Music stuff around the web

Links to the stuff we’re reading, listening to, and thinking about

By Amy Marie Slocum

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August 18, 2019

Music

Adam Schatz of Landlady shares his humorous account of the one Sofar Sounds show he played in 2016, and it’s a great read. A taste:

Sofar Sounds didn’t invent the house concert. The house concert was invented by Genghis Khan in 1205, when, having grown tired of conquering, he instead sang a few of his favorite traditional songs in a cave for his closest friends and colleagues. Before his last song, Khan passed around a hollowed out skull of an enemy warrior and asked everyone in the cave to please “give what they can.”

Since then, for hundreds of years, the house concert has been a not-so-secret way for anyone to bypass the often needless overhead of a bar venue and get back to basics. Humans in a room, sunning in the magic of live music. These shows are all ages. These shows are ramshackle. Sometimes there’s a ticket price, sometimes there’s a donation bucket, but always, always, always the money goes straight to the artists. The hosts do it out of love. The hosts do it out of a need to make something happen. The economy of music as a bait and switch for drink sales is erased, and the night is pure. Until someone pukes.

An investigation on Talkhouse suggests the Sofar Sounds business model might not just be running afoul of some artists, it’s also attracting the attention of the NY State Department of Labor.

Abstract ambient artist Loscil (aka Scott Morgan) just released a new LP of deep, lush, monochromatic goodness that, like many of his past releases, is destined to be played on repeat in my living room. If good ambient that doesn’t lean too new-agey is your jam, give Equivalents a listen.

If lyrics and guitars and stuff are more your thing, Justin Gage of Aquarium Drunkard made a damn fine Spotify playlist for us that we’d be remiss to let you miss.

Photographer Megan McIsaac shot our upcoming cover story on Ben Collins of Detroit’s minihorse, whose relationship with sound gets deep into science. A peek at some outtakes…

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