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Jefre Cantu-Ledesma – On The Echoing Green

/ David James / Leave a comment

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma is one of the most creative guitarists alive, perhaps the preeminent abstract painter when it comes to using the instrument as a brush.

His music transcends basic understanding of what guitar music can be, transporting listeners to realms buffeted by noise and gauzy atmospherics, spaces where traditional notions of the instrument are blasted away like a sandstorm. His latest album, On The Echoing Green, aims that sense of free-form exploration in a refreshingly melodic direction. It’s a change that results in his best work yet.

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Gramaphone Records // Last Stop Before Fatherhood

/ David James / 3 Comments

I finally visited one of the best record shops in the country, a little place called Gramaphone Records, nested in the north end of Chicago. This place feels tailor-made for my tastes, focusing on house and techno, providing room for all the weird corners of electronic music that most shops tuck into a dark corner.

Gramaphone is a groove music mecca, and appropriately enough, the place where I found one of my personal holy grail records. I can’t wait to go back some day soon, when my life looks very different.

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Sade – Promise

/ David James / 1 Comment

Sade - Promise

I’m writing about the most soulful, beautiful album I’ve heard this year. It just happens to have been recorded over thirty years ago.

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Ballroom [mixtape]

/ David James / 10 Comments

Ballroom Art1

This is the first time I felt compelled to make a mixtape for people I’ll never know.

Ballroom is dedicated to everyone who lost the fight of their lives when someone tried to silence an entire culture. It’s also a dive through my own personal history with dance music, exploring the deep end of the electronic ocean, the sounds that come out as everyone’s going home.

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David Bowie – I Can’t Give Everything Away

/ David James / 2 Comments

David-Bowie-‘Blackstar’-01

The video for the final song on David Bowie‘s final album has arrived. It was made without the man himself, of course; Bowie doesn’t appear on screen once. In fact, no one appears on screen. Using only text and minimalist graphics, the video pulses with life, propelled by the fallen star’s immortal energy.

You need to see I Can’t Give Everything Away:

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Sufjan Stevens “Fourth of July”

/ David James / 6 Comments

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Some of my favorite songs hurt too much to listen to very often. They send me plunging into those forlorn corners of memory that I spend most days avoiding. I try to remember these songs, play them, and appreciate what happens when I open the flood gates to total despair.

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The Weeknd “The Morning”

/ David James / Leave a comment

Here’s that moment, almost 5 years ago, when I realized The Weeknd was my jam.

While Abel Tesfaye is currently riding a wave of stardom with Can’t Feel My Face and spots on the Fifty Shades soundtrack, here’s the original slow jam that seduced the world. It’s called The Morning.

It’s great seeing more of my friends finally recognizing this dude, thanks to his latest single, but I’ve been proselytizing for years now. For all the fine work he’s done since, the original Trilogy of albums from 2011 stands as his obvious masterpiece. I’ve got fond memories of walking down the sidewalk with friends in San Francisco, belting out the verses to this tune. We were ecstatic and laughing at the seemingly sudden and magical way R&B had re-entered our lives as a vital force. It had returned older, wiser, and a lot more psychedelic than we remembered from the 90s.

I’ll just leave you with a link to those evocative lyrics. It’s just not the same to quote them in print; you’ve gotta sing ’em.