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Category: Interview

  • Ailbhe Reddy on Collaboration and Ireland’s Music Scene

    Ailbhe Reddy promo photo by Su Mustecaplioglu
    Ailbhe Reddy (Photo: Su Mustecaplioglu)

    Kiss Big, the latest album from Irish singer Ailbhe Reddy opens with an ending. “I see you,” she sings on “Align” as a melancholy synth percolates underneath her description of the reflection in a train window. You can imagine the goodbye play out as if it were filmed in black-and-white. 

    Reddy began writing Kiss Big several years ago, when the Dublin-raised artist moved to London, where she’s currently based, and was going through a breakup. “There were bits and pieces that I wrote over the years,” she says on a recent video call. The components gradually came together in the form of an album that digs into the aftermath of a relationship and all the conflicting emotions that come with it. Lyrically, Reddy glides back and forth through time as she juxtaposes flashback’s with revelations that sound more recent than they are. Making an album takes time. 

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  • Woo Reissues Cult Favorite Debut, ‘Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong’

    Woo Mark and Clive Ives (photo courtesy of Woo)
    Photo courtesy of Woo

    Around the junction of the 1970s and 1980s, brothers Clive and Mark Ives met up about three times a week to experiment with synthesizers. “We were having a real journey working with each other,” Clive recalls on a video call from his home in Brighton, England. “He had taken control of the tape recorders and I had the synthesizers and we would sit opposite each other and we were able to produce hundreds of little bits of music.”

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  • Karen Schoemer Wrote a Poem a Day in August, 2022. The Resulting Album Is Out Now.

    Karen Schoemer press photo by Michael Rogers
    Photo by Michael Rogers

    August, the latest album from Karen Schoemer, began with the prompt to write a poem a day for a month. Sounds like a straightforward premise, right? In reality, it was a multi-year process of writing and cutting and pasting before recording the poems, which are backed by music that pals like Mike Watt, Oli Heffernan, Amy Rigby, Wednesday Knudsen and others composed. 

    “I had the idea to make an album in August of 2022,” Schoemer recalls on a recent video call. That’s when she emailed her collaborators with the idea as well. “Oli Heffernan sent music within an hour. He was like, here are seven pieces of music that I’m not doing anything with.” A few others composed pieces with only the knowledge that the piece needed to be about two minutes long and it was for a project called August.

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  • From The Centimeters to Elf Freedom: The Musical Evolution of Nora Keyes

    Artist musician Nora Keyes
    Photo courtesy of Nora Keyes

    Nora Keyes is a woman of many bands and, if you’re even slightly acquainted with Los Angeles’ DIY scene, you probably have seen her on stage. Maybe it was with The Centimeters, who were active between the late ‘90s and early ‘00s and will reconvene on November 29 for Spaceland’s 30 year reunion bash at the Regent. Or, maybe you’ve seen her with ‘00s glam outfit Fancy Space People, who also recently reunited for select shows. More recently, there is Tinglez, Keyes’ Italo disco side project with and Bebe McPherson and Eric Nordhauser, and her primary musical focus, Elf Freedom, the improvisational psychedelic band whose 2024 album, Solstice earned raves from Bandcamp and a number of genre-specific publications and was recently released on vinyl via Greek record label Twisted Flowers.

    Recorded on the summer solstice of 2023, the album began as a jam session that evolved later with overdubs and became a collection of songs that you likely won’t hear live. “If someone asked us to play that album, we would probably do a variation of the chord progressions, but it would be a whole other improvised thing,” says Keyes. 

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  • Kim Theory Releases Debut EP, Bitch Scene

    Kim Theory press photo
    Kim Theory (photo courtesy of the band)

    Three Kims inspired the name of L.A. up-and-comers Kim Theory: Deal, Gordon and Shattuck. On the band’s debut EP, Bitch Scene, you can hear the influence of all three indie icons. The punk spirit of The Muffs lives on “Child Star Teenybopper,” where the legacy classic Pixies albums, as well as the Breeders, echo on “GrowingUp” and a noise rock dirge reminiscent of Bad Moon Rising Sonic Youth opens “Wish You Were.” 

    Kim Theory’s own story begins when Audrey Cymone, Lula Seifert and Zoey Su were in middle school, which wasn’t all that long ago. Cymone and Seifert performed one cover from each of the famed Kims for Seifert’s Women’s History Month school assembly. Su, who was in the crowd that day, recalls one kid proclaim, “Oh my god, they’re playing Sonic Youth!” when the girls busted out a cover of “Kool Thing.” 

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  • Simon Raymonde Talks Cocteau Twins and New Book, In One Ear

    Simon Raymonde author Photo
    Simon Raymonde will be at Book Soup in Los Angeles on November 14

    “Honestly, I never really considered writing a book until, literally, five minutes before I started doing it,” says Simon Raymonde on a video call. For decades, Raymonde has been making and releasing music. He spent much of the 1980s and 1990s as a member of Cocteau Twins, contributing to now-classic albums like Treasure and Heaven or Las Vegas. For close to 30 years, he has run Bella Union, the record label that helped introduce the world to Fleet Foxes, Beach House and Father John Misty. Raymonde’s memoir, In One Ear: Cocteau Twins, Ivor and Me, is set for release in the U.S. on November 18 and he’ll appear at Book Soup in Los Angeles on Friday, November 14. 

    In One Ear traces Raymonde’s life in music, from his early bands in post-punk London to his tenure with Cocteau Twins to his work as a producer and label-head. Raymonde also delves into the work of his father, Ivor Raymonde, himself a musician, songwriter and producer who worked with the likes of Dusty Springfield, The Walker Brothers, Los Bravos and David Bowie. Throughout the memoir, Raymonde keeps the focus on the music. 

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  • After Years of Collaboration, Solo Artists Laura Jinn and Tatum Gale Formed New Duo Mercy Land

    Tatum Gale and Laura Jinn of Mercy Land in cover photo for "Kid A" Photos: Mia Teresa @howboutmia Creative Direction: Virginia Walcott @virg________
    Mercy Land “Kid A” cover photo. Photos: Mia Teresa @howboutmia Creative Direction: Virginia Walcott @virg________

    Laura Jinn and Tatum Gale were set on making music as solo artists. The catch, though, was that the music they made together was really good. “It was obvious to our close friends much earlier and we were really rejecting it,” says Gale on a recent video call. 

    For a handful of years, though, the two New Orleans-based musicians would play as solo artists who collaborated with each other. “It was a little bit confusing for the audience,” acknowledges Jinn. The performances, though, helped shape would become their new project, Mercy Land, whose debut EP, Termites, dropped on Halloween. “I think the process of playing together also built a lot of trust between us, in the sense that, together, we were something different and better than we were individually and the music that we had made together was our best music and all that stuff,” says Jinn. “So, it emerged from that process.”

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  • David J Sings of History Repeating in New Protest Single, “ICE Too Cold to Thaw”

    David J and Shepard Fairey "Ice Too Cold to Thaw" press photo by Angel Enciso.
    David J and Shepard Fairey seen here with copies of the “Ice Too Cold to Thaw” vinyl and print. (Photo: Angel Enciso)

    David J was in Asheville, North Carolina for a gig when a protest erupted right under his hotel window. “I was woken up early in the morning with the sound of it,” the L.A.-based musician says on a recent video call. “I just went down to the street and joined in.”

    The event provided a spark of inspiration for J, who was already troubled by what he had been seeing in the United States. “Just being amongst that community there, just really good decent people speaking out against this authoritarian horror that’s being visited upon us, that was the galvanizing moment,” he says. Lyrics for what would become “ICE to Cold to Thaw,” the recently released single from David J and the Resistance, began to take shape. 

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  • Kommunity FK Returns to L.A. for Independent Project Records Anniversary Shows

    Patrik Mata of Kommunity FK press photo by Kevin Estrada
    Patrik Mata of Kommunity FK (Photo: Kevin Estrada)

    It’s been six years since Kommunity FK has played Los Angeles. To be specific, they haven’t played live at all since 2019. This week, though, you’ll have two chances to see the seminal goth band, who came up in post-punk L.A., this week. Kommunity FK is set to perform live on both nights of Independent Project Records 45th anniversary— Wednesday, November 5 and Thursday, November 6— at Gold-Diggers in East Hollywood. The concerts foreshadow an exciting 2026 for the 47-year-old outfit, helmed by singer Patrik Mata,. Kommunity FK’s 1983 debut album, The Vision and Voice, is planned for a reissue next year via IPR.

    “We get so many requests for it,” says Mata on a recent video call from Albuquerque, where he has lived since 2005. 

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  • Pets Fuse Dance Beats and Melancholic Pop on Debut Album, Spiral Question Mark

    Pets Press Photo by Mika Lungulov-Klotz
    Photo: Mika Lungulov-Klotz

    It’s nearly dusk on a chilly-for-L.A. Saturday when synths and sax float through the breeze in a small nook of Elysian Park. A handful of people, and a few dogs, are crowded on blankets spread across the leaf-strewn ground. Pets, the East Coast trio, are in town for a weekend of gigs celebrating their debut album Spiral Question Mark, one of which is here, under a tree, where dark green leaves hang above them like the valance of a stage curtain. Their sound is smooth and rhythmic and more than a little melancholic. It’s a good fit for a day like this one. 

    “It’s not really about wallowing in that feeling,” says Jonny Campolo of the sad song-heavy debut. “It’s about a solitary kind of confidence that you can have when you’re alone or when you’re sad or emotional or melancholic.”

    He adds, “Melancholic music, raw, emotional music is absolutely my favorite kind of music, the kind of records that you can just fall into and live in.”

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