I recently dug out my CDs and started reripping them all. I've found a few forgotten gems in there, but few hit harder for me than the beautifully concise Professor Murder Rides the Subway EP. There was a period of time in the mid-aughts in NYC where it seemed like every indie band wanted you to let loose, dance like no one was watching, and just have some damn fun. Few embodied that as much as New York dance punk band Professor Murder.

LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture were the biggest names of the dance punk revival. But there were also bands like Rahim, Liars, Dan Deacon, and countless lesser-known acts on DFA that you could see on any giv …

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Jane Schoenbrun's latest film, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, is making a splash in theaters right now. So it seems like the perfect time to revisit their first film, We're All Going to the World's Fair. I fell in love with this film when I first saw it at Sundance in 2021.

We are immediately introduced to our protagonist, Casey, as she engages in the World's Fair Challenge, a sort of ARG creepypasta meets ice bucket challenge. There's a creepy mantra, some bloodletting, and a mysterious video - basically a speedrun of horror movie tropes. But having them all delivered by this young girl alone in her room who just stares directly in …

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Two minutes and thirty seconds into the title track of Rachika Nayar's Heaven Come Crashing, an absolutely massive drum and bass beat drops. As a fan of Nayar's debut record Our Hands Against The Dusk, it caught me off guard. That album has no percussion on it at all. Heaven Come Crashing is almost entirely drum-free, too. There are some rapid-fire mechanical hi-hats on the second track, "Tetramorph," and the back half of track six, "Gayatri," has what sounds like a snare buried deep in the mix. But it isn't until track seven that Nayar delivers an unexpected drum explosion, before immediately retreating to the soothing wash of "Sleepless," …

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There's something about a movie like The Room, Troll 2, or Fateful Findings that I find irresistible. These sorts of "so bad they're good" films are marvelous curiosities where ambition far outstrips resources, ability, and self-awareness to become something much greater than the sum of their parts. Champagne and Bullets (also released as GetEven and Road to Revenge) is a film on par with those classics of outsider cinema.

The movie is almost entirely the work of one man, John De Hart. Hart wrote, directed, and stars as Rick Bode in the film. He even performs a musical number early in the proceedings - the bizarre "Shimmy Slide." During th …

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Just why?

ʅ͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡(̸̢̛̼̞̭͋ͅ)̸͚̰͛̔̾̀̿͒͂:̴͓̞̑̌̂̆̊͋̀:̸͎̟̯̂̓̌　҉　　　　　͡　͞　͞　͞　҉● ࿀ ●  ࿀  ●　　　҉⃝ 　　　⃝͢ ͞　　　͘　͞⃝̕ ͢　　　　̛　⃝ 　　　̸　̡　　͢⃝̧ 　͡　͡　　̀　̧　̢⃝͜ 　 　҉　　͞　͞　⃝͞ 　͞　͡⃝  ⃝҉҈҉҈҉҈҉҈҉҈҉ :̶̢͙͙͕̠̩͆(̷̮͍͚̫͚͂̍)̵̳̗̊(　̟̞̝̜̙̘̗̖҉̵̴̨̧̢̡̼̻̺̹̳̲̱̰̯̮̭̬̫̪̩̦̥

What am I supposed to do with this?

It's un-Googleable. Unpronounceable.

It doesn't even render the same way on various platforms. It looks one way on YouTube Music. Another on Apple Music. And yet another on Bandcamp. Even the artist name ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ is an unpronounceable series of glyphs that would make Prince shake his head.

So, from here on out, I'm just going to refer to ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ …

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Matmos are an incredibly accomplished duo between their own solo records like the masterpiece A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure and production classic Björk records like Vespertine. But Drew Daniel, one half of Matmos, is fiendishly prolific. When he's not literally dreaming up new viral music genres, he's also putting out records under the banner of The Soft Pink Truth.

Where Matmos usually focuses on a specific musical experiment - using only samples of medical procedures or building instruments out of PVC tubing - Soft Pink Truth goes wherever Daniel's whims take him. That might be a house record. It might be a bunch of black metal co …

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There was a period in the early aughts when Definitive Jux (nee: Def Jux) seemed like it was going to be the future of hip-hop. While the label featured plenty of experimental, boundary-pushing, and politically minded acts, Lif stood out as the most "conscious rapper" in the traditional sense. It was clear though, that label head El-P envisioned that as an important part of Def Jux's identity, as the first record it put out was 2000's Enter the Colossus EP, from Lif.

Mr. Lif's follow-up was 2002's Emergency Rations EP, a sort of place setter for the full-length I Phantom just a couple of months later. It opens with a skit about Lif missing, …

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