Dangerbird records a amp radio

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Hataałii—the singer, songwriter, and poet born Hataałiinez Wheeler in Window Rock, AZ, the capital of Navajo Nation—arrived just in time to witness American collapse. Not a galvanizing, grand explosion of empire but a paralysis-inducing decay and alienation that infects the American body politic. Zealotry repurposed into a new cultural crusade every week. Reality-building and delusion affirmation masquerading as liberty. The show-horse ladder of success. Pandora's Box purchased on credit, driving everyone mad in different ways, algorithmically determined to suit your unique neuroses.

It's from this vantage point that Hataałii brings us Waiting For A Sign, a heady collection of ghost town anthems, short story mirages, and brain fog-clearing personal reckonings. At times it recalls the playfully languid puzzlement of Pavement's Wowee Zowee, the trickster melancholy of Lou Reed's The Blue Mask, the economical yet winking earnestness of Blaze Foley, or the softer Spacemen 3 songs that cast awe and mystery against a droning, endless atmosphere. But, as easy as the tempos can get, Hataałii operates with purpose: the obscurantist details come into focus, giving way to trenchant observations about paranoia, accountability, and post-colonial fallout.

The One AM Radio: Heaven Is Attached By A Slender Thread (Dangerbird, 4/12/11)

The One AM Radio: “Sunlight”

LA-based multi-instrumentalist Hrishikesh Hirway is the force behind dream-pop band The One AM Radio. On the day before his new album, Heaven Is Attached By A Slender Thread, is released to the world, Hirway took the chance to get introspective with ALARM. Below, he explores the alignment (or misalignment) of various expectations and realities, including those of his own songwriting process, through the lens of self-portraiture.

On Self-Portraiture
by Hrishikesh Hirway (The One AM Radio)

Everyone confronts this question every day: how do I present myself to the world? This process is so ubiquitous and so fundamental that it often goes unnoticed, a blip in the subconscious. But when dealing with any work that’s declared to be a self-portrait, the process of figuring out who you think you are, and how you want to reveal that to others, becomes paramount.

For my new record, I wanted to make a conscious effort to step away from the adjectives that were often used to describe my music: somber, melancholy, introspective, East Coast. I thought, “I’d like to make something buoyant, happy, fun, LA. Dance music.” When the record was done, I realized that I hadn’t accomplished that at all. There was a huge divide between what I thought I could make and what actually came out.

These are some of my favorite self-portraits. I think about what self-loathing and self-aggrandizement had to go on behind the scenes to create them. The monstrous-ness of Francis Bacon’s. The careful, deliberate fiction of Cindy Sherman’s. John Coplans’ — unflinching. Rineke Dijkstra’s self-portrait could be of anyone at all. With the bathing cap and goggles and hands over her face, she makes herself almos

A quick visit to Philly based punk record label SRA Records‘ website reveals the quirky, jagged sense of humor that belies the countenance of label owner BJ Howze, a person whose personal growth has been as steady and pointed as his releases. If you were a fan of BJ’s noise-and-drums duo Hulk Smash and their in-your-face, “The Onion headline if written by Chomsky as heavy metal lyric” brand of punk, then you know what I’m talking about. But despite the adherence to punk’s need to shed light, tongue-in-cheek, on the troubling nuances of living in the world, it’s the evolutionary process — the growing up, the having kids, the accepting of your social position in the world and what kind of positive power that can yield — that has kept SRA continually challenging staid long-held punk notions of do-it-yourself, broadening the concept of punk community but retaining all of its power, humor and intelligence. From releases by agit-grunge outfit Psychic Teens, to the blistering wall of noise political chaos of Soul Glo, the label has stretched its sonic boundaries. By opening up his studio and label while providing support for bands that feature historically marginalized people, BJ has vowed to push social boundaries as well.

After seeing him around the punk scene for years, I finally officially met BJ after my band (Solarized, whose debut LP BJ also has agreed to release on SRA) played a show at a dive bar in South Philly and we’ve been making moves to work on projects together ever since. And while our prog-rock synthwave band might not ever see the light of day– and besides, BJ does duty with his wife and principle song-writer Helen in the band Dialer, holding it down in that admittedly slight genre already– it was an honor to work with him as he graciously lent his expertise to an event I put together, Electrifest (a queer/lgbt empower