Andy Beta

1 month ago | boisestatepublicradio.org | Andy Beta

For most of the '00s, Panda Bear and Animal Collective scribbled outside the lines of indie rock and made up their own rules, releasing albums that flouted expectations. Animal Collective built its buzz in the mid-2000s by arts-and-crafting album covers, wearing masks onstage, and making a ramshackle, spasmodic type of indie music that could be seen as being as childlike as a tantrum. Old album reviews abound with allusions to nursery rhymes, enchanted forests and Peter Pans.

Oct 21, 2024 | andybeta.substack.com | Andy Beta

I first met Surya Botofasina at a Midtown restaurant back in the winter of 2017. Up until that point, Botofasina had been in his New York City hustle mode, whether that meant working in restaurants (like this one) or appearing in Boardwalk Empire. On that day, I was there to chat with him about his childhood spent at Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda’s ashram in California. That conversation became part of Luaka Bop’s ever-transcendent The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda set.

Oct 16, 2024 | daily.bandcamp.com | Andy Beta

LISTS The Road to Aphex Twin’s “Selected Ambient Works Volume II” By Andy Beta · October 16, 2024 My decades-long obsession with Aphex Twin started with a mixtape (it was the early ‘90s after all). A friend needed something to fill the final two minutes of Side A and slotted in one of the untitled selections from the recently released monolith Selected Ambient Works Volume II. The work of British producer Richard D.

Jun 20, 2024 | andybeta.substack.com | Andy Beta

James Chance passed away earlier this week. Back in early 2003, Ryan Pitchfork asked me to go interview him at his apartment in the purgatory that is the Upper West Side on the occasion of a long-overdue CD box set. As a rather recent Brooklyn transplant, I got nosebleeds if I ever went north of the L and I was slightly bewildered to be this far uptown.

May 28, 2024 | andybeta.substack.com | Andy Beta

Marian Zazeela passed away last month. And J reminded me that Dream Lines, an exhibit of her drawings, was up for a few days more at Artists Space, so I trekked down to Tribeca for a chance to glimpse her work just in time. Wait, that’s not right. Time was Zazeela’s real medium; how you’re soaking in it, how you might glimpse light across a tiny slice of it. If you’re putting ink to a piece of paper, can you do it so as to trace the infinite?