Fabric 50

The ever-prolific Fabric series returns with this effort from Dutch producer Martyn.

Get Color

In today’s huge hype musical landscape, it can be near impossible for a band with a successful first album to parlay that success into a long career. Health seem ready to beat the odds. Their sophomore album Get Color starts out with a bang: huge guitar riffs, whirring electronics, and almost shoegazey, wall of sound vocals coat “In Heat,” the album’s opener, in sound from top to bottom.

Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

As depressing as they can often be, I’m generally interested in books on social justice issues. It’s essential to know the facts about issues before getting into a spirited debate about them. As an Urban Studies grad student, I’m especially interested in books on social justice as academic material, particularly ones on youth issues.

Sew Everything Workshop

Handicrafts have made an incredible resurgence in the past few years; everyone I know (and their mama) knits or crochets. There are plenty of hip, modern knitting and crocheting books to go along with the trend, to show people things they actually might want to make. Sewing has come a long way as well, but unlike the other crafts, books for modern young women who want to sew their own clothes are few and far between (not considering books about reconstructing old clothes, of which there are lots of great ones).

Fabriclive.33

Plenty of famous (and not so famous) DJs have contributed to the FabricLive series: James Lavelle, Jacques Lu Cont, Diplo and even the late John Peel. So Baltimore “dirty rap” superstars Spank Rock had a lot to live up to with their mix, the thirty-third in the series. And while other albums may have been better mixed, or contain more unknown tracks, there is almost no competition when it comes to plain old danceability. Spank Rock are, by their own admission, all about the debauchery that comes with partying, so they know what they’re doing with a mix CD.

Woke Myself Up

Julie Doiron has always been an artist that seems most at home in my headphones in the dead of winter or early Sunday morning, because of her sad lyrics and quiet melodies. On Woke Myself Up, Doiron’s first album since 2004’s Goodnight Nobody, she reunited with her first band, Eric’s Trip, who broke up over ten years ago.

Frozenstarpalace

As a Milwaukee girl, I was eagerly anticipating hearing Michelle Anthony’s second album, the mini-LP Frozenstarpalace. Anthony recorded it as a document of moving from Milwaukee, WI to Austin, TX, and has described it in interviews as having a “Milwaukee vibe,” despite having been recorded in Milwaukee, Austin, Chicago and Los Angeles. You might think that the record would be uneven, having been recorded at so many different times and places, but that’s not the case.

Cryptograms

Cryptograms, Deerhunter’s first album on Kranky, is the product of an extremely tumultuous time in the band’s life. After losing a member, the band tried recording the album in a single day early 2005. Deemed a failure at the time, this session makes up the first half of this album - a discordant, noisy, at times psychedelic tangle of guitars and yelps. “Cryptograms” and “Lake Somerset” take some elements of drone and noise rock and combine them with psychedelic elements, to make them more palatable, but no less interesting.