Sad news out of Paris yesterday, as French electronic producer Dj Mehdi died at the age of 34 after a roof collapsed in his home. The Ed Banger Records-backed DJ had collaborated with a number of big names over the years, including works with Daft Punk and Chromeo (see above)…
Last week, Hank Williams III released four CDs of new music — songs that he had written over the span of six months. Sure, a lot of the ideas have been percolating in Williams’ brain for a while as a nasty spat with his former record label has worked itself out…
The Los Angeles-based indie rock band Fool’s Gold has always been a work in progress. That is, until recently. The band is notorious for incorporating and African flavor into their music and their second album Leave No Trace, which dropped on August 16, holds true to that style. But frontman…
Best known as the leader of the psychobilly outfit Tiger Army, Nick 13 took a bold step by releasing a solo album of traditional, old-school country back in June. No longer content to wallow in the retro-rock and punk stew of his own band, Nick apparently decided to go way back…
It’s a beautiful day in the blogosphere for Dallas artists. First of all, Pitchfork is tossing out “Best New Music” like parade candy, and North Texas natives are scooping it up. It seems St. Vincent’s much-anticipated third album, Strange Mercy, hit a home run on the music site, which praised it as her…
Canada’s Kathleen Edwards has, perhaps too quietly, put together one of the stronger collections of albums by any young artist in the past decade. After turning heads at SXSW in 2002, she released her debut, Failer, a vulnerable audio-diary that had people lazily drawing the typical alt-country connecting line between…
Along with Weather Report and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Chick Corea’s Return to Forever brought jazz music to a rock audience. And though the “jazz fusion” label seemed to piss off the purists, Corea and the other talented musicians didn’t mind the increased profile and accompanying profits. Nearly four decades after…
Lots of Dave Navarro-related excitement in the local Twittersphere this weekend, as the Jane’s Addiction guitarist and band mercenary (Red Hot Chili Peppers, most notably) was apparently bouncing all around town, hitting Billiard Bar last night and the Double Wide and the Deep Ellum BuzzBrews location on Saturday night, and…
It’s coming up on two weeks now since we dropped the above bomb on you and announced that we’d somehow cobbled together the above four bold-faced names — Toadies, Old 97’s, Centro-matic and Sarah Jaffe — to headline our 2011 Dallas Observer Music Awards showcase on Saturday, October 15, in…
Have you seen the above billboard around town? I haven’t, but apparently it exists, and for the sole purpose of telling AT&T mobile customers how they can get into tomorrow night’s Gym Class Heroes show at the Granada Theater for free. Essentially, if you’re an AT&T customer, you just shoot…
Lots of small items of note worth passing along today before we wrap up the week. So, let’s tackle ’em — in brief form!For starters, lest you haven’t already heard, the love-’em-or-hate-’em Black Tie Dynasty is back, sort of! Two ex-BTDers — frontman Cory Watson, keys man Brian McCorquodale –…
Lots of Spune news to share today, the first of which being that the company is hosting its “Fall Social” and return-to-school bash tonight, but in a new location. In Deep Ellum. At Dada. And, notably, not in Denton, where it’s been held in the past. For one thing, that’s…
Fort Worth’s The Moon Bar is moving on up, literally. Sometime in mid-November, the bar, currently located on the Texas Christian University campus, will move northwest to a spot in the Ridglea Theater complex. But it won’t just be a few doors down from the historic theater, according to The…
The rent for Lakewood bars is too damn high. At least that’s what we’re learning this week as another area staple shutters its doors. Around 6 p.m. last night, Lakewood Bar & Grill updated its Facebook page with news of its abrupt closure. According to the update, the closure was unplanned…
Go here to vote online. Grab a paper ballot in the print edition out today if you prefer. You can vote over text-messaging, too. Those details are in the paper as well. Point is: Vote early, vote often. We’ll be accepting votes right up until and during our October 15…
Technically — technically — last week was supposed to be it for Rio Room’s somewhat over-the-top, but nonetheless impressive summer-long offerings of DJ sets from bold-faced names. Diplo’s performance was to be the cap in the summer’s feather, and the weekly Sunday night residency from Grammy-winning Dallas production duo Play-N-Skillz…
Back in July, when we caught up with Centro-matic frontman Will Johnson to talk about his band’s latest release, the excellent Candidate Waltz, much of our conversation centered around the small dusty city of Bastrop, Texas, located about 30 miles south of Austin, where Johnson wrote essentially all of the…
Some pertinent St. Vincent news to pass along to end the day today, exactly one week before Dallas product Annie Clark releases her third solo record, Strange Mercy, the most pressing of which is this: In case you haven’t yet noticed, the new, made-in-Oak-Cliff, John Congleton-produced album is streaming over…
Two weeks back, you may recall, we passed along a free download of local rapper Jay Fresh’s take on the unavoidable Jay-Z and Kanye West song “Otis,” for which Fresh had a little help courtesy of a production update from electronic artist and new Pretty Lights Music signee, SuperVision.A few…
Earlier this week, Denton musician Jessie Frye accomplished quite the feat. She, like so many other area artists before her, had taken to Kickstarter to raise funds for her art — in this case, money to help produce her first-ever music video. She figured she needed $1,000. So she asked…
About a year ago, before tragedy twice struck the much-adored area greaser-punk three-piece Spector 45, first with frontman Frankie Campagna on New Year’s Day and then again in March with bassist Adam Carter, the band had been approached about having their music used in an upcoming TV ad promoting the…
Spune Productions head Lance Yocom is moving rather swiftly down the road to recovery after he mysteriously fell ill in Flagstaff, Arizona, last month. It took a few weeks of intense testing for doctors to discover the Yocom was suffering from severe pneumonia. As such, for over a month, Yocom…
