Kevin Cole

"I never sold the studio gear, we just sold the tour gear. Not as much of it as I had thought, in fact I still need to get rid of some shit. I did have to buy back a few things which was slightly frustrating. The worst things to buy back are cases – because you have to go buy new cases. They’re far and away the most expensive thing to tour with, which is weird. You’ll have a guitar and a case, and the case is four times more expensive than the guitar. Your speaker cabinet might be $300, but the case that holds two of them is several thousand dollars, so buying that stuff is a real kick in the nuts. And once you’ve bought them, now they’re worth $200. I wanna start a whole company that has a whole depot filled with cases, it’s like a case exchange so you don’t have to keep buying new cases." ~ James Murphy goo.gl

A producer that works within a realm where glitch and ambient pop overlap, Odense, Denmark's Jonas Munk applies his knowledge of piano, bass, and guitar -- instruments he began playing in his early teens -- to soundscapes of programmed beats and crackles and creakings. Under the name Manual, Munk debuted with a well-received self-titled 12" on the Hobby Industries label. In late 2001, the full-length Until Tomorrow was released by Germany's Morr Music. Like late-period Talk Talk, one of Munk's prime inspirations (along with Boards of Canada), Until Tomorrow's best moments achieve a rare simplicity where seemingly random elements fall perfectly into place. Ascend, the equally great follow-up, was released a year later. goo.gl

"I don’t think of one song as being a relationship song and one being a politics song. It’s one big giant bowl of stuff for me. 'Fake Empire' [from 2007’s Boxer] is a political song, but it’s also a song about getting fucked up and avoiding responsibility in life. It’s a drinking song, too. Politics is personal. I don’t understand why people separate love and politics in their art—and I don’t know who does. We don’t expect people who write novels to be like, 'Oh, this chapter is the political chapter and over here is the love chapter.' Somewhere along the line, musicians felt it was uncool to be political. It never made any sense to me. Who’s cooler than Nina Simone? And why would you take it out of your toolbox of stuff to write about? How you respect yourself or someone else in the most immediate relationship is political. If somebody sitting next to you in a movie theater is eating popcorn in a way that bugs you, your choice to go, 'ugh, shut up,' or your choice not to do that is political. How you treat your wife is political. I’m a big believer that the tiniest little things you do have a significant effect: 'I’ll do the brave, kind thing versus the self-serving, ego-driven fear thing that gets me the piece of pizza or the tax cut or anything else.' When you choose to do the small thing, the petty thing, the selfish thing, it affects everything. If you go out and look at political songs and political signs, so many of them come back to the same thing about kindness and gentle hearts. So love songs are super political to me, and political songs are super romantic." ~ Mat Berninger goo.gl

“We have a natural inclination towards the pop thing. I remember when I was in uni, I was in halls with a guy who was really into the noise scene. I would go to some of the gigs and it was very obtuse and self-regarding and it thought that it was some kind of boundary-pushing thing that doesn’t adhere to song structure or melody or ideas about rhythm... I always thought it was so uninteresting because it absolutely did have a set of rules that you had to follow to be in that scene. I always thought that pop music was so much more weird and interesting in the way that it has to work within certain structures, but it’s always pushing against them. So we’re trying to speak the same language as people but adding colour to the language rather than talking in tongues.” ~ Kai Campos goo.gl

Released this day in 1989. Trent Reznor on the difficulty of performing this album live: "The main reason was that I don’t really like electronic hands when they simply lip sync to a DAT or there‘s one guy playing pads or something. It’s a cop out. I think that most people, with the exception of the elite few electronic purists, think that sucks. And I thought that the music was strong enough that it could lend itself to a different adaptation but not one that was a cop out like ‘okay, we’re afraid to play electronic music live, we‘ll have a full rock band,‘ because I think that sucks too. It was a question of arranging the songs so that they would be fun to play live for the band and interesting. They would be able to mutate into whatever they wanted to mutate into so that a lot of that was live, but also maintaining the integrity of the electronic sounds. The only way, after much experimentation, was to use tape on stage and have live drums, live guitars, live vocals, and mostly live keyboards. The bass was on tape and we had some loops and unplayable kinds of effects on tape that nobody would miss watching somebody play. But the second you mention tape on stage, everyone yells Milli \/annilli and Janet Jackson. My whole point is this – if someone leaves our show and feels ripped off, fuck you, you can have your money back. That was the way to make it sound the best and have the most energy and sound live, but also sound electronic at the same time." goo.gl

"Fans expectations of our live show should vary from person to person. Every night there are folks that have never heard of us standing next to folks that may have heard a single or two standing next to someone who has heard us since we started in the early days. You never know what goes through peoples' minds as they have sensory overload in the form of sweet rock and roll. We'd hope that every person in the room walks away with a new hope for our generation in our ability to bust guts, melt faces, and produce and reproduce sweet vibes that will one day bring peace on earth and good will in the international community. So far, we've just been doing the same thing we've been doing in the basement where it started, same energy, same intensity, same fun. Being rockstar is just like dancing alone in your room with headphones on and not caring what you look like while doing it...except now there's a lot more eyes on you." ~ Henry goo.gl

"My reference points for [Take Me Apart] are Janet [Jackson] and Prince, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. I’m trying to make all the words be empowering, for women and for black women, especially. Even when you’re in despair and being treated like s—, you can still talk about that in a way where you’re not the victim. I hope that [listeners] find some solace. Just softness and tenderness and a place where they can feel all good and safe and cozy.” goo.gl

“I’ve tried doing various different drugs when I’ve been DJing and everyone has been having more fun than I have. Drugs and DJing doesn’t seem work for me because I’m trying to concentrate and the drugs don’t help.” goo.gl

"[Lyrical directness in Swim] is the thing I had in mind right from the start. Because of a few things. Swim was received so well by fans, and I had started to put more of my personal life in Swim. And I realized the first thing I wanted to do was make an album for the people who wanted to hear it. In the past that’s never ever been even a tiny piece of what I’ve done. It has this afterlife, but the music in the studio is, “Close the door, this is my thing.” It was just for me. So the first thing I wanted to do is make this thing for you, whoever’s going to hear it. And the other side of it was that my personal life and musical life are so much more integrated now. I’m not a crazy workaholic like I used to be, closing the door on the studio and disappearing — none of my friends or family would see me for a week. Now I’m out with my daughter, talking to our friends who are going through fraught times in their relationships because they also have young kids and things are complicated in their lives. And all of that — that’s my life. That’s the context of my life, and that’s what ended up being the lyrical content. I wanted to capture as much of that complexity as possible. I’m glad you feel like it translates, because that was definitely the idea. Swim was very miasmic — I’ve always made music where I hide my voice behind the music. And this album is for the person who’s listening to it — I want to make the distance between me and them as small as possible. I want it to transmit directly." goo.gl

This highlight of the six-CD Playback box set, with a groove that vaguely echoes the Zombies' "Time of the Season," was originally the B side of "Don't Do Me Like That." The song originated with a demo from Mike Campbell. Petty wrote the words on a plane after reading a New York Times article about a strange town in his home state. "There are all kinds of psychics and fortune tellers," Petty said. "It's this really small place. And I wrote that by putting myself in the mind of someone who went to Cassadaga. Though I spelled it wrong. ... Poetic license, I guess." goo.gl

"'Time of the Season' is frequently used in pop culture to represent the era. In that sense, it is featured in the films 1969, Awakenings, A Walk on the Moon and Riding the Bullet, all of which depict 1969, and The Conjuring, which depicts 1971. It has been used as incidental or scene-setting music during many episodes of many television programs and has been featured in several TV commercials, such as a 1999 Tampax ad set at the Woodstock Festival, a 2005 Fidelity Investments commercial, and a 2006 ad for Sprite. It was also used in the advertising campaigns of Nissan Tiida in Japan (2004), Greece (2007), Russia (2008) and Toyota RAV4 (2013) in Russia. During the 2006 playoffs, the song was played in Shea Stadium as the home team New York Mets took the field." goo.gl

Cool trivia: Actress and painter Ione Skye, who starred in "Say Anything," "River's Edge," and "Zodiac," is Donovan's daughter. Although originally written and recorded by Donovan, a version by The Pandamonium was released in the United Kingdom as a single in November 1966 (CBS 202462), while Donovan's version was finally released in June 1967 on the Pye Records compilation Sunshine Superman. (The song was never released as a single but it became a very popular song with fans, enough so that Donovan himself played it live more than most of his other hits.) The recording features Bobby Ray on bass and "Fast" Eddie Hoh on drums. The hauntingly eerie guitar is provided by Jimmy Page, then a noted session guitarist working in England. goo.gl

“I think about the record as a whole as songs for self-preservation. Regardless of the kind of rock music we make, I really like pop music and I place a lot of value in that.” ~ Lauren D. goo.gl

Britt Daniel, lead singer and guitarist of Spoon fame, met Dan Boeckner, of Wolf Parade and Handsome Furs, at a Handsome Furs concert in 2007. They kept in touch, and later, Spoon and Handsome Furs played shows together. Spoon later played Radio City Music Hall, and invited Boeckner onstage with them. Sam Brown, drummer of New Bomb Turks, was recommended by producer Mike McCarthy, who had previously worked with Daniel. Daniel had written the track, “What Gets You Alone” and sent it to Boeckner in February 2011, who recorded vocals over top of it, and decided to go to California the following year, along with Sam Brown to form the band. Alex Fischel met Boeckner opening up for Handsome Furs with the band PAPA. Boeckner later got in touch with Fischel and asked him to join Divine Fits, adding keyboards to the mix. The vocals are roughly shared between Daniel and Boeckner. goo.gl | Watch Divine Fits play a ridiculously mesmerizing set in our star-filled Dexter studio: blog.kexp.org

"I think we were really motivated by the idea of just making something nasty. We always felt like that even when we were working in a more euphoric way. There was always this kind of… weight. We wanted to get nasty and make something that sounded quite horrible and quite unsettling again. I think we perhaps felt like that was a part of our world that we hadn't focused on as much over the last couple of years. It was like, okay, where do we go now? Higher or back into the shadows, back into the darkness a little bit more?" ~ Rhys Webb goo.gl

“We sent [Regina Spektor] this one song--"Just A Memory'-- that she wrote to and she said, 'I don't want to send it back to you. I'd actually prefer to sing it to you live.' That was the first time we've experience anyone saying that to us. We were unsure how to react. But she came to Seattle, and we showed up to her hotel. Her room was on the 40th floor and we were super nervous. We knocked on the door, her husband answered, we met her kids and then she came in. She opened her laptop, played the instrumental and then she sang it to us, pretty much with her eyes closed. We got this private performance in her hotel room and it was absolutely beautiful. She opened her eyes and said, 'Uh, would you guys change anything?' And we said, 'Absolutely not.'” goo.gl

"“What’s interesting is that Jimi never practised. He liked to have fun with the guitar, and he played it a lot. Remember the word “play,” because a musician doesn’t work at an instrument, they play it. When you’re playing the guitar and someone’s there and you’re bouncing ideas off of them, you might find a little pattern or riff that you want to show them. Like Jimi might play me something and say, ‘what do you think of that?’ I’d say that we could do this or that with it, to get it sounding different or I might start suggesting how to use the various fuzz boxes. That’s how a sound might develop but then Jimi was playing all the time. He was always having fun with his fingers, although he wasn’t necessarily remembering anything note for note. The way he played was freeform, like jazz, and so he never had to worry about what to play next." ~ Roger Mayer, longtime Hendrix collaborator starting-at-zero.com

Where his earlier albums had been a fusion of organic and electronic sounds, 1999 was constructed almost entirely on synthesizers by Prince himself. Naturally, the effect was slightly more mechanical and robotic than his previous work and strongly recalled the electro-funk experiments of several underground funk and hip-hop artists at the time. Prince had also constructed an album dominated by computer funk, but he didn't simply rely on the extended instrumental grooves to carry the album -- he didn't have to when his songwriting was improving by leaps and bounds. The first side of the record contained all of the hit singles, and, unsurprisingly, they were the ones that contained the least amount of electronics. "1999" parties to the apocalypse with a P-Funk groove much tighter than anything George Clinton ever did, "Little Red Corvette" is pure pop, and "Delirious" takes rockabilly riffs into the computer age. After that opening salvo, all the rules go out the window -- "Let's Pretend We're Married" is a salacious extended lust letter, "Free" is an elegiac anthem, "All the Critics Love U in New York" is a vicious attack at hipsters, and "Lady Cab Driver," with its notorious bridge, is the culmination of all of his sexual fantasies. Sure, Prince stretches out a bit too much over the course of 1999, but the result is a stunning display of raw talent, not wallowing indulgence. goo.gl

"Once the record is done and out in the world, it doesn’t belong to me anymore and it shouldn’t. People take it and weave it into their lives however they see fit. I have exactly zero qualms about being “misunderstood” — I’m happy to be misunderstood as long as the misunderstanding isn’t something horrible. I’m happy for people to find their own meaning and their own journey with it... Putting out a record is a lot like recreating your own mythology every time. This particular record, I’m having a whole lot of fun with that; the aesthetic, my personal aesthetic for it is like dominatrix at the mental institution and that’s the archetype, having it be equal parts sexy and completely absurd." ~ Annie Clark goo.gl

The song's lyrics describe the mysterious disappearance of Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player Bill Barilko. Barilko scored the Stanley Cup clinching goal for the Leafs over Montreal Canadiens in the 1951 cup finals. Four months and five days later, Barilko departed on a fishing trip in a small, single-engine airplane with friend and dentist, Henry Hudson. The plane disappeared between Rupert House and Timmins, Ontario, leaving no trace of Barilko or Hudson. Eleven years later, on June 7, 1962, helicopter pilot Ron Boyd discovered the plane wreckage roughly 100 kilometres (62 mi) north of Cochrane, Ontario (about 35 miles off-course). Barilko was finally buried in his home town of Timmins, the same year that the Maple Leafs won their next Stanley Cup. The song's lyrics also reference the World War II style U.S. Army Air Corps, or U.S. Air Force officer's cap, mentioned in the song's title. The fifty mission cap was a cloth cap with visor issued to U.S. Army officers in World War II that developed a particular crush from the headphones that the bomber crews wore. goo.gl

"I moved to the US in 1999. So, I’ve been here a while now. It wasn’t much of an adjustment really – although I was pretty shocked that for a lot of people their only knowledge of Australia was the Crocodile Hunter or Outback Steakhouse. I’ve even had people ask me what language we speak in Australia!" ~ James Hill goo.gl

“Particularly in the last year, I’ve had a difficult time finding confidence and learning how to adapt to certain situations,” she continues, with the unease at the world permeating every part of ‘Losing’. With the political climate in America, these feelings have only been made stronger. It’s been discouraging and sad to witness, and music has been a space for everyone to use as an outlet for negative energy, and as a platform with which to speak up. 'Our First 100 Days’ and beyond, the sense of community has never been stronger. It makes complete sense that these things are tied into a bunch of records that are coming out this year. It’s really unavoidable, you can’t overlook this. It’s affecting everybody. It’s comforting. Once things get low enough, people come together and work together. I know that when we had the women’s march here it was unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced. I thought ‘Wow, this is amazing, this is happening’ but also it was unfortunate that it had to happen because of such terrible circumstances.” ~ Alicia Bognanno

"The name came first. I had it in my back pocket for years, but I always thought of it as kind of a joke. But when I met Molly, it became clear that we should have a project together and when I told her the name, she loved it. Everybody loved it, and I think it has really come to encapsulate the vibe of the band. Not too serious, a little over the top, but capable of rocking hard. Lena was one of our best friends and a natural choice to join up, so at that point, with the name in mind, we thought, Let’s get a chick on the bass.” Leah is one of my favorite musicians and the four of us happened to all be at Doe Bay for the festival last summer. We asked her if she wanted to start this band with us and the rest is history." ~ Whitney Petty blog.kexp.org | Watch Thunderpussy in an incendiary performance here in our studios: blog.kexp.org

Along with Alabama Shakes' Brittany Howard, Thunderbitch comprises members of fellow Nashville acts Fly Golden Eagle and Clear Plastic Masks. The group first surfaced in 2012, reports Nashville Scene, playing a gig in a hot wings joint not long after Alabama Shakes scored several Grammy nominations for their breakout album, Boys and Girls.

Written by Otis Blackwell (‘Return To Sender’, ‘All Shook Up’, ‘Don’t be Cruel’, ‘Great Balls Of Fire’) it was one of the cover songs the New York Dolls’ had performed live. Although Johnny thunderised this Northern Soul gem, this dynamic version, mixed in 1978 by Steve Lilywhite, was left shelved when Johnny later re-recorded it with Steve Marriott, Phil Lynott, Steve Jones and Paul Cook (from the Sex Pistols).

From the second album of a trilogy entitled Amen, from the notoriously prolific Mikko Joensuu. Explore more tracks from this gorgeous and musically diverse album here: mikkojoensuu.bandcamp.com

"We did a lot of work over at EastWest, and we mixed a lot of it in their Studio Five. You can work there for 15 hours, and the assistants are some of the best assistants around. The work flow’s incredible. You never have to even think about where you are, because if you need a coffee someone gets it for you. Not on some rock star shit, but just more like, you get so much shit done. The focus is the work, and obviously having a studio bill helps that, because you’re in this great place, so you feel like you can’t be dicking around. Foo Fighters had Studio A locked down for four months. Me and Shawn [Everett, engineer who's worked with Alabama Shakes and John Legend] were working on an early version of 'Holding On,' and I remember Grohl was outside our studio, and we were cranking. One of the assistants was like, ‘Oh yeah, Grohl’s outside having a smoke. He said it sounds sweet.’ I was like, ‘Oh, that’s why you come here. So that you can turn it up to 200 db and then you hear that some dude you love and respect says it sounds sweet.’ I was like, ‘Cool, I think it sounds sweet, too.’" goo.gl

"Gin and Juice" was produced by Dr. Dre and contains an interpolation from Slave's "Watching You" in its chorus and a sample from George McCrae's "I Get Lifted" as its bassline; additional vocalists on the song include Dat Nigga Daz, Jewell, Heney Loc, and Sean "Barney" Thomas. "Gin and Juice" has been covered by other groups, including alternative country group The Gourds in 1996, lounge singer Richard Cheese in 2004, and comedians Naked Trucker and T-Bones in 2007. goo.gl

From the debut studio album by American hip hop recording artist Dr. Dre. It was released on December 15, 1992, by his own record label Death Row Records and distributed by Priority Records. Recording sessions for the album took place in June 1992 at Death Row Studios in Los Angeles and at Bernie Grundman Mastering in Hollywood.The album is named after a slang term for high-grade cannabis, and its cover is a homage to Zig-Zag rolling papers. It was Dr. Dre's first solo album after he had departed from hip hop group N.W.A and its label Ruthless Records over a financial dispute. On The Chronic, he included both subtle and direct insults at Ruthless and its owner, former N.W.A member Eazy-E. Although a solo album, it features many appearances by Snoop Dogg, who used the album as a launch pad for his own solo career. Dr. Dre's production has been noted for popularizing the G-funk subgenre within gangsta rap. The Chronic has been widely regarded as one of the most important and influential albums of the 1990s and regarded by many fans and peers to be one of the most well-produced hip hop albums of all time. The Chronic was ranked at #138 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. goo.gl

Fun trivia: Josh Wells, who not only played drums, synthesizers, drum programming, bass, electric guitar, percussion, piano, and piano strings, also produced and mixed this album. Another factoid? He's the drummer in Black Mountain, Radio Berlin, and Jerk with a Bomb, and has worked with Hot Hot Heat, Pink Mountaintops, Cave Singers, and Gaslight Anthem.

The debut album from this Seattle trio comprised of Lisa Prank (aka Robin Edwards), Chastity Belt's Julia Shapiro, and Tacocat's Bree McKenna is a fun set of hook-filled garage-pop combining buzzing guitars, energetic rhythms, and catchy pop hooks with humourous lyrics about Seattle, pop culture, and more. ~ Don Yates

The Toronto quartet's follow-up album to 2013's eponymous album. Co-songwriter Jasmyn Burke on the personal directness in the lyrics: "By way of literally existing, maybe these are thoughts I’ve always had but I didn’t really put them in my lyrics previously. Just meeting people on the road and being affected by their warmth and how they see themselves in you. Then you think ‘OK I need to be stronger, I need to be a better example for these people.’ It’s nice to be honest about how you feel. You’re not always a super confident person and everyone has moments where they feel shitty and bad about themselves."

The song's blunt statements nicely sum up Sage's staunch independence and refusal to play along traditional music industry lines, forever the outsider fighting the system, fiercely protecting his art. The Wipers' indie philosophy would greatly influence the Northwestern grunge scene that would spring up in the late '80s as would the group's heavy, "grungy" form of punk rock. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain frequently sited the group as a major influence that can be heard in Cobain's adoption of Greg Sage's fondness for the repetitive, one-line chorus -- a hooky device that can be heard on many tracks by both Nirvana and the Wipers. goo.gl

After a year of extensive touring in support of 2015’s The Agent Intellect, Protomartyr returned to their practice space in a former optician's office in Southwest Detroit. Guitarist Greg Ahee—inspired by The Raincoats' Odyshape, Mica Levi's orchestral compositions, and Protomartyr's recent collaboration with post-punk legends The Pop Group, for Rough Trade's 40th anniversary—began writing new music that artfully expanded on everything they’d recorded up until that point. The result is Relatives in Descent, their fourth full-length and Domino debut. Though not a concept album, it presents twelve variations on a theme: the unknowable nature of truth, and the existential dread that often accompanies that unknowing. This, at a moment when disinformation and garbled newspeak have become a daily reality. www.dominorecordco.us/usa/albums/10-07-17/relatives-in-descent/

Originally, Boy was slated to be produced by Martin Hannett, who had produced U2's 1980 single "11 O'Clock Tick Tock" as well as the group Joy Division. However, after the suicide of Joy Division's lead singer Ian Curtis, Hannett was allegedly too distraught to work. Producer Steve Lillywhite, who had produced other post-punk bands, was sent a copy of U2's first release U2-3 by Island Records to gauge his interest in producing their first album. After seeing them perform live, Lillywhite agreed to produce their single "A Day Without Me". Although the song failed to chart, the band had an enjoyable working experience with him and agreed to have him produce their debut studio album. Boy was recorded from July–September 1980 at Dublin's Windmill Lane Studios, which became U2's chosen recording location during the 1980s. It was also their first time working with Lillywhite. He employed unorthodox production techniques, such as recording Mullen's drums in a stairwell, and recording smashed bottles and forks played against a spinning bicycle wheel. The band found Lillywhite to be very encouraging and creative, and he subsequently became a frequent producer of their recorded work. Thematically, the lyrics reflected on adolescence, innocence, and the passage into adulthood, themes represented on the album cover through the photo of a young boy's face." goo.gl

Mudcrutch was formed in 1970 by Tom Petty and Tom Leadon, who had been playing together in a band called the Epics. Mudcrutch's lineup consisted of Tom Petty (bass and vocals), Tom Leadon (guitar and vocals), Jim Lenehan (lead vocals), Randall Marsh (drums) and Mike Campbell (guitar). Leadon and Lenehan left the band in 1972 and were replaced by bassist/guitarist/vocalist Danny Roberts. Keyboardist Benmont Tench also joined the band. Ricky Rucker was a part of the band for a short time. Mudcrutch served as the house band at Dub's Lounge in its hometown of Gainesville, Florida. In 1974, Mudcrutch signed with Shelter Records and re-located to Los Angeles, California. The band released one single, "Depot Street" in 1975, which failed to chart. After Danny Roberts left the group, Petty invited Charlie Souza to take over on bass guitar and the band continued recording in Leon Russell's Tulsa studio, and later at Leon's Encino, California home. The band's record company broke them up in late 1975. Petty, Campbell and Tench went on to form The Heartbreakers in 1976 with fellow Gainesville natives Stan Lynch and Ron Blair. goo.gl