Music
Five Pieces at the Kitchen
Exploring the Space Between 1 and 0
By Marshall Yarbrough
The stage was set up with four guitars, four amps, and sixteen small speakers.
Five Pieces at the Kitchen
The Beautiful and the Good
By George Grella
Beauty is underrated. Beauty used to be an important value in music, but one of the peculiar, and most significant, anomalies in the history of classical music is how beauty came to be distrusted and disregarded.
Highly Selective Listings
Brooklyn Rail Highly Selective Music Events
A thoughtful, discerning, and carefully compiled list of the most notable, promising and unique musical events for the month of April in New York City.
"Attention Online Shoppers..."
By Scott BeauchampTo say that 2016 was the year of the alt-right, which in many ways it indisputably was, is synonymous with calling it the year of the cargo cult. The alt-right’s emergence into public consciousness was facilitated by the internet—a platform that was developed by tech-utopia leftist baby boomers—and which communicates in the meme-heavy patois of hipster irony.
The Expansive Harmonium
By Michael BlairIn the opening seconds of Holy Science, the début recording of Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones ensemble, Kidambi’s harmonium counts off the notes of a dense minor chord and, backed by the buzzing drones of a bowed bass, slowly plunks through a progression of three other pitches before starting all over again.
The Hired Hands: A Tribute to Bruce Langhorne
By Christopher NelsonThe Hired Hand is rich in symbolism, often engages in experimental camera work, and moves at a deliberate pace. All of these elements are stitched together by a gorgeous film score by Bruce Langhorne.
Outtakes
By Steve DalachinskyAnother thought is that diversity in general is key to making the best music possible, the best art possible, the best anything possible. So it’s important that women improvise. How boring it would be to have nothing but major scales or just one hue of red or white or blue.
Brooklyn Rail Wintry Mix
by the EditorsPut together while snow was piled on the ground, a generous sample of our favorites tracks released during the winter.
