INTERVIEWS
Iceage’s Elias Bender Rønnenfelt on Crime, Poetry, Symbolism of New LP
In the late aughts of the Denmark music scene, nothing was really making worldwide waves. That is, until 2011, when post-punk outfit Iceage emerged from Copenhagen with their debut album, New Brigade: a loud, abrasive and slightly unsettling sound held together by Elias Bender Rønnenfelt’s echoing vocals. Controversies followed, staining the band’s image in their early days — and leading to accusations of sympathizing with far-right ideologies. In a recent Pitchfork interview, Rønnenfelt vehemently affirmed that the band is “most definitely not right wing,” adding, “We don’t have any sympathy or leanings to that side.” On top of that, Rønnenfelt belongs to the long tradition of interview frustration, devolvement, and general non-compliance — he was once dubbed “rock’s most ...
Artist of the Month McKinley Dixon on Time Travel, Cowboy Bebop, and the Death of a Childhood Friend
<span class="localtime" data-ltformat="F j, Y | g:ia" data-lttime="2021-05-07T00:06:38+00:00“>May 6, 2021 | 8:06pm ET Artist of the Month is an accolade awarded to an up-and-coming artist whom we believe is set to break out. In May, we turn our attention to rising rapper McKinley Dixon as he caps off an ambitious trilogy of albums with For My Mama and Anyone Who Look Like Her. Less than 30 seconds into our conversation, McKinley Dixon abruptly travelled through time. It happens frequently if you learn to see the world from a certain perspective, as Dixon has. The DMV rapper has a boundless cache of interesting ideas, and one of them — involving shifts in chronology — lands somewhere between a philosophical framework and a poetic theory of know...
Punk Pioneers in the Middle East
Yotam Ben Horin is feeling pretty pensive these days. He’s back in the U.S. to record an intimate solo record, and in a couple of weeks, his band Useless ID is releasing Most Useless Songs, a milestone best-of album on Fat Wreck Chords that spans the Israeli band’s 27-years in music. These 16 songs (including two new tracks) are important blocks for the foundation of a groundbreaking career that has convincingly established Useless ID as Israel’s most successful punk band and arguably the Middle Eastern country’s most internationally successful act ever. “I can’t believe we’ve come this far,” the vocalist and bassist tells SPIN, shaking his head via Zoom. “For a punk band in Israel, it was pretty challenging at times…saving up money to travel to tour and play shows.” He takes a moment to t...
“So Much Bigger Than Trance”: Jeffrey Sutorius on Mental Health and Post-Dash Berlin Future
There’s something to be said about memorable trance records. The records with the soaring melodies that lift your spirit to the heavens only to break your fall with each impassioned lyric. The records that gush your memory banks with rapture, reconnecting flashbacks with a blissful serotonin rush. Presiding over some of the most monumental trance tracks that evoke those feelings is Jeffrey Sutorius, the former frontman of Dash Berlin. Former Dash Berlin frontman Jeffrey Sutorius performing live. Jeffrey Sutorius (via Facebook) Performing as one of the most recognizable artists in the electronic music space, Sutorius was the public face of the Dash Berlin trio, a role he embraced as his bandmates, Sebastiaan Molijn and Eelke Kalberg, worked behind the scenes. However, following a tumu...
NTDC explores Lagos creative communities on Google Arts & Culture
The Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC) has concluded plans to explore Lagos creative communities on Google Arts & Culture in five different ways. The project tagged; ‘Eko for Show’, is in partnership with Google Arts & Culture towards celebrating Lagos and its creative communities. The Director-General of NTDC, Mr Folorunsho Coker, who made the revelation in an interaction with the media, said that Lagos is one of Africa’s fastest-growing cities and that its creative scene is taking the world by storm. Coker noted that with over 25 million people, the city’s creative scene is fueled by a young generation of talented individuals and communities spanning music, art, photography, fashion, theatre, literature and food. The Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation, he said ...
How Afrojack’s New Song With David Guetta Could Revitalize the Lost Art of Progressive Rave Music
There’s no limit to the impact of a collaborative song created by artists like Afrojack and David Guetta, two godfathers of modern dance music. Their relationship is actually like a day in the life of a parent. It’s unpredictable, but it gets better and better with age. Guetta and Afrojack have linked up more times in the last decade than breakups and ice cream. And each time seems to give rise to a different kind of sound, triggered by an innate propensity to take risks. They’ve now joined forces once again to test the waters of a risky sonic direction—albeit a familiar one. Afrojack and Guetta today released “Hero,” a soaring progressive house track that turns back the clock to the early 2010s, when the genre dominated the festival circuit à l...
Tomorrowland’s Austin Kramer on Breaking Artists Worldwide, Building Community via New Radio Show
Austin Kramer has come a long way since his first concert in 1997, when he saw the band Boston in Rapid City, South Dakota. The former Global Head of Dance & Electronic Music at Spotify now holds over a decade experience in music and has become widely known for breaking new artists and hits to millions worldwide. Sifting through the overwhelming amount of pitches he receives, he listens to over 100 track submissions per day and has even had a track named after his love of coffee (“Kramer’s Cup”) for consideration. Last month, Kramer announced his next big stop: an official move to another global music brand, Tomorrowland. On April 5th, the music industry plug began hosting his own One World Radio show, UNreleased with Austin Kramer, which promises to bring 10 never-be...
Meet Latin Rap’s MVP: Myke Towers on His New Album Lyke Mike
Nearly a decade ago, Myke Towers was an underground rapper from Río Piedras. To expand beyond Puerto Rico’s borders, Towers started to explore reggaeton and pop music — which led him to international success and to the top of Billboard’s Latin Albums chart. In the past two years, Towers has become a go-to hit-maker for heavy hitters ranging from Cardi B and Selena Gomez to Bad Bunny and Maluma, netting him multiple hits on Spotify’s Global 200 chart. He possesses a piercing rap flow that can leave an impression on any genre. Inspired as a teen by the likes of Biggie and 2Pac, Towers (born Michael Torres) first generated buzz around his name from the rap en español he uploaded to SoundCloud. For last year’s sophomore effort, Easy Money Baby, the 27-year-old embraced reggaeton and saw him re...
Serj Tankian on More New System of a Down Music: “We Might Be Able to Get It Together and Do Something Again”
<span class="localtime" data-ltformat="F j, Y | g:ia" data-lttime="2021-04-28T15:03:46+00:00“>April 28, 2021 | 11:03am ET System of a Down surprised fans back in November by releasing their first new songs in 15 years. Singer Serj Tankian is “extremely proud” that the band was able to put aside their differences, and offers hope that they’ll one day “get it together and do something again.” In the past few years, the band members have made no secret about creative differences hampering their return to the studio. The multiplatinum metal act has not released an album since 2005’s Hypnotize, but came together to record the songs “Protect the Land” and “Genocidal Humanoidz” to raise funds for Armenia and its neighboring state of Artsakh, which had come und...
Andy Hull Says That Manchester Orchestra Is His ‘Life’s Work’
Nearly 15 years after the release of their debut album, I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child, Manchester Orchestra have established themselves as a career indie rock band. As they prepare to release The Million Masks of God this Friday (April 30), the band has seen every album chart in the top 40 on the Billboard 200 since hitting mainstream rock radio with 2009’s “I’ve Got Friends” and even their 2014 acoustic album (Hope, the followup to that same year’s Cope) landed in the top 100. It’s a level of steady success that’s not common for a group of folksy rockers from Atlanta, but the group’s success is largely attributed to lead singer Andy Hull’s blend of grandiose themes with personal narratives in his songwriting. Hull also happened to be one-half of the Artist x Artist conve...
How Rain Man Reinvented Himself in a Post-Krewella World
They say the strongest swords are forged in the hottest fires. The adage rings true in the saga of Rain Man, whose life became an inferno following the explosive 2014 fallout from the split of his former band, Krewella. But as the embers of the pandemonium flickered out over the years, so did his habit of allowing his past to dictate his future. Rain Man, whose real name is Kris Trindl, recently set alight the kindling of a new chapter with the release of “Still Young,” a poignant, chest-thumping electronic track recorded alongside longtime creative collaborator Oly. The song is a microcosm not only of Trindl’s resilience, but also that of humanity after a lonely year thanks to the wrath of COVID-19. And after some serious reflection, it seems we’re w...
Gojira on New LP Fortitude, Escaping Our ‘Collective Coma’
“We’re all drawn into ourselves — in a collective coma,” Joe Duplantier sings on “Born for One Thing,” the punishing centerpiece of Gojira’s seventh LP. That lyric is crucial to Fortitude, as the French prog/death metal band gaze outward (and occasionally inward) to critique the evils of consumerism and the world’s zombie-like apathy toward watching nature crumble. “Things are happening around us on a big scale: the [destruction of] the Amazon rainforest, the oceans getting drained, the ice caps melting,” the frontman tells SPIN. “All this stuff is pretty alarming. And also on a small scale: Sometimes you don’t know the name of your freaking neighbors. If you live in New York, you get on the subway and everybody’s on their phones. What’s happening? If you took somebody from 100 years ...
