,” “Gz & Hustlas”).
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