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Category: Interview

  • Anja Huwe on New Xmal Deutschland Box Set and Returning to the Live Stage

    German goth band Xmal Deutschland, Hamburg, 1987 (Photo Kevin Cummins)
    Xmal Deutschland box set, Gift: The 4AD Years is out on May 9, 2025 (Photo: Kevin Cummins)

    Last February, Anja Huwe took to the stage at the Grauzone Festival in The Hague for a set that included songs from Xmal Deutschland, the post-punk outfit she fronted throughout the 1980s. Huwe hadn’t performed these songs live since the band’s demise some 35 years earlier. In fact, after Xmal Deutschland, Huwe stepped away from the stage to focus on her career as a visual artist. Meanwhile, songs like “Mondlicht,”  “Incubus Succubus” and “Qual” have become classics of the era. Out in the crowd were multiple generations of fans. 

    “I had to go out there and I saw these people, so many people, so I just tried to concentrate,” Huwe says, adding with a laugh, “I’ve got to get it right.”

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  • Big Black Delta Makes Music for the Other Side

    Press photo of Big Black Delta Jonathan Bates by Josh Giroux
    Jonathan Bates is Big Black Delta (credit: Josh Giroux)

    “Honestly, nowadays, making an album is not a healthy thing,” says Jonathan Bates. “Spending a year and a half making a collection of music and then putting it out and people literally giving it 30 minutes is not good for the soul.”

    Bates, though, released his fifth album as Big Black Delta, Adonai, last February. It’s a fantastic mix of synthpop and rock. Since the album landed in my inbox earlier this year, I’ve spent much more than a half-hour listening to it. 

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  • Vague Lanes on Catharsis and Connection Through Music

    Vague Lanes (photo Steven Purham)
    Vague Lanes (photo Steven Purham)

    “I think all of the music that I’ve ever made is mostly cathartic,” says Mike Cadoo of Vague Lanes. “I almost need to make music for that means.”

    In fact, he notes, most of the songs on Divergence and Declaration, with the exception of “Exo,” are “pretty grim.” 

    “We’re not exactly making pop-punk music here,” bandmate Badger McInnes agrees. 

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  • Friend of a Friend Didn’t Intend to Record in a Haunted House, But That’s What Happened

    Friend of a Friend Claire Molek Jason Savsani press photo (Credit: Ashleigh Dye)
    Friend of a Friend (Photo: Ashleigh Dye)

    Claire Molek and Jason Savsani didn’t intend to record Desire!, their latest album as Friend of a Friend, in a haunted house. In fact, they didn’t know that the Illinois abode, once a home for spiritualists and said to be a site of demonic possession, had that reputation until a few days into their stay. 

    “I think when we share this tale, people might assume that we’re obsessed with this sort of stuff and we watch Ghost Hunters and we’re all about that lifestyle,” says Savsani. “We are not. We are not seeking that out.”

    In fact, he adds, “We weren’t thrilled about it.”

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  • Acidtrain Asks “What’s This Obsession with Cultivating Wealth?” in New Song

    Acidtrain live at Slipper Clutch on Sunday, April 13, 2025 (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
    Acidtrain live at Slipper Clutch on Sunday, April 13, 2025 (Pic: Liz O.)

    Update (7/22/25): “Delulu” by Acidtrain is out now via Lollipop Records.

    It’s just before 9:30 p.m. on a Sunday night and red lights beat fast against the upstairs stage at Slipper Clutch. Acidtrain, aka Ryein Evan, has just launched into “Delulu,” a song, he says to the crowd, that’s about the billionaire class. 

    It’s the day after 36,000 people turned up for Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s Fighting Oligarchy event at Grand Park, just a few blocks away from this downtown club. Plus, “fuck billionaires, fuck Trump” has been the general theme of club conversations for months, so “Delulu” is a good fit for the moment. The frenetic beat and a squelchy synth sound that comes and goes throughout the song captures the vibe of downtown Los Angeles. Evan dances and bounces across the stage, growling lyrics like, “what’s this obsession with cultivating wealth?”

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  • Taleen Kali: “Sometimes, I think it’s easy to lose touch with the point of DIY”

    Taleen Kali - photo credit Sophie Prettyman Beauchamp
    photo credit Sophie Prettyman Beauchamp

    In early February, in a small L.A. venue called Love Song, Taleen Kali debuted her EP, Covered, a few days before its Valentine’s Day release. Every detail reflected the holiday theme. The EP, which includes versions of songs like “Ava Adore” and “#1 Crush,” was available on heart-shaped flashdrives at a merch booth decorated with cupids. The listening party was followed by a live set where Taleen Kali, the person, morphed into Taleen Kali, the band, as more and more musicians joined the singer/guitarist on stage for a set that included live rarities and music from Covered. 

    It was a killer night, and I’m not just saying that because I happened to be the DJ for the show or because Taleen and I have been pals for a few years. I mean, it was a very well-planned and well-executed show.

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  • Night Ritualz: “We won’t be here forever, but our music potentially could live for a very, very long time”

    Night Ritualz promo photo 2025
    Night Ritualz (photo courtesy of the artist)

    When Vincent Guerrero had a venue in San Antonio, called Vice Versa, he spent his days organizing, which also meant going through the vinyl collection housed in the space. “Every day, I would get a random record and I would listen to it,” he recalls. 

    He was struck by the album covers with photos of the musicians, sometimes large bands, all dressed up for the occasion. “At some point in their life, this was their dream,” Guerrero remarks. He’d listen to the music, some of which could not be found on Spotify or YouTube. “It was kind of scary, but kind of beautiful,” he says. “We won’t be here forever, but our music potentially could live for a very, very long time.”

    All this inspired Guerrero, who records under the name Night Ritualz. “I always wanted a record, a vinyl,” he says. “That was a dream.”

    So, after Vice Versa closed, Guerrero put his efforts into attaining that dream. On March 7, Night Ritualz’s self-titled debut album was released via Metropolis Records on both digital and vinyl formats. Following the album drop, he hit the road. He headed back to San Antonio for the record release shows, then to Austin, where he now lives, and played a string of South by Southwest dates. A West Coast tour, which concludes with Night Ritualz’s first headlining gig in California at The Cathedral in Pomona on April 4, followed. 

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  • Flashback to 1980s L.A. with Grey Factor on Live Album, A Peak in the Signal

    Jeff Jacquin and Joey Cevetello of Grey Factor (Photo courtesy of the band)
    Jeff Jacquin and Joey Cevetello of Grey Factor (Photo courtesy of the band)

    When first wave L.A. synth band Grey Factor originally played around town, it was the junction of the 1970s and 1980s, an era when synths were more cumbersome and complicated than they are today and local audiences weren’t totally sold on electronic music. 

    Back then, Jeff Jacquin and Joey Cevetello, the core of the group, and their bandmates lugged analog gear into punk clubs. Sometimes, they brought their own soundboard as well. Cevetello carried pieces of paper with charts showing how all the knobs on the synthesizers should be arranged. Their stands were repurposed shelving units. 

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  • “You could pop on the internet right this second and find people road-raging”: Mark Lane on New EP, Yelling at Cars

    Black and white photo of minimal synth artist Mark Lane
    Mark Lane (photo courtesy of the artist)

    “You could pop on the internet right this second and find people road-raging,” says Mark Lane. “It’s so ubiquitous, such a part of the culture.”

    That unabashed anger so often on display online and in the streets is what Lane is referencing in “Yelling at Cars,” the title track from his latest EP, released last November. “I saw you standing in the street/Yelling at cars,” he sings over a beat that’s a little electro, a little EBM, a clubby sound that still conveys the shock and dismay of his observations.

    “It’s really hostile now,” he says. “The record touches on this psychosis of imagined road ownership. These people really believe, the road is mine. You see it over and over.”

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  • Agender: “Some Songs Need to Be Fast and Furious”

    Photo of Agender by Lindsey Byrnes
    Agender (Photo: Lindsey Byrnes)

    It was the night before the inauguration and, somewhere in the distance, the Eaton and Palisades fires continued to burn. Needless to say, the mood was grim on the streets of L.A. that Sunday. Inside The Regent, though, at a little after 7:30 p.m., the vibe was dynamic. Agender was in the midst of their opening set for CSS. The floor level of the venue was already packed wall-to-wall. The balcony, where I stood, was quite full as well. Looking down, a mass of people bopped around the floor as the L.A. punk band ripped through one fierce song after the next. 

    “I think it was a moment of the city coming together and it felt special,” says  Romy Hoffman, who is the singer, guitarist and songwriter for Agender. “I know I needed that outlet.” Hoffman, who has known CSS since a previous project of hers toured Australia with them in the mid-‘00s, notes that the Brazilian indie band has a “positive, infectious energy” that lent itself to the “catharsis” inside the venue that night. “It was the perfect band to play at that time just because of their energy,” she says. “We had a great time and the crowd was really responsive. It was wonderful.”

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