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Yannis Kyriakides

“Why don’t you come by my place and I can sell you the CDs you’re seeking,” said the voice on the phone. It was the spring of 2005, I was in Amsterdam and looking for recordings from the Dutch label Unsounds. The voice on the other end of the line was that of Dutch-Cypriot composerContinue reading “Yannis Kyriakides”

Extermination Music Night

It’s quarter past midnight in late May 2008. Storm clouds loom but hold, on this surprisingly humid night. I open the garage, grab my bike and check my backpack: flashlight, five cans of beer, five-dollar donation, notepad and pen. I recheck the instructions I printed from an online forum: “Do not be seen entering theContinue reading “Extermination Music Night”

Big Ears Festival. Knoxville, Tennessee. March 26–28, 2010.

Clean, tidy, and walkable, downtown Knoxville feels more like Europe than America. Unlike the Next Big Thing-chasing club crawl of that other Southern-U.S. fest, South by Southwest, in Austin, the Big Ears Festival is a carefully curated festival driven by an artistic mandate to showcase cutting-edge artists from a wide variety of practices. This moreContinue reading “Big Ears Festival. Knoxville, Tennessee. March 26–28, 2010.”

Densités Festival. Fresnes-en-Woëvre, France. October 23-25, 2009.

A rural French hamlet in the Lorraine countryside isn’t the setting you would imagine for a world-class festival of unadulterated Electronic and Free Jazz music. Yet the Densités Festival in Fresnes-en-Woëvre—population five hundred—about eighty kilometres from Nancy, is just that. During three days in late October, the sixteenth edition presented a sonic banquet of unstoppableContinue reading “Densités Festival. Fresnes-en-Woëvre, France. October 23-25, 2009.”

Decibel Festival. Seattle, Washington. September 24–27, 2009.

Decibel is an annual international electronic-music and visual-arts festival celebrating its sixth year, which it did by expanding its programming with stacked line-ups within genre-themed showcases, creating some scheduling conflicts and dilemmas of choice for audiences. The opening gala took place in the Seattle Art Museum and featured artists from the Detroit-based label, Ghostly. InContinue reading “Decibel Festival. Seattle, Washington. September 24–27, 2009.”