Author: paulsbrizzi

Tirzah and Mica Levi have been besties since forever, and the records released under Tirzah’s name have all been collaborations. While Mica is quite the karma chameleon, recording delightful new wave-influenced racket as Michachu and the Shapes and Good Bad Happy Sad and scoring toney art-house auteur films, Tirzah tends toward the minimal, taking fragments…… Continue reading October ’23

The title track on Leftfield’s 2022 album This Is What We Do was cute, in fact it was pretty great in its own low-key way. But the re-worked track, called “We Do Dub,” on the new This Is What We Do. Version Excursion, is a full-on arsequake as they used to say, building up exquisite…… Continue reading September ’23

It’s hot, beachy weather in my hemisphere, so why don’t we discuss what the song of the summer might be. Jung Kook of BTS just knocked Caucasian Country favorite Morgan Wallen (yeah, me neither) off the top of the Billboard Top 100 with a profoundly, primordially, primate-ally vapid gust of air called “Seven.” Apparently that’s…… Continue reading August ’23

You know I always strive to bring you the very latest in musical refinement and excellence, but in one of my walkabouts I came across “Chancellor,” a lovely bit of shrugging rumination recorded way back in 2001 by Gord Downie, the late lead singer of The Tragically Hip. It’s a. a great tune, and b.…… Continue reading July ’23

In my last year at U.C. Irvine I was finally out of the closet. I started to have friends and my world was expanding like the universe. Greg Parkinson was a few years older than me; we tried going on a date once; we went to see Romeo Void in at the Golden Bear in…… Continue reading June ’23

I most ceeertainly did not grow up around country music. I mean I remember “Jolene” by Dolly Parton getting played on the radio, but country music mostly seemed alien and strange and comical — ladies with giant bouffants, stiff-looking black-haired dudes and more simple-minded sentimentality than you could ever sop up with your cornbread. It…… Continue reading May ’23

Field recordings of life in Kiev before the war set the stage for some hardcore poignancy in Heinali’s Kyiv Eternal album. He has an uncanny way of conveying shifting moods and emotion as he layers dusty, pixellated textures over field recordings that create a sense of a physical space and buried chatter that sounds like…… Continue reading April ’23

It’s been a long cold winter in my summery LA apartment and I’ve got a backlog of little masterpieces I’ve been meaning to talk about… Liv.e reminds me of Erykah Badu when I first saw her on the Jenny McCarthy Show way back in ‘97 — fully steeped in the lineage of R&B but also…… Continue reading March ’23

I went to Park City for Slamdance in January and I had a couple of opportunities to DJ, but before I get to all that why don’t we rewind to 40 odd years ago. I came out after much agonizing when I was 20, largely because I really didn’t want to be a virgin when…… Continue reading February ’23

This is gonna be our year.