beta blog

Visiting down in the mid-Atlantic region, our holiday has already been soundtracked by nu-Patriot classics like "The Lady in Red,...

RIP Rammellzee. A few years ago, I queried at Pitchfork about the man's totemic 12" "Beat Bop": "If "Rapper...

While the living artistic example of Oneida's Kid Millions has always been a revelation/ inspiration to me , I'm still taken aback ...

With each annual Jazz Fest, I lacerate myself for not spending the exorbitant sum for tickets to see bossa nova maestro João Gilberto perfo...

From the excellent Sam Anderson profile on musician/ comedian/ enigmatic beardo that is Reggie Watts in New York Mag from a few weeks ago:...

Last week, I got to do a very brief interview with Hendrik Weber, a/k/a Pantha du Prince . We chatted about the dark, efficient works of Ge...

A few winters ago, I traveled to China for a piece and from there decided to traipse through Southeast Asia for a few months more. My head ...

My interview with Black Dice's Bjorn Copeland appears in this month's edition of Theme Magazine, which was curated by Hisham Bharo...

Damn. Not even a week after my feature on the Sunday Best party, which kicked off along the Gowanus Canal over the Memorial Day weekend (pe...

Easily the best piece of music writing I've come across in the New Yorker in many moons (sigh, where do I begin with the travesty that...

This week, in a rare double-double for The Village Voice, I wrote about the mighty fun and fine Sunday Best party , as well as a bit about ...

Listicles, despite their objective presentation, are always line-in-the-sand subjective ones. I had fun spending the day with Kon + Amir...

Despite modern hip-hop/ R&B's obsession with dehumanized vocalizings, did anyone really think that circa 2010, aesthetic trending wo...

Back in February, I rented a car and wound up in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park, to interv...

Due to a spacing issue, my "Essential Five" tracks sidebar to the Claremont 56 piece didn't run. And so I thought I'd pos...

One of my favorite labels in recent memory, Claremont 56, just got "Label of the Month" designation over at Resident Advisor. As ...

"The act of writing brought him neither transport nor release; it was like slogging through acres of deep mud and had the same effect ...

In the depths of those chasmic doldrums that winter can bring, I one day received a big sunbeam in the form of an email from a Thomas Herman...

In the most recent issue of Paste , I contributed a few blurbs to their 50 Greatest Living Directors feature. Got to re-watch the work of T...