Ned's Atomic Link Bin: From Mariah to Royal Trux, Sleater-Kinney to the Wu-Tang-Loving Pharma Bro and More

Writer's note: Greetings! My name’s Ned Raggett, occasional music writer for a variety of spots. The Cream approached me to talk a bit about interesting music news, think pieces, longreads and more from the previous week. And some actual music too, strangely enough. You can thank a huge range of friends for suggesting things to their own circles as much as anyone else. Maybe I just like to be my own aggregator. Welcome to the column, and hope you enjoy!

As the end of the year approaches, more reviews of the previous 12 months unsurprisingly turned up, a veritable flood in the expected making. But there were a variety of intriguing features and interviews that emerged too, from the up-and-coming Lizzo to the long-deceased Julián Carrillo. There was the Wu-Tang Clan, or rather, their now most notorious fan. (And for the last time, the Bill Murray contract detail was a hoax.)

My Body Is a Tuning Fork: An Interview With Lizzo

Laura Snapes interviewed the Minneapolis MC for Rookie, with Lizzo riding high after a year that introduced her to a wider public all around, topped off with her second full-length, Big GRRRL, Small World, with Snapes taking Lizzo into a deep plunge from everything from her young Destiny’s Child obsession to her instrumental passion for flute music and performance.

I started off very wildly on flute. I was almost self-taught. I don’t brag about much, but I brag about flute: You don’t end up as good as me in the school district I was in from having private lessons. I wasn’t set up to be as good as I was. I had to really practice and do it on my own. I played a lot of things by ear, and I was really, really, really self-taught. So by the time I got to a teacher — I was a junior, I think — I was already competing. I remember, she was like, “You’re like a wild horse. Your fingerings are all over the place, your breath control is insane, your vibrato is—what? And you play so fast!” She said, “We need to take you back a notch.” I was like, “OK, whatever, I still can play really fast, so what!” And then with singing, I started off so loud, and I had to take myself back a notch. By the time I had been working outside of the rock band, [my bandmates] were like, “This is electropop music, you can’t be yelling all over the place, this isn’t the Mars Volta.” I just learned how to refine myself. In refining myself, I found the purest of me. The essence, I guess, the marrow in the middle. I think it’s important to find that, man. That’s the good stuff. I had a lot! But I can also find the laser point of me. Don’t hide yourself. I don’t think it’s important to hide yourself like I did. I think that everyone’s experience is so unique that you have to do what you gotta do. Yeah, it happens to all of us, to the best of us, and I think that I was very fortunate to find the positivity in that and not completely lose myself.

For Noisey, Phil Freeman wrote about Leigh, full name Heather Leigh Murray, touching on her extensive career in experimental music — other acts and performers she has worked with include Charalambides and Peter Brötzmann — and her latest solo album, I Abused Animal, released via Sunn0))) member Stephen O’Malley’s label.

My setup is kind of basic, actually. I use a volume pedal, I use an analog delay pedal, I use a fuzz, and a Boss Blues Driver that really helps add a tactile quality to the fuzz and delay. Occasionally I’ll use a wah-wah, but I would say the setup I’ve had for quite a while is those pedals. I usually play through a Fender Twin or a Fender Deluxe, and I really like the Wem Dominator amp as well. It has a really sleazy sound. I toured New Zealand a few years ago, and I have to say the pedal steel through the variety of boutique, homemade, strange amps that are only in New Zealand … I would like to import one of those one day, if I could. They’re amazing.

Tyler Wilcox’s brief but enjoyable study of Yule, who infamously ended up the last member of the band standing thanks to the UK-only release of 1973’s Squeeze, makes a case for him as a strong contributor to the band’s aesthetic in his own right, whose main crime in many eyes may simply have been being not John Cale.

During his time with the Velvets, the classically trained John Cale leapt from bass to viola to organ to piano. Yule couldn't take over viola duties, but throughout 1969, his keyboard skills were increasingly brought to the fore, especially on the VU's churning masterwork, "What Goes On." On a live recording included on Live 1969 and freshly remastered from the original tapes for the new Complete Matrix Tapes box set, Yule rides the neverending wave of interlocking guitar and drums for close to nine minutes, conjuring up a swirling celestial sound. Sterling Morrison later suggested that early, unrecorded live versions of "What Goes On" with Cale were definitive. But it's hard to imagine them — or anything, really — being better than this.

Freda Love Smith Generates Warmth Through Music, Food and Memoir Jes Skolnik profiled Smith, most well known for her work in the Blake Babies and the Mysteries of Life, with reference to her recently published autobiography Red Velvet Underground, a combination of, indeed, music and food among other memories.

[T]aste in food and taste in music are similarly potent markers of self. If you know that Olive Garden is my favorite restaurant you can draw some conclusions about who I am (or if my favorite restaurant is Frontera Grill, or a restaurant in Brooklyn that seats four and you’ve never heard of …). Likewise you could hazard a decent guess as to what I’m like if I tell you my favorite band is The Kinks (or Motley Crue, or The Dead Kennedys). One of my students in the food class pointed out that these subjects are safe “getting to know you” territory, that when you meet a new potential friend or love interest you might ask where they like to eat and what kind of music they’re into, and although it seems casual and not particularly personal the answers can be immediately revealing and give you a read on your compatibility with that person. It’s weird how much class plays into all this too, even more than age or geography. When I was in high school in southern Indiana, it was mostly the kids of academics who were into punk and gravitated towards less mainstream food and vegetarianism, and mostly the kids of blue collar workers who were into metal or country music and hamburgers.

Jillian Mapes wrote for Vulture about the end of Sleater-Kinney’s touring year, a return of shows to a New York City venue and the joys of rocking out in general.

The Market Hotel gig marked the end of a weeklong New York victory lap for Sleater-Kinney, who celebrated their greatest year to date as a band with the kind of reunion that is so rare in rock: They’re bigger — and better — than ever. During their original run from 1994 to 2006, Sleater-Kinney were a DIY band and then a critics’ band (Greil Marcus once called them "the greatest rock band in America"), but Carrie Brownstein’s increased comedic profile via Portlandia has brought more of a general cultural awareness to S-K’s feminist anthems, at a time when they were inactive, no less. To see wider recognition go to artists who really deserve it — both for years put into their craft and for consistently standing for something with their evolving commentary on politics and society — is satisfying to begin with. Paired with the setting, it was the sort of loud show that can shake you to your core, in the process sloughing off some of the bad stuff. (Watching prototypical rock dudes watch Carrie Brownstein play guitar better than they ever will, for one, is wildly entertaining.)

MetalSucks ran a reader contribution in its regular Peanut Gallery section on, per the headline, the question of accepting rather than questioning particular lyrical themes in extreme metal as defined. Reader/writer Harvey Wilks spoke frankly of his own disenchantments hand in hand with his own growing awareness of how to look through others’ eyes.

Horrific content is justified as “the exploration of fears” rather than “the promotion of violence,” and I know that, but I don’t think that’s good enough. There’s an element of perverse exclusivity to it all as well: “if you want to be in our club, you have to leave certain mores at the door. If it offends you, then you are weak, not metal enough.’ No one wants to be that guy, or that girl. Of course, every genre has its shadowy corners — and I know extreme music is called extreme for a reason — but surely its modus operandi is not to simply troll those who might be offended.

Hilary Hughes took it upon herself to attend all eight of Carey’s Christmas shows in New York City, reviewing each one for the Village Voice. Several shows in, Carey included a direct mention and compliment of Hughes in her nightly thank-yous to fans, completely taking the writer by surprise and leading to a wider reflection at the whole experience.

I took on this assignment to see what Mariahmania was all about; I was curious about how legitimate her love of the Christmas spirit was and wanted to see for myself whether or not she could still hit the octave-leaping notes. My feelings about her — which were never negative, but more or less indifferent and casually informed — changed after the first night when I realized that "O Holy Night" was enough to shatter any doubt I had in her talent, let alone "All I Want For Christmas Is You" and the intensely positive effect it has on people. Now that I know that Mariah's been reading and keeping tabs on what people are saying about her performances, that's concrete proof that girlfriend is invested in both her craft and the experience of her audience — and, more importantly, her fans.

Brad Cohan interviewed Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema, the duo that always made up the core of the band, about their still surprising return, among other things noting that the band — with admirable frankness — made no bones about the fact that a key reason was that the money was good.

Hagerty: Yeah, the money was prime. It wouldn't have happened without a certain price tag. The money had to balance out how much I didn't want to do it. But once it was on it had to be good. We are lucky we weren't really beloved the way Pavement or a lot of others were; we weren't really that big. So there isn't much to support in the way of nostalgia for the era, just the music and songs the way they've sort of saturated over the years since we broke up. It's pretty cool—just gotta go out and play the tunes right.

Herrema: We’ve been offered really good money before but when the Berserktown thing came up—honestly, it was one of those bizarre moments where everything was perfect, the nature of it and us headlining that type of crazy and inclusive festival was perfect. Once we’d done that, we got this offer from New York. It’s good money; it’s not Berserktown money. But we had such a good time that when we got the offer from New York it was like “We should definitely do that.

Philip Sherburne’s overview of the field for Pitchfork tackled questions of identity and visibility, noting that much of the more creative work in the genre for 2015 emerged not simply from the fringes as such but from performers of backgrounds increasingly shut out by the dominance of a crisply clean-cut white male background — a compounding irony given the origins of modern dance music to start with.

Arca is at the forefront of a vanguard of artists who are reshaping the sound and nature of experimental club music by exploding established forms from within. This crew — including Elysia Crampton, Lotic, Rabit, M.E.S.H., and Amnesia Scanner — is responsible for some of the most exciting sounds to emerge this year. Their productions are practically the only places you could hear electronic music being treated as a zone of possibilities and not simply an excuse to rehash well-worn patterns. I don't think it's a coincidence that the majority of the artists taking this approach are queer, and that many of them are people of color. Both are groups that have largely been forced out of mainstream electronic music as corporate interests have reshaped it in recent years. In contrast to EDM's boundless hubris and suffocating kitsch, these artists are pushing back and redefining electronic music according to different terms, where pride lives alongside doubt, and ecstasy rubs elbows with rage. Where most dance music — mainstream and underground alike — celebrates the mass, they are defiantly putting individual identity to the fore.

Now What Happens to Shkreli's Wu-Tang Record? Having broken the news about Martin Shkreli’s purchase of the limited edition Wu-Tang album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin earlier in the month, Bloomberg Business reporters Devin Leonard and Annmarie Hordern were perfectly placed to write an inevitable follow-up after Shkreli’s arrest for securities fraud.

Unless the government seeks a formal asset freeze from the court, Shkreli remains free to dispose of the album as he sees fit. "Usually, freezes are sought when there's a risk assets will be transferred overseas and out of reach of authorities," said Jacob Frenkel, a former SEC enforcement attorney. "At the end of these cases, there's usually an understanding that money is fungible." Even if federal prosecutors don't contend that Shkreli purchased the Wu-Tang album with tainted funds, he still might consider selling it to pay for what is surely to be a costly defense effort. It’s not entirely clear what his rights are under his deal with Wu-Tang, which stipulates that the owner can't release the album commercially for 88 years. Neither Tarik Azzougarh, a Clan “family member” and co-producer of the album, nor Paddle8, the online auction house that handed the sale would comment on Shkreli's arrest and what it might mean for the album.

Brandon Stosuy interviewed Brams, one of the two titular subjects of Stevens’ album Carrie & Lowell, for Pitchfork. Brams, Stevens’s stepfather, spoke with pride and frank honesty about the album, which studies and reflects on his relationship with Carrie and her struggles with mental illness before her passing.

[W]hen his mother and I split up it was, it seemed to me that it was unlikely that he and his brothers and sisters were going to get to spend a lot of time with her after that. And I wanted to be a connection for them to her. It ended up oddly that I moved from Oregon and ended up in Michigan in the lower part of the state, and they were in the upper part, but it wasn't that hard to visit. And their father and stepmother were very gracious and always allowed me to visit. So I just wanted to be a part of their life; it was heartbreaking that those times that they spent with us couldn't continue, and heartbreaking that it didn't seem they weren't going to be able to spend much time with her, and she was not going to be in a situation when she was with me where she could have them sometimes. So, the album helped confirm that I did something right there. And it's gratifying he appreciated it. I know they all appreciated it. They're all grown up now. And have kids and all. But it was a confusing time for them. And most confusing for Sufjan because he was the youngest. He's with his mother, and then he's not with his mother, and then he’s with his mother again with me, and then that changes. You know, he was very young and it was really confusing. And then on her death, it just all came back to him.

As the title indicates, this piece for the Talkhouse is just that, with Daniel providing a typically thoughtful, associative analysis of the latest album by his fellow electronics obsessive.

Thankfully, copyists are bypassed and the auteur hammer comes down hard on “Sticky Drama,” in the form of a virulent earworm of a lead vocoder riff that I first heard when Nate played it for me after a show on his phone. Even then, the hook sounded potent, nasty. Once the song was released in conjunction with Jon Rafman’s baroque LARP goo-bath of a video, the goddamned vocoder riff on “Sticky Drama” was stuck in my head for days. Walking down the street, waiting in line at the corner store, trying to teach millennials about Spenserian poetry: there it was. At the end of a day, I would be brushing my teeth and there it would be, still cooing and coiling in my head. Lopatin’s possible production reference points are many: the electronic sackbut of Hugh LeCaine, Roger Troutman’s computerized eroticism in Zapp, Aphex Twin’s seasick honeydrip on “Windowlicker,” T-Pain’s gargled love cries; one could go on. But the context adds to its power and make it more than a kitsch style-tag. Yang to the vocoder’s yin, when the blast-beats, guitar-synth crunches and guttural Cookie Monster growls kick in on “Sticky Drama,” you suddenly realize that Lopatin has fashioned a kind of unheimlich homage not to R&B but to crabcore: that perfect storm of Hot Topic, MySpace and Guitar Center in which tight pants, pointy hair and knee injury momentarily made a suburban horde squat low for the break and wobble comically sideways en masse. Since I’m a sad old rave hag, my own reference points of choice are flung farther back: I might be hearing things, but I swear there’s a Mentasm stab breakdown in this song that is pure pleasure for me.

At Vulture, Rembert Browne wrote about seeing Hynes, more commonly known under his performance/production identity of Blood Orange, at the famed Harlem venue, dovetailing it with wider thoughts of performance and portrayal in the current historical moment.

But with every song, the magic of the Apollo was seeping into the crowd in a way few other venues can. It was like witnessing someone go to a significant other's family’s Thanksgiving dinner — even if you don’t know if you like squash casserole, you fucking eat the squash casserole. And between the songs, the guests, and what you saw onstage — Hynes dancing with the confidence of a human alone in his bedroom — the infectious joy took over the hallowed hall. There was no turning back: Squash casserole was your new favorite food. It was clear it was turning into a night that no video could fully capture, no picture could do justice. Either you were there, or you weren’t. Part of Hynes’s success at the Apollo came from the undeniable sense of importance. And not self-importance, but the almost-historic reality that an event like this could happen. It was closer to Dave Chappelle doing a block party than Blood Orange putting on a concert. And based on much of the crowd that assembled, it was clear Hynes wanted to illustrate what beauty can come from leaving your comfort zone. And the Apollo as Harlem — Harlem as a look into Black America — was that representation. Essentially, a clear statement that if you want me — and you want my friends and my culture — you’re going to have to come get a taste of Black America en route.

Streaming War Pigs: Apple, Tidal, Spotify & The Year In Music Services Michael Nelson’s extended piece at Stereogum took stock of all the news regarding the main streaming services in the U.S. (plus a few elsewhere) throughout the year, concluding that the combination of too much money chasing after too little variety in terms of service has led to an exhaustive, unsatisfying situation compounded by multiple unforced errors.

Content is being walled off mercilessly and haplessly (oddly mirroring another of this guy’s policy proposals) — and it’s being done not to protect artists’ rights, but to boost the visibility and value of the individual services, often at the expense of the artists (and always at the expense of the audience). Drake would’ve had his first chart-topping single with “Hotline Bling” if not for Apple Music. The Tidal-exclusive Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé video, “Feeling Myself” was massive, but just finding it was a huge fucking headache thanks to Tidal’s tireless whack-a-moling of the thing every time it popped up outside the castle gates. And for every one person who subscribes in order to get a glimpse of what’s behind the border, countless others just bail, find something else to listen to, something else to do. As you may already be aware, the internet offers a lot of stuff to do. As Nielsen analyst Bakula said, “Only a small ­percentage of people buy a record if they can’t find it streaming — generally, they move on to something else.

Mark Swed’s Los Angeles Times profile of the early/mid 20th century composer Julián Carrillo makes a case for his virtues as being an unduly forgotten musician in both his home country and elsewhere, combining it with a review of Los Angeles performances by the Mexican ensemble Liminar, aiming to bring his work back into wider currency.

A couple of years before Harry Partch came up with his 43-note scale and began making specially designed microtonal instruments in California, Carrillo invented instruments to play his pieces that divided the octave into as many as 96 equal parts. Among them were a fretless guitar, a double bass and harp similar to those Partch would come up with. Carrillo designed a piano with its 88 keys covering a single octave, and he also invented the necessary notation to go along with this. (The competitive Partch was dismissive of Carrillo.)

Kaleb Horton provided a year-end overview piece for Bitter Empire, noting first that he wasn’t a music writer per se, then providing a very personal month-by-month review of music and music-related news that affected him or provided an important personal anchor, instead of a conventional ‘year in review’ approach.

Ornette Coleman died. You remember that year everybody saw Batman Begins? That was the year I spent trying to be cool enough to listen to Ornette Coleman. I never did get cool enough. But I recommend trying. I spent half the month listening to two Blind Willie Johnson songs – “Let Your Light Shine On Me” and “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning.” Sanctified and perfect. People pretend “Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground” was the only thing he ever recorded, but he recorded lots of stuff, and it’s all that good. It feels a million years old. There should be a second Library of Congress in case somebody blows up the regular Library of Congress, just to preserve Blind Willie Johnson.

Anyway, we’re almost there, for those who celebrate. And there’s only one way to celebrate.