Patrick Sisson - Writer, Journalist, Cultural Documentarian, Music Lover

Category: Music Reviews

Review Pitchfork March 16, 2010 Link 7.8 You can only be the dark horse once. The Besnard Lakes may have been a (mostly) unknown quantity when they broke out to a wider audience in 2007, but they were also insiders of sorts– guitarist/vocalist Jace Lasek had done production work with Montreal heavyweights Wolf Parade and […]

Review Pitchfork March 11, 2010 Link Casey Dienel doesn’t stay put for very long. The singer’s last full length with White Hinterland, 2008’s Phylactery Factory, swayed to brushed drums, dainty piano, and perky vocals. Later that year, she created prickly, sophisticated art-lounge on the Luniculaire EP, a collection of originals and covers all sung in […]

Review XLR8R February 23, 2010 Link As owner of Bristol’s Rooted Records shop and founder of the Punch Drunk label, Tom Ford (a.k.a. Peverelist) doesn’t have trouble staying current. But the dubstep producer’s full-length debut, named after the inventor of the artificial heart valve, incorporates futurist techno vibes into his dub vibrations and low-end rhythms. […]

Review Pitchfork February 5, 2010 Link 7.1 Finding patterns in Madlib’s rambling yet brilliant production work can be difficult, but on his new In Search of Stoney Jackson album, he doesn’t take long to zero-in on some recurring themes. An obscure sample ushers in “Chittlins & Pepsi”, a stick-to-your guts blend of flashy soul and […]

Music Reviews XLR8R February 2 Link Boogie revivalist and long-haired LA electro visionary Damon Riddick (a.k.a. Dam-Funk) wants to make music that lets your hair blow in the wind—a difficult task, but his massive Toeachizown offers just that kind of soothing experience. Full of retro-futurist ’80s funk filled with smeared keyboard melodies and dirty beats, […]

Music Review Pitchfork January 18, 2010 Link Independence is thrilling, but after those first tentative or defiant steps towards freedom, the urge to look back and survey the situation you just left can be hard to resist. That seemingly contradictory perspective, looking both forward and backwards, was at play when Rjd2 wrote The Colossus. His […]

Music Review Pitchfork January 6, 2010 Link The cobbled-together beast from Greek mythology known as a chimera should be a recognizable concept for fans of electronic music, a genre that has evolved via the repurposing, re-contextualizing, and splicing together of sounds and samples. The instrumental, electro-acoustic Austrian trio Radian has spent more than a decade […]

Review Pitchfork November 30 Link 6.8 Jahdan Blakkamoore’s solo debut begins with familiar sounds: a coy flute melody, a clapping cadence, and then the sub-aqueous bass notes of Baby Kite and Nokea’s “Reef”, the slow burner that kicks off DJ /rupture’s Uproot mix. The track– co-produced here by Rupture and Matt Shadetek and rechristened “Get […]

Music Review Pitchfork November 10, 2009 Link 7.7 “Life is nothing but death and taxes/ And all the trees that get the axes,” Pylon singer Vanessa Briscoe Hay dryly coos on “K”, against a backdrop of prickly guitar tones and a taut bass line. “I’m tired of moving my jaw,” she also sneers, in case […]

Music Review XLR8R October 2009 Link Chilean producer Matias Aguayo (formerly of Closer Musik) has created a dark carnival of an album on Ay Ay Ay, a restrained event with sustained creepiness underlying the celebration. Filled with thudding drums and melodies constructed from vocal tics, tones, whispers, and asides, it plumbs disorienting depths—imagine an Audion […]