On “This Is Cave Music,” Moon Hooch Tighten Up Without Turning Down (Album Review)
Written by Kevin Madert
Before I bought Moon Hooch’s self-titled debut album, I didn’t know the true meaning of the phrase “replay value.” From late-night drives to early morning runs, parties to study sessions and everything in between, Moon Hooch became my go-to soundtrack for basically everything. It’s for this reason the prospect of a new Moon Hooch LP stirred within me equally feelings of excitement and nervousness. My mental bar for a follow-up full-length was set to an unfair height, and a part of me fretted the trio would let me down by default.
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Album Review: This Will Destroy You – Another Language
–Written by Mike Hogan
I’m constantly amazed by how much can be accomplished with some droning, reverb-y guitar feedback and a simple, repetitive drum beat. It seems like nothing – an album skipping, perhaps – but there can be so much depth and subtlety hidden within the noise, invoking a fresh new mood with only slight adjustments in dynamics. It’s truly a phenomenon to experience when a single non-melodic sound can inspire so much emotion. Years ago, Austin, Texas post-rock band This Will Destroy You took an idea very similar to this one and cemented their place within the hearts of the post-rock community with their debut EP Young Mountain. The first track, “Quiet” encapsulated the prodigious grasp TWDY had on just a single phrase of music, showcasing how such a simplistic structure could be manipulated into a million different emotions – from despondent and melancholy to bright and uplifting, all driven by a largely unchanged drumbeat. It was a brilliant exercise in simplistic minimalism, and it became the hallmark of their sound.
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Weekend Warm-Up No. 4: Rad Drummers
–Words and list by Michael Hogan
Do you remember sitting in chemistry class in high school, trying to figure out a new concept, and your brain just keeps stumbling over itself? You’re reaching to understand something, and you feel like you’re so close, but it’s always just out of reach? Maybe I’m just especially terrible at chemistry (I am), but this same principle applies to these tracks, featuring some of the gnarliest drumming ever recorded.
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Review: Phaeleh Gives Back with “Somnus”
–Reviewed by Mike Hogan
I’ve always been very impressed with how Phaeleh could accomplish so much using so little. All of his tracks are so minimalistic, yet so full. Take “Here Comes the Sun” off his 2013 full length, Tides, the majority of the song is just a drum track, a very simple bass line, vocals, and some very subtle atmospherics layered way in the back of the track. But it never feels like that little. It seems like a complete, complex track, one that actually feels a lot more whole than most other tracks out there.
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Next Time I’ll Bring More Rope: Behind the Scenes (and Before the Crowds) at Big Dub Festival
–Written by Michael Hogan
On Wednesday, July 30, people were beginning to show up to Big Dub in droves, sitting outside the front gate at some ungodly hour of the morning. I was most certainly still asleep, though I couldn’t stay asleep for long, I had work to finish, and unfortunately I had to finish it before gates opened at two to let all those people in. That was the 5th day of my Big Dub adventure.
Of course, people started pouring in much earlier than two, and I was greeted by every single one of them as my team and I worked tirelessly to finish up our last major deco installation, which was blocking the main road down to the bottom camp (much to the disdain of Four Quarters management). Nearly every person that waited patiently as we cleared the road in periodic increments to let campers by made sure to shout from their car windows at us to let us know how good everything looked, and what a good job we were doing. This was quite brave of them; I was hot, sweaty, and had gone far too many days without a shower. I couldn’t have looked like anybody worth a kind word.
But everyone appreciated all our work regardless, and that felt really good. That made all the setbacks and frustration worth it. Not only seeing our finished product in the air and working, but having everyone else see it, and actively appreciate it; that made it worth the trouble.
I couldn’t help but recognize that all of those people were only seeing the closing stages of the process; they were only witnessing the proverbial tip of the inflatable iceberg. They knew it looked cool, and I’m sure they knew it must have been some work to get it all up there, but that effort was not a tangible, identifiable action. It was a concept, a theoretical portion of time that had passed, and remained in their mind for only a fleeting moment as they first passed underneath the almost complete structure.
They had no idea we had a potentially disastrous light bulb oversight, or a massive calamity with the rope, or how we had to improvise with just about every makeshift ‘tool’ that we used. And that’s okay. They didn’t need to know about all of that. They were there to enjoy the show, and only processed the decorations as an object requiring effort when they could see the effort being put in.
And it’s that forgotten side of things that I’m here to talk about, because most of us rarely take the time to note all the hard work that actually goes into making these festivals look presentable. So here’s a timeline of my set up experience from start to finish.
It’s important to note that this is only a small piece of the pie; countless staff members put in countless hours of hard work to make this happen. But it should provide some relative perspective, and hopefully an interesting look at a side of the festival experience that you have never seen before.
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Review: The Gaslight Album Bottles Instant Nostalgia On “Get Hurt”
–Written by Michael Hogan
Late in the summer of 2008, I was settling into my new apartment in Boston. I had just moved there, and I didn’t know many people yet, so most of my time was spent either walking around the city trying to get my bearings or sitting on my computer listening to music. One day, not long after I had moved in, my good friend from New Jersey messaged me on AIM with an album that I needed to check out immediately. This was something he’d do from time to time – and in fact still does – but this album was different than all the others; this album spoke to me immediately.
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