ZapTown

Whimsical chaos is Mucca Pazza’s hallmark and nobody does it better than them. Demonstrating the atypical nature of the band, they covered everything from 60’s television show themes, rearranged rock tunes, and original compositions to Balkan brass, Czech folk songs, and the works of classical composers. Multiple times I felt something brush against my ankle, only to find a trumpeter laying on the ground… still playing his instrument.

It takes a certain kind of talent for a band to exist purely on its own merit without some form of gimmick to help establish a band’s identity or market them in hope that it will make someone notice. But for Yourself And The Air, there is nothing flashy about these four guys — Erick [...]

With This That, the whole premise of this album flirts with the idea of what is considered improv and what is actual composed material. Fields performs flawlessly in the attempt that you cannot tell the difference between the two states of musicianship. But even with the blurred lines, you get a sense of structure within these pieces as the sonic architecture is very tight knit and space is given a sense of correlation within the songs.

It’s often difficult to make claim to the importance of an EP, especially when many of them are used as simple marketing strategies and the exploitation into what became the extended single. But for Jesus Lizard’s Lash — much like the EP Pure in 1989 — this album was as important a release as the full length Liar was the previous year.

History has shown us that art draws from influence. One aspect to good art is that it takes something from the past and expands on it. Same goes for music, and in an environment where recycling the past has become a means of the future with one wave becoming a third, fourth, or fifth wave, [...]