Freak Scene #41: Sacred Bones Guest Column
In this edition of Freak Scene, a still-China-living Jamie Johns presents a guest column by Caleb Braaten, owner/curator/impresario of the epic Sacred Bones Records, purveyors of music by Zola Jesus,...
View ArticleFreak Scene #42: The Freak Scene Goes to China Edition
In this week’s Freak Scene—now back to mainland America—Jamie Johns recounts her experiences, noisy and otherwise, living in China, including Torturing Nurse, ritzy Haagen Daz, scant record stores,...
View ArticleFreak Scene #42: Less Freak, More Geek
In this week’s Freak Scene, Jamie Johns runs through her favorite releases and shows from Halflings, Pharmakon, Pens, Zola Jesus and John Wiese in the month since her last non-China post. This week’s...
View ArticleFreak Scene #48: Pop. 1280, Hot Guts, Rosemary Krust and Siltbreeze
In this week’s Freak Scene, Jamie Johns tackles the new last few weeks in weird. Click below for Pop. 1280, Hot Guts, Rosemary Crust and Siltbreeze’s new label comp. Hot Guts – S/T 7” Hot … read more »
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Freak Scene #55: Stress Ape, Birds of Maya and Condominium
In this week’s Freak Scene, after breezing through her senior thesis (!), Jamie Johns catches us up on three new sweet records by Stress Ape, Birds of Maya and Condominium. I had a pretty good … read...
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Freak Scene: Holodeck Records
I didn’t realize I wanted to restart the Freak Scene column until almost a year ago, when I was in Austin, Texas doing a feature on a bunch of close-knit bands, many of which lived … read more »
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Freak Scene: William Cody Watson’s Bill Murray LP
It turns out that one thing that white dudes in their late 20s like myself have in common is a deep understanding of Bill Murray. Ghostbusters, and more specifically, Murray’s character in the movie,...
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Freak Scene: Animal Collective’s “Fireworks”
It actually feels weird to think about now, but there was a time when there would have been audible gasps—AUDIBLE GASPS!—from Animal Collective fans upon seeing them headline major global festivals....
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Freak Scene: Basilica and New York’s Weird Music Scene
Today is my last day as a full time employee at The FADER. I’ll still be contributing regularly on a freelance basis and this column will continue, but it’s causing some serious introspection. You know...
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Freak Scene: That Overlooked Destroyer Album
The above headline is not exactly true, but Destroyer’s 2008 album Trouble in Dreams, which came on the heels of the universally loved Rubies, didn’t get so much attention. I couldn’t tell you why,...
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Freak Scene: Emotional Ambient
When I started doing Freak Scene, my goal was to highlight weird corners of the music world. Whether that was through talking about an older record in a new way, or looking at a scene … read more »
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Freak Scene: Interview with Flying Lotus
Listening to Flying Lotus’ new album, Until The Quiet Comes, feels like coming up for air. His previous LP, Cosmogramma, was monolithic. Layering dueling sounds on top of each other in an endlessly...
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Freak Scene: Growing’s Color Wheel
When I first started hanging out with my friend Jamie, there was music all over his apartment. He was a buyer at Mondo Kim’s, which, at the time, was a massive, multi-story record and video … read more »
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Freak Scene: A Year
A couple years ago, crammed in the back of a car, my roommate asked me what my top albums of the year were. I went on a too long rant that could basically be boiled … read more »
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Freak Scene: Oni Ayhun
If “Full of Fire,” the first single from The Knife’s Shaking The Habitual, says anything about the brother-sister duo’s brutal, difficult and often beautiful career as musicians obsessed with austere...
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Freak Scene: Grouper and Music as Texture
Up until recently, most of Grouper’s music was largely unavailable on vinyl. Liz Harris would press limited runs, and they’d disappear almost immediately. The MP3s are easy to come by, but there’s a...
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Freak Scene: Four Tet’s Rounds
In 2003, a lot of people still had Discmans (Discmen?). The iPod already existed, but wasn’t yet ubiquitous. I had one of those portable CD players that could handle data CDs, which could hold multiple...
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Freak Scene: Tyondai Braxton’s HIVE
Whenever I interact with experimental music that’s “crossed over” from dingy warehouse spaces to museums or planetariums or zoos or really just places that feel more traditionally welcoming than, say,...
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Freak Scene: New Sounds From Way Out
One weird thing about Freak Scene is that because of the constantly shifting nature of what we define as weird music, things that normally would fit perfectly here suddenly seem like they should be...
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Freak Scene: Forest Swords and the Shifting Idea of Dub
Right now, the background on my phone is the cover of Vivien Goldman’s Dirty Washing EP, because it is the thing I listen to more than anything else. Goldman is now a professor at NYU, … read more »
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