August 3, 2016
Astral Spirits, 1.22.16
In a poetic doubling of firsts, Icepick, the first project to release a cassette on the outward-bound Monophonus Press imprint Astral Spirits, returned earlier this year with their and the label’s debut vinyl offering, Amaranth. If you started collecting the Astral…
May 17, 2016
Time was, rock criticism was rotten with youngsters stealing the pennies off the eyes of Lester Bangs’ corpse. They’d wheedle around a non sequitur ledge before going bug-eyed about a band that was almost always some variation on the same geocodes and same genre gestures, holes torn in the same…
April 13, 2016
Astral Spirits, 1.22.2016
Joe McPhee knows two modes in the solo. He knows the warrior and he knows the sputter. He can occupy everything in between too, percussively amalgamating pieces of phrases, here and there. He is the truest definition of the jazz multi-instrumentalist, having occupied the flugelhorn,…
January 9, 2016
#1 – 1.4.2016 – Denver based hyper-realist David Winkler, aka julien — who appeared on the recent Wasabi Tapes comp we mentioned in last week’s review — shared a brisk but vibrant preview mini-mix for his upcoming cassette with Orange Milk. It’s the first I’ve…
January 8, 2016
In a year filled with over-hyped rhetoric, it feels a little surreal to try and parcel up my take on the experience. Honestly though, I may have felt similarly last year, if the title of my year end posts signals anything. America’s long-winded election is in full-swing… a year+ long leer…
December 22, 2015
Though we finished up with this episode early enough in the month that we managed to neglect even the most rudimentary holiday sentiments, we’re still proud to share the third episode of the Decoder Podcast in time for Christmas — thanks as always to Free Form Freakout and Decoder’s…
November 25, 2015
The third release in Astral Spirits latest batch, Azimuth, records three improvisers during an hour-long set at Chicago’s jazz and classical focused Constellation club late last year, featuring the show organizer Nick Mazzarella on alto saxophone, Norweigan bassist Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten (currently…
February 21, 2015
The new FFFoxy Podcast will be delayed until later today since the stalwart David Perron had to postpone recording until this morning — we’ll point you to the new installment ASAP. In the meantime, I thought I’d clear out an older tidbit that caught my eye this week: a wonderful feature…
February 17, 2015
The near simultaneous arrival of the third tape batch from Monofonus Press’ future minded jazz imprint Astral Spirits in our mailbox and online is enough to make me wish I’d made a fourth entry for my contribution to last month’s label feature, because I doubt any vision of my 2015…
December 13, 2014
We’re starting to break into list season and although Decoder’s 2014 features will run early next year, we kicked things off a bit early this week with Experimedia founder Jeremy Bible’s favorites from the preceding year; check that out here. We also debuted a new column focused on…
