INTERVIEWS
Nifty Gateway Founders on Why Musicians Should Embrace Digital Art: “EDM Artists Are Just the Perfect Fit for NFTs”
As the latest Bitcoin and cryptocurrency hype cycle has gripped investors and driven a whole new wave of adoption to the space, Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster find themselves at the epicenter. The twin brothers and entrepreneurs have helped spearhead a meteoric trend in the digital asset space with their company Nifty Gateway, a marketplace for digital art and collectibles called NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, which are collectible assets authenticated and secured by blockchain technology. A few years ago, the idea of collectors purchasing digitally minted art pieces to the tune of thousands and sometimes even millions of dollars would have seemed ludicrous. However, as public comfort and interest in blockchain technology has only continued to rise, cultural influencers—especially musicians...
How an EDM Sea Shanty Got Signed to a Major Record Label
In some sort of dystopian social media twilight zone, sea shanties exploded in popularity in early 2021. Toe-tapping hymns in the style of 19th century drunken sailors and rum-swilling pirates found new life in—you guessed it—TikTok, a platform ironically dominated by prepubescent teens. After a Scottish musician named Nathan Evans shared his renditions of “The Scotsman” and “The Wellerman” on TikTok, the sea shanties went viral. Why? Who knows. This is TikTok, a Wild West of beautiful stupidity where people challenge each other to remove moles and insert pennies into live electrical sockets. When Evans’ sea shanties erupted on the platform, they inspired a new trend, which eventually mutated into its own native culture called ShantyTok. EDM ultimate...
‘El Madrileño’ Meets World: C. Tangana on His Globally Minded Album
Spanish rapper C. Tangana is expanding on his trap foundation with his new album El Madrileño, incorporating elements of Mexican folk, Brazilian bossa nova, Spanish flamenco and other global influences. Guiding the Madrid native along the way are Latin music titans like Puerto Rican singer José Feliciano, Uruguayan rocker Jorge Drexler and Cuban Buena Vista Social Club member Eliades Ochoa. “The most happiness I got from this project was to be in the studio with these artists who I admire that are authentic legends,” C. Tangana tells SPIN over Zoom. “That they worked with me and respected what I was doing is what I valued the most.” Before he was C. Tangana, Ánton Álvarez was a kid who grew up on classic New York hip-hop artists like Mobb Deep, Big L, Lord Finesse and Big Pun. As a teen in...
Brijean’s Love Supreme
Oakland-based duo Brijean has been introducing a special guest in their recent Zoom calls. In fact, you could call him the unofficial third member of the band. “He’s the life of the party,” says keyboardist/bassist Doug Stuart. “I think he’s gonna be a roadie for us.” Stuart and bandmate Brijean Murphy are co-parents of Shuggie, a White Shepherd-Blue Heeler mix they named after the psych-soul legend Shuggie Otis. Like a lot of households over the past year, the couple adopted a “COVID puppy” to help fill all of the downtime they were facing. Brijean hangin’ with Shuggie CREDIT: Benjamin Brown “We came to Santa Fe to just lower our overhead and have a furnished sublet,” Murphy says. “Our landlord told us about this litter of puppies. We didn’t really want one, but we had a look at the...
The World According to SG Lewis: Disco, Dance and Ecstasy
When planning their album release parties, musicians tend to look for several key components: a killer guest list, a jaw dropping venue and, naturally, a massive stage. But in the COVID-19 epoch, reality couldn’t be more offbeat. For the long-awaited drop of SG Lewis’ debut LP, times, this adjustment meant reimagining the February 19th celebration from a raucous champagne shower to a gentle pour, sipped from modestly sized glasses in the comfort of his parents’ home. Composed of 10 nostalgia-fueled tracks dedicated to the club, the irony couldn’t be more real. “A lot of these songs were written without knowing this pandemic was going to happen,” Lewis told EDM.com of times, which was released via Republic Records. “But then they had this message in them, a reminder that the things I always...
The Blurry World of Billie Eilish
Filmmaker R.J. Cutler – best known for his work on documentaries such as The War Room, The September Issue, and Belushi – recalls that there wasn’t much he really knew about Billie Eilish when he was invited to meet her and her family at their L.A. home several years ago. And it didn’t matter. As he remembers the brief drive up the 101, he says he knew about “Ocean Eyes” – the 2015 song that Eilish and her brother, producer Finneas O’Connell, had uploaded to SoundCloud, catapulting the pair to millions of streams and the attention of record labels – and that she was local. But beyond that, he was going in relatively blind. Whether through some directorial instinct, brilliant luck, or some combination of the two, Cutler would spend two years, from 2018 to 2020, following and capturing...
It’s in the Stars
Celestial inspiration led to the latest Edie Brickell & New Bohemians album, Hunter and the Dog Star, which was released on Feb. 19. “I was reading about the constellations Orion and Sirius. I saw this phrase, ‘Hunter and the Dog Star.’ It struck me as so beautiful and poetic,” Brickell tells SPIN. “They call Orion ‘The Hunter’ and Sirius ‘The Dog Star.’ Orion is followed through the night by Sirius, and then Sirius is the brightest star in the sky just before dawn.” This concept was, she says, “so perfect for our band and what we’re trying to express.” The band recorded the album in 2019, during what Brickell calls “a dark time” due to the prevailing political and social unrest, so she says she and her bandmates made the deliberate decision to “focus on what makes us healthy and ...
Nine Albums in and Many More to Go, Architects Want to Be ‘the New Version of Bob Dylan’
It’s only been a little over 27 months since Architects released their deeply personal Holy Hell, but for the British metalcore veterans, that still marked the first time they’ve ever gone two full calendar years without putting out a new studio album. Now, they’re back with For Those That Wish to Exist (out Feb. 26 via Epitaph), a self-produced pandemic-recorded new take on the band’s tried and true hard-rocking formula. In addition to breathing some new life into their traditionally controlled chaos behind vocalist Sam Carter’s singing and screaming, the new album expands on the lyrical subject matter as well, taking on some of the planet’s biggest issues rather than focusing on personal losses and events. SPIN sat down with Carter via Zoom to chat about the upcoming release as well as t...
It’s a Boston Thing
Ken Casey and I are rivals. No, not really. But our high schools were, less than eight miles apart or about 20 minutes away—if you take 93 South, Route 1 South, 95 North or Route 128, as the locals still call it. It’s all the same freaking road, which may very well be the most Boston thing ever. Or maybe, quite possibly, the Dropkick Murphys are the most Boston thing ever: their accents, their influences, their continued devotion to community, defined by undying loyalty and a heart as complex and intricate as a Boston downtown cobblestoned street map. This Celtic punk band formed originally in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1996 is as Irish-Boston as they come, defined by their shit-kicking special brew of passion and sentimentality, even when they’re singing about getting drunk or punching you ...
My Morning Jacket’s Patrick Hallahan on New Cooking Show, Food-Themed Songs
As Patrick Hallahan calls up SPIN, the My Morning Jacket drummer is gearing up for a full-blown blizzard — 12 to 18 inches of snow are expected in his current home of Louisville, Kentucky within 24 hours. And where many Americans would devolve into a panic after a day without takeout, this dude’s prepared — with a fully stocked kitchen and the culinary skills to make good use of it. But one core message from his new cooking show, In the Kitchen With Patrick Hallahan, is that interesting dishes (and, by association, memories) are tucked away in our cupboards and rarely visited fridge drawers. We just have to seek them out — and, for the novices among us, embrace the unknown. “The biggest lesson to learn in life really is to push past the fear and challenge yourself to do some...
Serj Tankian on His Film Truth to Power, the Chaos Around Toxicity, and the Time He Feared for His Life
Serj Tankian’s life as an activist and musician is captured in the new documentary, Truth to Power. The just-released film offers a fascinating look at the singer’s journey inside and outside of his multiplatinum rock band System of a Down. Following Tankian’s path from his childhood to to his pre-SOAD band Forever Young to the present day, Truth to Power features testimonials by Serj and his bandmates, along with such associates as producer Rick Rubin and Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello. The film also uses archival video to tell Tankian’s story of activism, while also touching on the origins and highlights of System of a Down’s career. Interspersed are newly shot scenes that include the singer visiting his old high school in Hollywood and voyaging to Armenia during a revolutio...
Faithless Remain Blessed
In a decade since their last studio album, The Dance, renowned UK dance artists Faithless reemerged in 2020 with All Blessed, their seventh studio album and first project without their talismanic frontman Maxi Jazz, whose focus has shifted to the band he has since formed; Maxi Jazz & the E-Type Boys. Sister Bliss and Rollo Armstrong produced All Blessed. The absence of Jazz obviously sets All Blessed apart from previous Faithless records. However, it gives way for a more vocally collaborative experience, featuring multiple guest vocals from spoken word poet Suli Breaks and singer-songwriter Nathan Ball. Other collaborations include Caleb Femi, L.S.K, Gaika, Jazzie B, and Damien Jurado. Their lead single from All Blessed, “Synthesizer” (featuring Nathan Ball) serves as an ode to their p...
