beta blog

Nearly a year in the works, the big feature I wrote about Nine 11 Thesaurus , a rap group that springs from an after-school program for dis...

How to spell New York. Two lines left out of my recent Esscort Q & A about their new single "Cocaine Blues" at the Voice : ...

Out now is Light in the Attic's handsome and heavy remaster/ reissue of Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg's first collaborative al...

It's a total thrill and honor to be spinning a few hours' worth of jams for my girl Jess Rotter 's art opening on Wednesday eve...

Islaja: Keraaminen Pää The two times I've happened upon Finnish musician Islaja (in Greenpoint and Beijing, of all places) she's en...

JUNIP - Always (Official Video) from City Slang on Vimeo . As a judge for this year's World Air Guitar Championships, I sat at the ...

Tough night at the (Ma)Sonic Temple with Sunn O))), Boris, and The Cult frontman Ian Astbury.

In anticipation of the new football season, I was asked to do a little something on facial hair in the NFL for the new issue of TV Guide . ...

It is with great honor (and a wicked windmilling motion with my tongue wagging out) that I announce that I have been asked to be a judge in...

"The barren desert that I was, I wanted to populate with words; I wanted to weave a veil of writing to hide the hollow sockets of my g...

And then there's Gary Snyder: "It is a perfectly simple, ordinary activity to be silent, to pay attention to your own consciousn...

Re-reading a book of interviews with Beat writers and poets, I realized many talk about breath and meditation and how it pertains to the wr...

"What technology really does is make our days seem to move too slowly, the nonstop flicker and flight of all our mechanisms stranding...

"Imagine the most likely use for the wired city of the future not in cyberpunk or megatripolising world music frameworks then but as ...

"Now I play Chopin. Yes?" and he replaced the bust of Beethoven with one of Chopin. "Do you wish waltzes or mazurkas?" ...

I wrote a succinct set of liner notes for the first-ever CD reissue of this Bukka White recording on John Fahey's Takoma imprint, out n...

Aside from having my lobes re-arranged by the vuvu drones during World Cup matches in Johannesburg, I've also been spending an exorbitan...

While we will no doubt be veering towards the Rothko exhibit at the National Gallery instead, D.C. is also hosting Telling Stories: Norman...

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