My Bloody Valentine leader raises possibility the mid-90s pop movement was part of an establishment conspiracy

6.9% Growth Outpaces US Inflation as Streaming, Physical and Sync Revenues Rise Paid Subscriptions Generate $3.4 Billion in First Half of 2026 The Recording Industry Association of America® (RIAA) tod...

Are you as exhausted by AI discourse as I am? Good, bad, boom, gloom, blah blah blah. I’m so tired of it—but I also feel like I have to pay attention, because it’s infesting so many parts of my professional life whether I like it or not. One of the places I’ve paid closest attention […]

4 track album

For the last few years I’ve been quietly dreading Google Zero, the term coined by Nilay Patel 1 for the day Google stops sending traffic to websites at all. As someone who makes his living building websites, and who has his own to worry about, it felt like watching a slow-motion collapse I couldn’t do […]

I recently found myself listening to a wonderful piece of music that I’ve always had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with: Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel (1971).

Some of the best music being made in Portland today is built from the sounds of the outside world. A handful of deep listeners armed with fancy parabolic microphones, handheld Zoom recorders, or their...

A roundup of reviews published at A Closer Listen over the last week. William Selman – Sanctioned Departures (Critique of Everyday Life, 2026) — reviewed by Richard Allen June 13, 2026 Émile Zener – Sumatra Method (Critique of Everyday Life, 2026) — reviewed by Richard Allen June 12, 2026 Garling Wu and Jessie Leov – Earthworks (2026) — reviewed by Richard Allen June 11, 2026…

Preorder, estimated shipping early july 26. For more than thirty years, Kevin Drumm has developed a unique sonic language situated at the intersection of drone, electronics, improvisation and sound a...

The composer's quiet, slow, spacious musical aesthetic is remarkable in music history.

The album uses a thematic tagging system to reorganise field recordings, producing collages where water phases, animal calls, and electromagnetic fields collide with unforced logic.

The name of the label fits the release:  Critique of Everyday Life.  Émile Zener’s Sumatra Method is an expose of the past and an indictment of the present, causing listeners to question what…

Can one remix reality?  We do it all the time, as our minds revise, rewrite and reorganize our memories. Critique of Everyday Life’s William Selman performs a similar feat on Sanctioned Depar…

Podcast Episode · Base Camp Beta · April 29 · 2h 10m

At any given party or get-together we've all been asked "What's your favorite album?" For me it's an impossible question, but honestly, if I truly had to choose ten records...

Ahead of the release of Backrooms, we invite you to lose yourself in our list of the most terrifying – and most inviting – hallway scenes in cinema

The actor, director, and writer shares his love for the physical comedy of Jackie Chan, praises the timeless beauty of The Red Shoes, and talks about discovering noir classics like The Big Heat and In...

UCSB scientists discovered that watching just seven minutes can open your mind and enhance creativity.

The best sounds captured outside the studio in April.

The best sounds captured outside the studio in April.

Podcast Episode · Base Camp Beta · April 29 · 2h 10m

Podcast Episode · Base Camp Beta · April 22 · 2h 9m

YouTube video by La Synthèse Humaine