Philip Sherburne

5 days ago | pitchfork.com | Philip Sherburne

James Holden discovered trance states as a child, hammering out repetitive chords for hours on the piano. For Wacław Zimpel, Polish folk music and American blues offered early glimpses of higher states of consciousness. Since those introductory ear- and mind-openers, the search for musical transcendence has guided both artists in their respective journeys.

1 week ago | futurismrestated.substack.com | Philip Sherburne

Today’s issue is unusually and unexpectedly international. I hadn’t planned it this way, but I ended up writing about records from all over the damn place. Basic Channel’s Mark Ernestus and the players in Ndagga Rhythm Force recently returned with a head-spinning new album that turns the group’s Senegalese rhythms inside out.

2 weeks ago | pitchfork.com | Philip Sherburne

Titles don’t come much more self-explanatory than “Sad Piano House,” which could double as the genre tag for the new loosie from Daphni, the dance alter-ego of Caribou’s Dan Snaith. The London-based musician crafted the song as fodder for his DJ sets last year, reworking elements from Cherry’s melancholy “Cloudy” into even more skeletal form; once Ben UFO and other DJ friends started playing the unreleased song in club sets and on radio shows, Snaith’s working title for the track became official.

2 weeks ago | futurismrestated.substack.com | Philip Sherburne

I have a bad feeling about the way things are headed. Trump and his lackeys (and his puppetmasters, like Vought) want a confrontation, and they’re doing everything they can to force one, inventing emergencies as a pretext to invade Los Angeles. Trump is threatening to arrest the elected governor of California; cops are shooting reporters with rubber bullets.

2 weeks ago | futurismrestated.substack.com | Philip Sherburne

Back in April, I ran an interview with Stephen Vitiello, an ambient and experimental musician whose catalog includes collaborations with artists like Taylor Deupree, Steve Roden, Tetsu Inoue, Pauline Oliveros, and Lawrence English, about an album he had just announced for Balmat, the label I run with my Lapsus Radio co-host, Albert Salinas.