Though no means new to the noise making game, seasoned dance-punk band !!! (usually pronounced "Chk Chk Chk") released a highly anticipated new album last week. Strange Weather Isn't It? is the fourth full-length album from !!!, who have been crafting fine tunes for over a decade now. Given the raving popularity of bands like The Faint and The Rapture when I turned eighteen, sufficed to say I have a bit of a soft spot for dance-punk in general and !!! in particular. Along with Liars release earlier this year, it's really great to see these bands still making noise and evolving as artists. Strange Weather Isn't It? is an apt title for this album. It draws from a wide range of influences and atmospheres, featuring strange combination of sounds and beat shifts. There are ample hints of early 90s synth pop, which probably explains my weakness for it as I may have spent a little too much time at the roller rink as a kid. There are also moments of 70s glam that add a

Baths - Lovely Bloodflow One of the new releases I had dearly wanted to review and feature this summer on Tuesday Is For Tunes had I not been on the road was Cerulean , the debut album from Baths . The creative outpouring of Will Wiesenfeld, Baths is beat-driven avant ambiance with enough vocals and found sound samples to make my ears lustful. This week they premiered a surreal music video complete with strange shapes and haunting figures. Definitely worth watching. Freak Of Confectionery Nature What candy is ten inches tall, weighs five pounds, is bigger than a football, and has over 12,600 calories? The world's largest gummy bear! Handmade in North Carolina, but available for order online, this singular confection is over one thousand times larger than your average bear. Just the thought that this exists is both a little terrifying and a lot mesmerizing for me. Available in fun flavors like sour apple and cherry cola, I'm not sure if this makes more sense as a gag gift, a pa

One of the first stops on my road trip to Alaska this summer was Indianapolis. My friend's band, Cut Short , was playing a house show, and I detoured to see them bring some ruckus. As always, they came big, and it would have been a fairly standard basement show, except that they played in a homemade half pipe covered in graffiti. Memorable times. Here's the photographic evidence. Read more about my Indianapolis house show adventures in the On The Road journal entry, Day 3: Indianapolis House Show .

Have you ever stayed up all night to see the dawn break over a field hazy with mercurial mists, the tall stalks of grass hung with spider webs dripping dew? There’s a coolness that seeps into your bones as the light blooms ever so softly and swiftly, rose tinting the golds and blues and greens of the land. Those colors, that feeling, is how We All Grow , the debut album from S. Carey , sounds to me. S. Carey, previously known as Sean Carey the drummer from Bon Iver, has crafted a collection of songs so delicately lovely they almost make me weep with joy. We All Grow is a complete sound experience. The opening track, Move , fades in with building synth tones, a tinkle of bells, and a muffled sample of distortion before breaking into hushed vocals and plucked acoustic guitar. The duality of complex soundscapes and the simple intimacy of S. Carey’s musicianship is the essence of this album. And, it is the inherent dualism of that I find captivating. Serene and innocuously passive, yet so

I grew up going to West Virginia at least once a year to white water raft the New River and Gauley River with my mother and brother. As far as I've traveled the New River Gorge still steals my heart in all its many seasons and moods. No two trips down the river are ever the same. It's filled with history and adventure, misty slopes and massive rocks. I never feel my photographs do the gorge proper justice. Still, here is yet another attempted homage to a place that's always a calling my wandering soul home. Dear West Virginia, I love you. Sincerely, Sachi. Read more about my West Virginia adventures in the On The Road journal entry, Day 2: The Gauley River .

Postmodern Mashup As I've expressed many a time before, I love postmodernity! I love talking about it. I love using it as a conceptual lens to deconstruct society. I love mass media in all its many postmodern forms. YAY, communications theory and my unapologetic nerdiness. I haven't had much time to idly comb the internet for interesting tidbits to include in the weekly roundup, but I did stumble upon a fascinating string of related video on YouTube. Apparently a lot of people have had the brilliant idea to set more modern music to old videos of people dancing, mostly variations of the Charleston. SUCCESS!!! For years my favorite vintage dance footage has been from a 1941 movie called Hellzapoppin' . I found it set to both The Killjoys and a Voidstar remix of Notorious B.I.G. I found over ten, but here are my top six favorites. Many of them use the same video clips, but the musical range is impressive. Can someone please teach me the lindy hop now so I can use it to win a b

Photos taken at my hometown's annual street festival, Newark Nite. My friends' hardcore bands, Doubledealer and Lifeless , played at Switch , the local skate shop. Good times reppin' the 302.

I encountered a lot of great new tunes this summer in my travels. There's really too much awesome sauce in my ears now to choose just one music maker to feature on my first Tuesday Is For Tunes update since successfully completing my road trip to Alaska and back. So ever the maker of rash decisions that I am, I'm spending big and giving you my top three all at once. Screw the haters and American Idiot . Let me publicly declare that I am quite pleased the caustic cacophony of punk rock still sounds true. The local scene in Cleveland has always done a quality job of keeping the punk torch burning, and now they have given us All Dinosaurs . Hitting hard, fast, and loud, All Dinosaurs are four friendly dudes that like to get a little rowdy. Their music is infectious with beats that ring like gunshots, riffs as rough as a hangover, and gang shouts bleeding raw. HELL YEAH! Still don’t let all the good times fool you, All Dinosaurs are far from mindless. The first full-length album, P

Last day of the epic Alaska adventure. Woke up and got on the road with my father. Tired, still reeling a little from the previous night's head injury, sitting in an awkward silence that is the most familiar sound of time spent with him. Slept through New Hampshire and most of Connecticut. Roads I've known all my life, worn dull with use. Detoured to New York City to go to a massive Japanese grocery store there, my father's favorite treat. He always did advocate eating well. Then the last big push through New Jersey to catch a stunning sunset over the bridge as we crossed back into my home state, Delaware. Get off the highway. Pull down the driveway. Greet the cat. And, exhale a vast and lengthy sigh of unpacking. The tires of my car visibly perking up as their load of the last two months was lightened. Reorganizing my belongings back into their old places. And at first the only difference I can notice from my life before is that tomorrow is tuesday, but I don't have to