Photo: Fonald Photography Too often, instrumental music gets wrapped up in technical gymnastics, a jumble of exhaustive and endlessly intricate guitar riffs and complex percussion patterns that stack up like a failed game of Tetris. For every Explosions in the Sky or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, there are a dozen acts more suited for musical […]
Joshua Boydston
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Mon — Goodbye September
A wellspring of introspection, Goodbye September is a subdued record, the Sunday morning hangover to Saturday’s wild night stemming from Drake’s Take Care blueprint. If Mon is content to color within those lines, at least he does so adeptly. He hits puree on this soul-baring hip-hop and R&B blend from the get-go. Its confident, sensual […]
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Words of a feather
Photo: Caitlin Lindsey Feathered Rabbit’s sound hits you in waves. There’s the sultry lounge essence and smoky jazz groove, both wafting with a natural ease. That’s met with a wallop of punchy, gravelly blues and swampy psychedelia that swirl together in a patchwork of sound swatches belonging to a forgone era of American music. Complex […]
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PLSTKNOVA — Lights
His second EP, Lights, is an entrancing odyssey through the sleep cycle, pouring an ethereal dream-pop fog over mind-bending down-tempo bass grooves. Taking cues from Tycho, Baths and Four Tet, the seven-track effort focuses on aural world-building delicately built brick by brick. The adventurous but contained record is melodic and gripping all the same, its […]
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Wise guy
Photo: Samantha Lamb For all the talk of Oklahoma singer-songwriter Parker Millsap and his Pentecostal roots, there’s a point that gets glossed over along the way. People note that gruff howl of a voice rumbling out of his gut with a tent-revival vigor equal parts fire-and-brimstone and piss-and-vinegar. Millsap himself nods to those Sunday morning […]
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Heavy mettle
Mississippi metal band Cathercist takes its music — but little else — seriously. The grueling path of an upstart, touring hard-rock band is taxing to be sure, with sweaty dudes packed into cramped vans and scraping by from city to city with just enough cash to put gas in the tank. But the five-piece has […]
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Graham Colton — Lonely Ones
Lonely Ones doesn’t feel like a manufactured change, though, and Colton’s wise choice in marrying his intrinsic tendency toward soaring, ear-friendly melodies with some quirkier sonic sensibilities — owed to a push from friend Wayne Coyne — is nothing if not natural. This sounds like where Graham was meant to be all along. The opening […]
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Vangough — Between the Madness
At 12 songs, most clocking in at six minutes or longer, moments of Oklahoma City trio Vangough’s third full-length album are overlong, overwrought and occasionally disjointed from start to end. That said, the pair of cojones Vangough shows through tackling this big, theatrical album worthy of Spinal Tap is praiseworthy in its own right, and […]
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Awash in sound
Photo: Parker Fitzgerald If Moon Tides, the full-length debut of indie duo Pure Bathing Culture, reads as a breath of fresh air, then Sarah Versprille and Daniel Hindman accomplished what they set out to find for themselves just over two years ago. In 2011, the pair left its cramped digs in the frenzied, urban sprawl […]
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The ‘Hurt’ rapper
Flash back to one year ago, and Jabee — arguably Oklahoma City’s biggest hip-hop artist — was on the verge of calling it a wrap. The perpetually positive emcee found himself forcing smiles. Discouraged by a dip in local support and a Kickstarter campaign that had fallen considerably short of its goal, that fandom was […]