There aren’t too many artists making soul music today who had a release in 1969, back when R&B was first beginning to give the drummer some. Lee Fields, however, is one such artist—or maybe he’s better labeled a phenomenon. Since the late sixties, the North Carolina native has amassed a prolific catalog of albums and has toured and played with such legends as Kool and the Gang, Sammy Gordon and the Hip-Huggers, O.V Wright, Darrell Banks, and Little Royal. With […]

The genesis of THE WORD began in 1998, when the Avant-jazz and funk group Medeski, Martin & Wood took the burgeoning North Mississippi Allstars on their first tour. Riding down the road, the groups listened to the first two Arhoolie Records compilations of sacred steel guitar, a musical style then just seeping into the broader public awareness. Sacred steel is ecstatic pedal steel guitar used in sanctified churches; it’s the same instrument familiar to country & western music, but played […]

  Experimental electronic music producer Flying Lotus, born Steven Ellison, is a grandson of songwriter Marilyn McLeod(the co-writer of Diana Ross' "Love Hangover"), as well as a great-nephew of pianist Alice Coltrane, and therefore a cousin of saxophonist Ravi Coltrane. Ellison made beats for the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim network before releasing his debut full-length, 1983, which resembled the work of fellow avant-garde hip-hop producers Madlib, J Dilla, and Ammoncontact on Plug Research in 2006. Following the six-song EP Reset, he released his second full-length, Los Angeles, on Warp in 2008. A three-part series of […]

Theeey’re baaack! Continuing an incredible year that has seen them drop one of the most celebrated, most cerebral and most searing albums of 2014, Run the Jewels 2, El-P and Killer Mike brings their pulse pounding, hip hop pugilism back to the Twilight Concert Series this summer. El-P and Killer Mike, two of the most distinctive and distinguished names in rap, have travelled the world over subverting and pulverizing all expectations of their unlikely pairing. The have taken the creative […]

It starts with the creation myth: St. Vincent, naked and alone in the wilderness, startled as the ominous rattle of a snake breaks the silence of her Eden. She realizes she’s not alone in the world and breaks into a run, headed towards the uncertainty of the future. It’s a lovely and appropriate metaphor to open St. Vincent’s self-titled fourth album, except that it literally happened. “It’s not a metaphor at all,” St. Vincent, aka Annie Clark, says of the […]