Self Destruction In 1988, KRS-One assembled an all-star cast of East Coast rappers as the Stop the Violence Movement to release a protest song called “Self Destruction,” which became the standard bearer for hip-hop artists banding together to make a positive statement, the genre’s equivalent of “We Are the World.” In recent weeks, many...
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The Hexagon Last week, the Hexagon Space, the Station North DIY gallery/music venue, announced it would be shutting down as of July 1. Its lease was set to expire, and it would not be renewed by the space’s owner, Joy Martin (of Club Charles/Zodiac fame). In a phone call to City Paper, Martin explained,...
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This week’s City Paper features a story on White Life, the latest and perhaps greatest project from the prolific young formerly Baltimore-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jon Ehrens. But a lengthy April interview with Ehrens yielded a more comprehensive overview of his prodigious output of self-proclaimed “mixtape rock” than could fit in the print article,...
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via MySpace Uncle Jesse, club music boundary-pusher and maker of some of the only tolerable moombahton out there (see “Boat Shoes”), just put out “Samson,” an excellent though not exactly categorizable electro track. Let’s start with the drums, which could pound like every other dance song and be just fine, but instead kick and flutter...
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On a balmy Baltimore night in May, the cream of local salon society crowded around Paul Cassedy’s table for another great night of what he calls “dinner and music.” It’s no mean feat for a Baltimore rowhouse. Cassedy introduced Alexis Tantau, the night’s singer, and her piano accompanist, Elizabeth Brown. He toasted them with...
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The Hexagon in its heyday The Hexagon Space, for a time an indispensable DIY performance/gallery space in Station North, has announced that it intends to shut down July 1. A posting on its web site reads: Sorry folks.  We’ve lost our lease.  Effective JULY 1ST, 2011, The Hexagon Space location at 1825 NORTH CHARLES...
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Erin Schwartz/NPR The secret is that pretty much every Future Islands song is a huge bummer. Recent acoustic shows (and the EP, Undressed) have revealed the heavy heart behind the super-fun dance beats and, here, as part of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series, the group’s kinda stripped down take on new-ish songs like “On...
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Ellis A promising up-and-coming Baltimore rapper named Ellis, who released his first mixtape barely more than a year ago, has been getting some well-deserved buzz on bigger out-of-town hip-hop sites like Rap Radar and kevinnottingham.com with his video for the songs “Bmore Boys” and “Oh Lord,” both off of his recent album, Bluray E....
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Hilvarenbeek: Totally, Totally Broke and Beautiful Just in case you thought hanging out with Francis Ford Coppola had turned Dan Deacon irreparably fancy, IFC.com premiered Hilvarenbeek, an absolutely insane short film directed by Deacon’s pal Jimmy Joe Roche and scored by Deacon. Hilvarenbeek starts out in a church with a hipster chorus humming, led...
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by Jay Crossley At the time of this interview, which was arranged and conducted in the span of several hours after it was announced that Will Adams was leaving Lower Dens on April 25, there was a growing local controversy surrounding an ExxonMobil commercial touting oil-sands technology. The reason: the oil company licensed the...
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Around 4 p.m. this afternoon Sonar–the club Lonnie Fisher co-opened in Canton in the summer of 2001, which opened at its 407 E. Saratoga St. downtown location October 2003–announced via its Twitter feed and Facebook page that it was shutting down immediately. The two messages–here and here–claim that the venue’s liquor license and corporate...
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King Tutt DJ King Tutt’s Say Hello to The Bad Guy mix is an hour of unabashed house and electro. No Baltimore club productions. And none of Tutt’s own electro work either. Just 19 tracks of the cheap, strong stuff. Big booming songs from guys like Tiesto, Laidback Luke, and the Bingo Players. Also:...
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