INTERVIEWS
The Funk and the Fire
What’s a musician supposed to do during the pandemic when the stages of the world have gone silent? If you’re Judith Hill, you record the album you were born to make. “Funk is the party in the midst of a burning fire,” says Hill, seated in a chair in the backyard of her Los Angeles home. “My music is about finding the funk and soul in the middle of sorrow. You have to find a way to dance in the fire. That’s the type of funk I feel I’m moving into.” <!– // Brid Player Singles. var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ “div”: “Brid_10143537”, “obj”: {“id”:”25115″,”width”:”480″,”height”:”270″,”playlist”:”10315″,”inviewBottomOffset”:”105px”} }...
Emily Wolfe Unveils Epiphone Sheraton Stealth Guitar and “No Man” Performance: Interview + Giveaway
Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Emily Wolfe has been rising up the music ranks over the past few years, and now she has her own signature Epiphone Sheraton Stealth guitar. She puts the instrument on display in a new performance of her song “No Man” at the Gibson Showroom in Austin, Texas, exclusively premiering at Consequence of Sound along with a giveaway contest for the new guitar. As an up-and-coming musician, Wolfe makes history with her own signature Epiphone guitar, which she helped develop. The Sheraton Stealth offers thinline, double-cutaway, semi-hollowbody design similar to the Gibson ES-335. Wolfe’s model comes in a Black Aged Gloss finish, boasting an Indian Laurel fingerboard with 22 medium jumbo frets and mother-of-pearl block inlays with abalone lightning bolts. The headst...
Flogging Molly’s Dave King Just Wants to Bring Some Drunken Joy Back to St. Patrick’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day is this week, and Flogging Molly isn’t about to leave everyone high and dry for a second straight year. Sure, COVID might’ve gotten in the way of their plans last year, but the Celtic punk legends are going above and beyond this year to bring a live-streamed show straight from Ireland just so fans around the world can chant along to “Drunken Lullabies” from the comfort of their own homes. Tickets start at $15 and go up from there, but at least you can rest assured knowing that you’ll get your money’s worth from vocalist Dave King, violinist Bridget Regan, and the rest of the band. Plus, the show is sponsored by Bushmills, which seems like a particularly appropriate partner at a time when everyone’s drinking enough to forget the fact that they haven’t been able to buy an o...
Cocteau Twins’ Milk & Kisses Turns 25
When Cocteau Twins broke up in 1998, it came as a surprise to virtually no one. Five years earlier, guitarist Robin Guthrie and vocalist Liz Fraser ended their 13-year romance, leaving the band to operate on thin ice. “To be honest with you, I’m amazed that we stayed together as long as we did,” admits former bassist Simon Raymonde, who now runs the Bella Union label and records as one-half of Lost Horizons. “I was expecting the band to break up after [Robin and Liz] broke up. A normal band would have done that! But looking back on it now you can see why we did stay together, because the music was really important to all of us.” <!– // Brid Player Singles. var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ “div”: “Brid_10143537”, “obj”: {“id”:”2511...
Weird Al’s Bad Hair Day Turns 25: Mike Mills, Dave Pirner, Chris Ballew, and Portugal. The Man Discuss the Parody Classic
By the time the mid-’90s rolled around, “Weird Al” Yankovic had already recorded “Eat It”, “Like a Surgeon”, “Yoda”, “Fat”, “Spam”, “Smells Like Nirvana”, “Bedrock Anthem”, and dozens of other iconic parodies. He’d been a comedy legend for a decade. And yet somehow the accordion-playing mad genius found a way to reach another echelon with the landmark release of 1996’s Bad Hair Day. On the back of hits like “Amish Paradise” and “Phony Calls”, the record introduced Yankovic to a whole new generation of fans. Moving a record-shattering 1.3 million copies in its first year, it was his highest-charting effort to that point, topping off at No. 14 in the US and cracking the top 10 in Canada. Over the years, its renown only grew, until in 2019 it became one of just eight comedy records to achieve...
Primal Scream: An Oral History of The Howling
“What if this is a movie where the characters have actually seen a horror movie?” –John Sayles By the dawn of the 1980s, there hadn’t been a genuinely successful werewolf film in years. And in the wake of films like The Last House on the Left and Halloween, which brought horror to the cities and suburbs where most Americans lived, torch-wielding villagers and mythical monsters lurking around the European countryside seemed quant. Even when the cinematic werewolf mythology was occasionally modernized in the 1970s, with films like Werewolves on Wheels and The Werewolf of Washington, the results were lackluster. But just as the sub-genre appeared to lose its bite, The Howling burst onto screens and changed everything. The first in a series of three werewolf-centric films released in 1981 — Wo...
Wuki’s Debut Album is “Part Rave, Part Circus, Part Amusement Park, and Part Art Installation”
Just one year ago, Wuki was prepping for the 2020 Grammy Awards, for which his flip of Miley Cyrus‘ “Mother’s Daughter” earned a nomination for Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical. The most pressing matter on his mind was picking out a suit. “I’m living it up right now,” he told EDM.com last January. That reality now feels miles away, but the pandemic hasn’t kept Wuki from staying sharp in the studio. March 12th saw the official release of his debut album, WukiWorld, via HARD Recs. In fact, the pre-pandemic vision for the release was built around an IRL WukiWorld, which Wuki described as “part rave, part circus, part amusement park, and part art installation,” to EDM.com. “Upon entering, you would be ...
Ingrid Andress on Her Grammy Nominations, Her Love of Megan Thee Stallion and Being a Digital Therapist to Her Fans
When Ingrid Andress found out she was nominated for three Grammys including Best New Artist, it was the opposite of glamour: She was tending to her plants at her Nashville home. With no live shows and a lot of time in isolation, her life as a new artist hitting her stride has been, well, lackluster. But the singer has made it work. Last March, Andress released Lady Like, a confessional, country-pop record that underscores Andress’ unwavering vulnerability and evocative storytelling. From musing about broken hearts to family and unexpected encounters at bars, Andress treats her music like therapy, processing her most complex emotions as a means to learn and heal. <!– // Brid Player Singles. var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ “div”: “Brid_10143537”, “objR...
Ingrid Andress on Her Grammy Nominations, Her Love of Megan Thee Stallion and Being a Digital Therapist to Her Fans
When Ingrid Andress found out she was nominated for three Grammys including Best New Artist, it was the opposite of glamour: She was tending to her plants at her Nashville home. With no live shows and a lot of time in isolation, her life as a new artist hitting her stride has been, well, lackluster. But the singer has made it work. Last March, Andress released Lady Like, a confessional, country-pop record that underscores Andress’ unwavering vulnerability and evocative storytelling. From musing about broken hearts to family and unexpected encounters at bars, Andress treats her music like therapy, processing her most complex emotions as a means to learn and heal. <!– // Brid Player Singles. var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ “div”: “Brid_10143537”, “objR...
Crazy Horse Guitarist Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro Goes Inside Neil Young’s Latest Archival Release
By the time 1990 hit, Neil Young and Crazy Horse were in the midst of a resurgence, even if they didn’t realize it at the time. On the heels of the success of 1989’s Freedom, which introduced Young to a younger, harder rockin’ crowd with “Rockin’ in the Free World,” he once again joined forces with the mighty Crazy Horse to kick off the 1990s in style. In this case, the style was a heavier, harder sound. Frank “Poncho” Sampedro had been playing guitar with Young since the mid-’70s, but he knew when it came time to record and play what would become Ragged Glory that they were onto something. So much so that when the group played the first shows of that album cycle in November 1990 at the Catalyst Club in Santa Cruz, Sampedro can still marvel at the raw intensity and powe...
Michael Kiwanuka Finally Relaxed Enough to Make His Best Album
In Michael Kiwanuka’s mind, everything in America seems heightened. When something is good here, it’s “ridiculously good,” according to the British-Ugandan singer/songwriter. And when it’s bad, it’s really bad, which, he says, “is probably why I’m obsessed with America.” This extends to the Grammys, which have always felt otherworldly to Kiwanuka. This holds particularly true this year as his third album, Kiwanuka, which won the Hyundai Mercury Prize in 2020, is in the running for the Grammy for the Best Rock Album, a first for him. “When I started, I used to be jealous of artists that were getting bigger because they seemed to fit in,” the 33-year-old Kiwanuka says from his home in the UK where his connection to the Grammys could not be more remote. “I kept trying to fit in and it never w...
How the Pandemic Gave Rise to VJ Kobra and Illuminated the Importance of Visual Artists
VJ Kobra’s first visit to the state of Colorado was as a runaway. With an idealized dream to head anywhere new, she climbed into a packed car with friends, left her home of South Dakota, and headed West. A few days later, she would be returned home by police, jettisoned back to the mundane locale that thwarted her youth and creativity. Several years later, on a lone trip in the fall of 2020, she would return on her own accord. However, this time around, she was one of the most topical visual artists in the electronic music space. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” This classic opener of A Tale of Two Cities poetically summarizes what was a polarizing, yet somehow career-defining year for many visual artists in 2020. With electronic music’s rise over the last...
