Going Deep into the "Uncanny Valley"

No, not the heartbreakingly terrible new reunion album from a beloved post-punk band, but the compelling experimental play at UNC starring a real robot. Most impressive was how director Francesca Talenti was able to plumb below what could have been a sheer gimmick to unearth a lingering emotional resonance.  I didn't simply ponder what it meant for a robot to be human. For awhile, I believed.

Read my thoughts on The Uncanny Valley at the INDY's Artery blog.

Three new Pitchfork reviews of really interesting albums, including a well-earned Best New Music for Jon Hopkins' tremendous ambient/dance record Immunity:

Jon Hopkins: Immunity

Eluvium: Nightmare Ending

Cocorosie: Tales of a Grass Widow

Deerhunter Quakes the Carrack Modern Art

by Brian Howe on April 25 2013

If you hadn’t heard that an indie-famous Atlanta rock band was scheduled to play a secret show in Durham by the morning of April 23, you certainly caught wind of it that night if you were anywhere near the Carrack Modern Art. Deerhunter didn’t concede much volume to the small space. Instead, they seemed to greet it with added ferocity, and their clangorous music cascaded through the open windows behind them, down onto a startled Parrish Street.

“See & Hear”: A New Art and Music Series’ Nightlight Debut

Especially for 6:00 p.m. on a Sunday, it was crowded at Nightlight on April 21. The taco potluck on the Chapel Hill nightclub’s patio probably helped boost attendance, as did the fairly long list of names—each with its own distinct coterie of fans and friends—on the program. But mostly, people seemed excited to check out a brand-new curated event, “See & Hear,” that seeks to put local musicians and visual artists into equal dialogue rather than segregating them in their respective clubs and galleries. An eclectic, atmospheric, and well-paced first event, it left me eagerly anticipating the second installment.

Nico Muhly's Drones on eMusic

I just made my debut at eMusic with a review of Nico Muhly's collected Drones EPs, embedded below. Read the review here.

Pauline Oliveros - Reverberations

Really can't overstate my admiration for Pauline Oliveros . . . though I did try.

Zammuto.

Zammuto!

Arrange and Johnny Jewel

Two recent Pitchfork pieces I thought came out well: A review of Arrange, a young South Floridian whose music never ceases to bewitch me, and an interview with Johnny Jewel of Chromatics and Glass Candy, demystifying his phenomenal new record as Symmetry.

Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf

My Kill Screen review of this cray cray game treats of Ryan Trecartin, the uneven proportions of gaming and cinema, and the burgeoning no-wave folk-game avant-garde. Download the game here, read the review here.

Jens Lekman & Megafaun

Not together, silly. (Though a guy can dream, right?) They're in the pages of Pitchfork (Jens review) and the Independent Weekly (Megafaun feature).

20 Years of Ron Liberti

"American Checkbook etc." by Ron Liberti

In the Indy, check out my review of Ron Liberti's poster and print show at the new Ackland Museum Store.

The Cat and the Coup

Forget, for a moment, about whether or not video games can be art. Can they be documentaries? I took up the question in a Kill Screen review of The Cat and the Coup, which deals with the American and British plot to depose the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. Read it here.

Video Game Journalism Extravaganza

I've dabbled in video game writing for years, printing quite a few reviews, humor pieces, and a few features in Paste Magazine. It's something that I've been getting more and more interested in recently. So I'm extra-super-excited to simultaneously break into two incredible gaming publications, one a venerable mainstream institution and the other a new grassroots upstart.

EDGE is a huge British gaming mag that has been in print for like 17 years, and provides more in-depth reporting on all aspects of the industry than any of the American print mags do. The April issue with the Max Payne cover, on American stands now (at least in North Carolina), includes my first article for the magazine, a "Time Extend" feature on Final Fantasy VIII. It was really fun to write, and getting to spell things all British was the icing on the cake. I'll definitely be writing more for EDGE in months to come.

The upstart Kill Screen, on the other hand, represents the sharpest effort so far to provide intellectual, cutting-edge video game journalism to an American audience that craves it, but too often has to rely on consumer-reports reviews and baldly promotional previews. If you believe that gaming is mature enough for a serious and skeptical press, you're probably already a subscriber to the print edition. I'm not saying my first review for Kill Screen rises to this lofty intellectual standard: it's about Bulletstorm, a profoundly silly but way-fun shooter, and I didn't want to gild the lily. But maybe it will get you clicking around to see what all Kill Screen has to offer online. Read it here. 

Oh Levon!

To hear him sing "Ophelia," you'd think she just boarded up the windows and disappeared yesterday.

The Wise Man's Fear

Out now is issue #5 of Bull Spec, the Triangle's own magazine of speculative fiction. It features my review of Patrick Rothfuss' mostly excellent fantasy novel The Wise Man's Fear, the second in a popular trilogy that began with The Name of the Wind. You can order the issue online here, or pick it up on local newsstands. (For the record, I wrote this article about the magazine well before anyone ever considered that I might contribute to it.)

Baby Dee: "Regifted Light"

Heart this record so much...

My Pitchfork review

Video commercial:

Laurie Anderson: Homeland

Possibly my favorite album of 2010. Don't sleep on it.