INTERVIEWS
After 13 Albums, Low Has Come Full Circle
Low has been doing this for a long time. The now-duo of drummer-vocalist Mimi Parker and guitarist-vocalist Alan Sparhawk has been making music since the ‘90s, and they have 13 studio records under their belt, as well as various EPs, one-off singles, and live albums. Many artists have formed and disbanded in the time that Low has been making music, and Sparhawk considers himself lucky. “It took a long time to get there,” Sparhawk explains to SPIN over Zoom. “I feel lucky that we’re still doing it.” Their 13th album, Hey What, furthers the trajectory initially laid out on 2015’s Ones and Sixes. It marks their third consecutive album working with prominent indie producer BJ Burton, who has contributed to Low’s stylistic plunge into digitally altered soundscapes. Whereas the group’s earlier o...
How Singapore’s Zouk Group Is Parlaying Decades of Success In Las Vegas—And Changing the Fabric of Sin City
Zouk Group has only just begun to reap the rewards of its labor from seeds planted decades ago. With the industry relationships and wealth of experience needed to facilitate their mission of international expansion, the brand is a global household name in waiting. But until recently, most Western audiences have never heard of it. Originally rooted in Singapore, Zouk is now amplifying its illustrious portfolio in the U.S. for the first time, testing the waters in none other than Las Vegas, the entertainment capital of the world. Zouk’s arrival, part of Sin City’s new $4.3 billion Resorts World complex, became a highly publicized endeavor overnight due to its affiliation with the first major development on the Las Vegas strip in over a decade. Zouk Group’s R...
Madi Diaz Has Built Herself Back Up Again
For Madi Diaz, the journey of History Of A Feeling has been a long one. She can hardly believe it herself. “2014…how is that simultaneously two seconds and like 5 million years ago?” she asks SPIN over Zoom from her Nashville home. Diaz, who is perched on her red and white couch, glows as the sun pierces through the window behind her. It makes sense that she’s embraced such tranquility, considering she was “white-knuckling a Zen approach” to everything early on in the pandemic. “I didn’t have a publishing or label deal or any sort of foundation there at that point,” she recalls. “So it was tough, and it was scary, but it was also very strange the way that the cards started to just naturally fall.” And they did. In February, the singer-songwriter signed to ANTI- Records. And sev...
The Robots Are Coming and They Like to Rave: What We Learned From Interviewing Sensorium’s AI Avatars
When Sensorium’s virtual PRISM world finally opens its doors to concert-goers later this year, don’t be surprised to find yourself striking up a conversation in the crowd—with an AI-driven avatar. It’s no secret AI has been a pillar of Sensorium Galaxy’s overall development strategy, but the technology—developed in partnership with Mubert—has been kept vastly under wraps. When it comes to AI, Sensorium’s computer-generated avatars serve multiple functions. Some are artists with the potential to produce an endless stream of electronic music in a live performance setting. The remaining AI personalities—each possessing unique behavioral traits and professional and personal backgrounds—are residents of the Sensorium ecosystem. They have the “freedom” to navigate t...
Beyond the Boys’ Club: Willow Smith on Embracing Rock, Her Mother’s Influence, and Opening for Billie Eilish
Beyond the Boys’ Club is a monthly column from journalist and radio host Anne Erickson, focusing on women in the heavy music genres, as they offer their perspectives on the music industry and discuss their personal experiences. Erickson is also a music artist herself, recently releasing the song “Eternal Way” with Upon Wings. This month’s piece features an interview with Willow Smith. Many music acts take an entire career to churn out four studio albums, but Willow Smith has already achieved that feat at the age of 20. If you count her collaborative LP (The Anxiety) with Tyler Cole, then it’s five albums, plus a handful of EPs. Willow recently released a rock-inspired new album Lately I Feel Everything, featuring a raw, alternative vibe with heavy guitars, punky rhythms and powerful vocals...
Inside Chubby and the Gang’s Retro Evolution
If you listened to Speed Kills, Chubby and the Gang’s bloody-knuckled 2020 debut, the British hardcore bruisers’ new record should feel plenty familiar. For a while, at least. But about halfway through The Mutt’s Nuts, all those throttling guitars and volcanic drums suddenly cease as the album morphs into something more methodical, more nuanced. Retro power-pop bleeds into American doo-wop, like Elvis Costello writing for The Chantels. What’s this, has Chubby gone soft? No fucking way, says frontman Charlie “Chubby” Manning-Walker — just “three-dimensional.” “I don’t want to be a band who just has 12 tracks of 200 miles an hour,” Manning-Walker tells SPIN. “We sort of did that with Speed Kills and I don’t want to make the same record twice.” After 15 years spent grinding on the U.K. hardco...
From Fan to Family: How Discord Gave Artists a Platform to Connect With Purpose
The social media landscape has changed over the past few years. Myspace took the world by storm when it launched in 2003. Then came Facebook a year later, revolutionizing the way that we connect with friends, family, and loved ones. But now Facebook’s imminent doom lingers like a roadkill stench, and other platforms are swooping in to pick up the slack. Twitter created a platform that allows people to share bite-sized pieces of information and join conversations from all around the world. YouTube has provided creators with a podium to share their stories and build their brands. TikTok has replaced Vine and filled the void of video memes millennials and Gen Z’ers yearned for during a global pandemic. While every social media platform has a unique position within the online social community,...
We Interrupt This Programming for an Important Message
The Interrupters have a decade together and three albums under their belt and are a musical force. Aimee Interrupter and the Bivona brothers, Kevin, Justin, and Jesse, met in 2009 while on tour with Sugar Ray and Dirty Heads. Aimee was a solo act and The Bivona Brothers were then with The Transplants. Following the tour, Aimee and Kevin started writing together. Soon thereafter Kevin’s twin brothers were brought in to form the band that would eventually be The Interrupters. Oddly enough, The Interrupters’ name was created after Aimee met the Bivonas’ mother, and said, “Your mom is an interrupter, isn’t she?” Hopefully, that fence was mended! The Interrupters’ three album releases between 2014-2018 were produced by Tim Timebomb, of Rancid fame, and released by his label, Hellcat records. In...
Shannon & the Clams Survived Through The Year of The Spider
“When you write a song that’s really close to you or really emotional, and then you play it a bunch of times and work on it, by the time you get to recording it, I feel like it’s not as heavy anymore,” guitarist Cody Blanchard of Shannon & the Clams tells SPIN in a video call. “It’s traveled from this crystal of painful…whatever’s going on,” Blanchard continues, “Then it’s been massaged into the craft of making the song. It becomes a little bit abstracted.” At this point, a smiling Shannon Shaw, lead singer of the Oakland retro garage rock band, interjects from the other side of the screen, adding, “I love that metaphor.” I’d just asked them about their sixth album, Year of The Spider — trying to figure out how they transmuted its weighty themes into such buoyant tracks. “By the ...
Heavy Culture: Nova Twins on Racial Identity, Representation of Women of Color in Heavy Music, and More
Heavy Culture is a monthly column from journalist Liz Ramanand, focusing on artists of different cultural backgrounds in heavy music, as they offer their perspectives on race, society, and more as it intersects with and affects their craft. The latest installment of this column features Amy Love and Georgia South of the Nova Twins. UK duo Nova Twins released their debut album, Who Are the Girls?, in 2020. They kicked off 2021 by curating a compilation called Voices for the Unheard, which showcases alternative and rock artists of color. Proceeds from this compilation went to The Black Curriculum, which is an initiative to address the lack of Black British history in UK classrooms. Bandmates Amy Love and Georgia South describe their music as “urban punk,” but it melds several genres together...
Meet Jennifer Decilveo, the Secret Weapon Behind Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato and MARINA
Lounging in her loose jumpsuit, songwriter-producer Jennifer Decilveo might be laid back in her steel chair laughing in the middle of New York City, but she’s never been more serious. “I’m not a political dick sucker,” she exclaims, her voice echoed by the skyscrapers surrounding a concrete park in Manhattan. “Going to tell you that right now. If I don’t like somebody, they’ll know it.” That hardscrabble, no B.S. attitude might not be for everyone, but the New Jersey native’s authenticity is what has helped some of the biggest names in music churn out hits. Despite her laissez-faire demeanor on one of the hottest days in Midtown in mid-June, one thing is instantly apparent: For Decilveo, songwriting and producing is a serious game. “People who call themselves producers and don’t produce or...
As Empty Streets, Aaron ‘Small Hands’ Thompson Wants to Mess Up Your Mind, Not Your Lover
Under the moniker of Empty Streets, multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Aaron Thompson creates dramatic electronic dream pop as a conduit for his checkered emotional state. But as a respected adult-film actor with the nom de plume Small Hands, Thompson (once described by a fan as looking like “all the best parts of Benjamin Bratt and Bam Margera in one tasty treat”) can drive your girlfriend, sister and/or mom to ecstasy in record time. Although he has a bevy of Adult Video News awards (the Oscars of pornography) to his name and admirable skills in both bedroom studio and studio bedroom, Thompson isn’t phoning it in anywhere. “Empty Streets is a three-pronged thing,” he tells SPIN over the phone. “First of all, I’ve always loved bands like Depeche Mode and Sisters Of Mercy. Those bands are alwa...
