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Friday, February 5,2010
Music Feature

Milwaukee Hardcore Takes on Domestic Abuse

By Michael Carriere
While hardcore may not be the most female-friendly genre, there is a long history of punk bands using the stage as a sort of bully pulpit to get their fans to think about such issues as domestic abuse, rape, and sexism. As a young suburban hardcore kid...
Wednesday, February 3,2010
Music Feature

Burkina Electric, Lukas Ligeti’s Electronic Africa

Present Music’s restless journey

By David Luhrssen
Being the first ever electronica band from Burkina Faso, the landlocked African nation formerly known as Upper Volta, is an interesting accomplishment. More intriguing, however, is the overall career of the group’s co-founder and percussionist, Lukas Ligeti. The son of one of the mid-20th century’s singular composers, Gyorgi Ligeti (author of the spooky music from 2001: A Space Odyssey), the younger Ligeti has found...
Tuesday, January 26,2010
Music Feature

Surgeons in Heat Hit the Ground Running

Upstart trio quickly becomes one of Milwaukee’s most visible bands

By Tyler Maas
A band’s first months are a period usually reserved for false starts, the scrapping of potential names and learning how to play together as one. Evidently, Surgeons in Heat—a 6-month-old Milwaukee transplant that’s already played more than 25 shows, recorded and tirelessly promoted itself—wasn’t aware of that. When singer and guitarist Johnathon Mayer left Appleton and relocated to Bay View in September, he and longtime friend and drummer Ryan Rougeux enlisted the help of Milwaukee bassist...
Wednesday, January 20,2010
Music Feature

Brandi Carlile: Hunting for the Right Emotion

By Alan Scully
While recording her latest album, Give Up the Ghost, Brandi Carlile continually found new ways to tap the emotions that inspired her songs when she wrote them months earlier. “I would do things like wake myself up at like 6 o’clock in the morning when I was all tired and hadn’t had my coffee and I’m all bummed out and grumpy, and sing a song like ‘I Will,’ because I wanted it to sound crackly, pained and tired...
Tuesday, January 19,2010
Music Feature

Sharon Van Etten’s Songs of Suppression and Absolution

By Evan Rytlewski
For five years, Sharon Van Etten wrote music in secret, stockpiling songs she hoped to perform under better circumstances. “I started playing open mics when I went to college, but then I took a break,” Van Etten explains. “My boyfriend at the time wasn’t very supportive of my music and didn’t think I was good enough to perform, so I had to hide it from him...
Wednesday, January 13,2010
Music Feature

Musicians Find Opportunities at Open Mics

By Tyler Maas
Open mic nights have long been stigmatized as forums for inexperienced musicians to play off-key cover songs to disinterested audiences at second-rate venues, but local businesses are working to change the image of open mics, and musicians are benefiting from their participation in this unsung format. Over the past three and a half years, bartender Tim “Timber” Buege...
Wednesday, January 6,2010
Music Feature

10 Stories That Shaped Milwaukee Music in 2009

By Evan Rytlewski
In just the past several years, a support system coalesced around Milwaukee’s music scene, with venues, radio stations, promoters and cheerleaders offering new opportunities and a bigger spotlight for local musicians. Newly nurtured, the music scene flourished in 2009, closing the year stronger than it had been all decade. As a result, 2009 was marked with success stories...
Wednesday, December 30,2009
Music Feature

Spoon’s Decade-Long Hot Streak

By Evan Rytlewski
It’s official: Spoon is the artist of the decade. The review aggregation site Metacritic made the call this month after crunching the numbers to determine the decade’s best-reviewed band. “The band topping the list was a surprise to us as well, albeit a pleasant one,” the site wrote. “The Austin, Texas, indie-rock band Spoon may not be the most prolific band of the decade, but they were the most consistently great...
Wednesday, December 23,2009
Music Feature

Jay Reatard: How to Count to 475

By Joe Uchill
No one is entirely sure of the number of albums released by Jay Reatard and his bands. His record company says it's more than 90. Wikipedia places it somewhere around 60. Reatard isn't certain of the exact number, but says that Wikipedia's discography has some...
Wednesday, December 16,2009
Music Feature

The Lab Partners’ Live Hip-Hop Experiment

By Evan Rytlewski
The Lab Partners is a new group that pairs Rusty Ps rapper Adam James (known as Phantom Channel) with Milwaukee producer Brandon Birchbauer (The LMNtlyst), but the project isn’t quite the traditional beats-and-rhymes rap excursion that description might suggest. The group was born of impromptu jam sessions between the two musicians, with James laying down drums...
 
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