It’s quite possibly my favorite mic. It’s a dynamic. But it certainly has qualities of a condenser. It’s definitely one of the most accurate, flat and detailed of the mics in my collection. I love what it can do with female voices that have a lot of sibilance. It’s my go-to mic for snare bottom. I love what it does to guitar cabs with just a little too much presence. What’s even better about this mic is the off-axis rejection with its super-cardiod polar pattern. Which means it’s incredible to use live, either in the studio or for performance. The mic also has a 5-switch bass roll-off just like it’s younger sibling the 421. It also has a high/presence boost which I rarely use, unless a snare is really dull.

(more…)

White Life is something of a departure for Jon Ehrens, the prolific and chameleonic singer-songwriter previously best known for indie bands like the idiosyncratic Art Department and the lo-fi Repelican. For one of the first times in his career, Ehrens is sharing vocal and production duties on White Life’s self-titled debut, which was recorded with Chris and Mickey Freeland at Beat Babies, and features several lead vocal performances by his sister Emily Ehrens. But more significantly, White Life is a big stylistic left turn for Ehrens into the world of synths, drum machines and unabashedly pop vocal performances.

(more…)

Rjyan “Cex” Kidwell has been consistently revising and switching his modus operandi for recording and releasing music since his career began in the late ’90s. Early Cex releases featured instrumental IDM, before he began rapping, then singing, and later returning to making beats without vocal accompaniment. His first handful of albums tended to run an hour or more, before he began to favor concise 40-minute albums and even shorter EPs. And after beginning his career with high profile national releases on the trendsetting IDM label he co-founded, Tigerbeat6, Kidwell has released much of his music in recent years on deliberately low key vinyl or cassette-only releases, while remaining as prolific as ever. And since some of his best music yet has been on less heralded records like the 2007 Steely Dan sample collage Dannibal or the 2009 experimental club music of Bataille Royale, it’s proven worthwhile to give every new Cex record close attention.

(more…)

Civilian is Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack’s third full-length album for Merge Records. But it feels more than anything like the continuation of a collaboration between Wye Oak and another duo, brothers Chris and Mickey Freeland of Beat Babies Studio, who began producing the band on last year’s My Neighbor / My Creator EP. The four songs debuted on that EP pointed toward possible new directions for the band, including a wider variety of instrumentation and some of their most lively and upbeat songs to date. Ultimately, however, the ten new songs on Civilian are closer in sound and mood to 2009′s The Knot, another dark and subtle album that gradually unfolds and reveals its charms over several listens.

Holy Holy

Adobe Flash Player is required to play this audio.

(more…)

The intriguing title of Microkingdom’s latest album, Three Compositions Of No Jazz, made me wonder if the Baltimore trio were making some kind of statement, serious or tongue-in-cheek, about their genre affiliations or how composed or improvised their music is. As it turns out, the title is a nod to both Anthony Braxton’s Three Compositions Of New Jazz and the ’70s post-punk “no wave” movement, and those reference points in and of themselves make a potent statement about where Microkingdom is coming from.

(more…)

J Roddy Walston and The Business have been becoming Baltimore rock’s latest success story in the last few months with the release of their self-titled second album on indie powerhouse label Vagrant Records, which was preceded earlier in the summer by the Don’t Break The Needle EP. But that success has been a long time coming, since the band relocated from Tennessee in 2004, won a dedicated following in Baltimore with their frantic live shows, and self-released their great debut full-length, Hail Mega Boys, in 2007. And given how well that album established the band’s sound and captured their energy on record, it’s appropriate that J Roddy Walston and The Business doesn’t mess with a good thing, putting the same straightforward production sheen over the same kinds of boogie woogie piano rockers and guitar licks. Even a re-recording of one of the band’s most popular songs, “Used To Did,” sounds as perfectly at home here as it did on Hail Mega Boys.

(more…)