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Talkhouse

Musical maverick Mark de Clive-Lowe seems an impossibility at first sight — juggling piano, synths, live sampling and beat making all on-the-fly, brought to life with a casual ease that’s mind-boggling. The Japanese-New Zealander was raised primarily in New Zealand where he learned piano from a young age developing an avid passion for jazz through his father’s record collection. In high school, he fell in love with Native Tongues hip hop and early UK jungle — laying the foundation for what was to come next
During his hugely formative decade at the epicenter of London’s underground music scene, MdCL helped evolve broken beat alongside some of the UK’s most forward-thinking trailblazers, establishing himself as a new voice in progressive electronic music. Since 2008, MdCL has called Los Angeles, California home where his acclaimed club night CHURCH has taken his signature sound of technology and beat-infused jazz mash-up from coast to coast and around the globe.
He has performed with Harvey Mason, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Dwight Trible and Jean Grae; remixed Shirley Horn, Hiatus Kaiyote, Mantombi Matotiyana and Jerry Goldsmith; and recorded as producer and collaborator with artists all over the planet. Having contributed to over 300 releases, to call MdCL prolific is something of an understatement.

Mark de Clive-Lowe

Music

Mark de Clive-Lowe Talks Digging Into His Biracial Identity and His New Album Heritage

Kiri Oliver is a writer and musician from Brooklyn, NY. She wears bright colors and sings about her feelings in the folk-pop-punk band Early Riser. She was a music booker for The Chris Gethard Show from its public access days through its run on truTV. Follow her on Twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/kirioliver" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://twitter.com/kirioliver">here</a>.

Kiri Oliver

How Songwriting Saved Kiri Oliver from the Curse of Perfectionism

Murray A. Lightburn, the longtime frontman of Montreal’s acclaimed The Dears, returns with his deeply personal new solo album, Once Upon A Time In Montreal, available digitally, along with a vinyl edition available online and in stores via Dangerbird Records.

Murray A. Lightburn

Murray A. Lightburn’s Guide to Songwriting

Shamir is Shamir and remains Shamir through and through, no matter what the universe puts him through. You may know the singularly named artist (think—Madonna or Cher) from his 2015 debut hit record Rachet, beloved by NPR listeners and club kids alike. After quickly rising to underground fame with his Northtown EP in 2014, the DIY pop star made a sonic splash with Rachet’s lead single “On The Regular,” a poppy banger that had extensive commercial usage. But how to follow all that up? Shamir, who came from the dusty dunes of Las Vegas, to Brooklyn’s Silent Barn, to the Philly indie scene (and all over the world in between), wanted to go back to what had inspired him from the beginning. Outsider music, country &amp; punk. Raw and vulnerable tunes, stripped down to their emotional core. 2017’s Revelations explored a new avenue of guitar driven hooky indie rock and was widely critically praised in the US and overseas.
Shamir’s most recent releases, the brilliant Room 7” on Father/Daughter, and his self-released limited edition album, Resolution, are pinnacles in the catalog of the increasingly fascinating artist’s career. Room and its b-side Caballero celebrate Shamir’s love of country music, while Resolution is a deeply introspective look into the fabric of society and the artists’ own mind.  With these two releases he has refined his craft exponentially and done so in less than six months from the release of Revelations.

Shamir Bailey

Ratchet TV: Abducted in Plain Sight

Laura Stevenson is a songwriter living in New York. Her newest album, Late Great, is out now on Really Records.
(Photo Credit: Rachel Brennecke)

Laura Stevenson

On Dermatillomania

Even if you’ve never heard the name Hugh Marsh you almost certainly have heard the sound of his violin. He is a featured player on major soundtracks by Hans Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams, was nominated for a Juno award in 2007, recorded with Iggy Pop and The Stooges, was in the backing band for the solo project of Bauhaus’ Peter Murphy, yet all of this amounts to a tiny fraction of his decades-long list of credits. 
The latest addition to that list is Marsh’s own Violinvocations, an LP of eight brooding, exploratory tracks culled from daily recording sessions that spanned the six months he spent living in Los Angeles with friend, mentor, and fellow soundbender Jon Hassell.

Hugh Marsh

Alone, Not Lonely: On Making Violinvocations

Louis Michot is best known as the fiddle player and lead-singer for the Grammy award winning Lost Bayou Ramblers, but his passion for Louisiana French and local folklore are what fuels his career as a musician. Based in Arnaudville, LA, Louis resides with his wife Ashlee and three sons, Julien, Louis Jr, and Marius in the house he built himself.
Louis was born and raised in South Louisiana, and started playing Cajun music on the stand-up bass at age 14, replacing uncle David Michot in the world traveled group of his father and uncles, Les Freres Michot. He picked up the fiddle at age 19 and started the Lost Bayou Ramblers with his brother Andre Michot. Louis took to learning his ancestral language of French by traveling throughout French Canada, by learning from Cajun French speakers at home in south Louisiana, and by singing the endless repertoire of Cajun French music. In 2012 Louis’ violin and vocal work was the main feature for the Oscar nominated film Beasts of the Southern Wild. Louis has recorded and performed with Rickie Lee Jones, Scarlett Johansson, Spider Stacy, Gordon Gano, and Dr. John, as well as Cajun greats D. L. Menard, Belton Richard, Vin Bruce, Hadley Castille, and Luderin Darbonne.
In 2018, Louis started Nouveau Electric Records, a record label with the mission of promoting local music within the experimental and traditional realms, with a focus on Louisiana French. 2018 also brought BLOOD MOON, the debut release of his fiddle based music group, Michot’s Melody Makers.

Louis Michot

Singing Old French In New America

Jamie Stewart was born in 1978 in Los Angeles. He began Xiu Xiu in 2002 and began to waste his life.

Jamie Stewart

A Guide to Xiu Xiu’s Girl with Basket of Fruit

Abby Weems is the lead singer and guitarist of Potty Mouth. Originally from Amherst, Massachusetts, she now lives in Los Angeles where you will most likely run into her at a birthday party

Abby Weems

More to Consume Than Words

A family of spiritualists, writers and performers generations deep; a home haunted by legends of literature and music; personal upheaval and a sense of being unseated in time: these are the origins of singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Vera Sola.
As a child she played classical piano, later guitar and bass, learning more by instinct than instruction. An obsessive reader and writer, she’d forever written poetry and been fascinated by wordplay, falling in love at a young age with Russian literature and the work of Dylan Thomas, James Joyce, and William Faulkner. All this, along with a career as a stage and voice actor—combined with years of touring in Elvis Perkins’ band—would serve as a launching point for Vera Sola.
But it wasn’t until early 2017, when she booked time at Native Sound Studio in St. Louis, that she began to experiment with the idea of recording her own material. What emerged from the sessions was her debut album, SHADES, a collection of ten finely-honed and immaculately-rendered ballads. Poems and stories delivered in a mannered but casually dismissive style—full of sorrow, yet arch and wry. Songs of the present that conjure the past. Accounts of women and their ghosts: echoes of memories that just won’t quit; of relationships over or current but fleeting; of the extinction of species; the violent capture of a feminine landscape and the spirits that stick around long after; messengers from the other side.
(Photo Credit: Pola Esther)

Vera Sola

The Reaper

Ella Vos has quickly become one of the most exciting new acts in pop music. Beginning with her viral hit “White Noise,” Vos has hit number 1 on both Spotify and Hype Machine’s Viral Charts. Acclaimed for her dreamy soundscape and praised by the likes of Rolling Stone and Neon Gold, her debut album Words I Never Said has received over 200 million streams independently. Her new EP Watch and Wait is due January 25.

Ella Vos

Watching and Waiting

Butch Vig is a legendary producer (Nirvana&#8216;s Nevermind, Smashing Pumpkins&#8216; Siamese Dream, among many others) and the founding drummer for alt-rock pioneers Garbage. Vig currently plays in the supergroup 5 Billion In Diamonds.

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