Compact Lexie Mountain rummages through her tape collection, pulls out yet another cassette and pops it into the Centennial tape player on the floor. “Her tapes are bonkers,” Mountain says of the woman on the recording. Play. “God, I wish I could stop shaking,” says the woman. Audibly, she shutters, shivers. Then silence for...
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By Jefferson Jackson Steele U2 playing anywhere is a big deal, but in Baltimore it was such a big deal that when the band’s show at M&T Bank Stadium was booked last year, the mayor made the announcement. And considering how few touring acts can still fill a football stadium, especially in Baltimore, Wednesday...
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Mickey Free For the last four summers, the Rap Round Robin has been one of the most exciting events in Baltimore music, combining the city’s burgeoning, offbeat hip-hop underground with the surprisingly durable novelty of having several acts in one room taking turns playing one song at a time. And it just got a...
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7-inch cover art What made In Evening Air, the second full-length from post-wave trio Future Islands, work so well was a certain sense of unity, a clear declaration of purpose. Sam Herring’s woeful tales of heartbreak, backed by synths and beats from Gerrit Welmers and bass rhythms from William Cashion, were pieced together like...
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Be there or be unconcerned about local hip-hop This Monday eventing at 7 p.m., a “town hall meeting”  of sorts is being held for the Baltimore hip-hop community at the Guilford Avenue venue 5 Seasons, which might as well be the community’s hub. The unique event, which is open to any musician, fan, or...
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Mania Music Group A week ago at Joe Squared, Kane Mayfield announced a new member of Mania Music Group: Eze Jackson of Soul Cannon. Right after a passionate mini- set from Mania’s Ron G, Jackson did a five-minute straight freestyle–in the truest sense of the word, without the accompaniment of a beat–that ended with...
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No, Emaneul Ax didn’t debut a piece by Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra June 3. The celebrated pianist occupied the second half of the BSO’s Friday night program and was billed the star of the evening–not the newly commissioned piece: Sidereus, which opened the evening. We were surprised a star...
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King of Pops As the Brown F.I.S.H. frontman promised when I interviewed him for City Paper in April, OOH dropped his first solo mixtape at the end of May, on the occasion of his 35th birthday. The King of Pops: The James Evans Mixtape even opens with a callback to that article, with the...
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Solar Temple Suicides The first instrumental element you’ll take real note of in a Solar Temple Suicides song is the bass. It’s not shy, that bass. It’s prominent in the mix: bold, booming, probing, a sweet, mellow groundswell carrying the rest of this Baltimore-based group’s earthenware psychedelic grooves on its muscular back like an...
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Karen Gomyo and her “Ex Foulis” Stradivarius delivered a resplendent performance of Jean Sibelius’ Violin Concerto at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall May 27. The Baltimore Symphony players then followed this up with their first-ever performance of William Walton’s Symphony No. 1 in B-flat Major. Both works demanded big sweeping sound from the orchestra, which...
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