I Love This Big, Dumb Truck
The monster truck-ified Chevrolet 1500 across the street from our house. I grew up in Georgia. Not redneck South, but suburban South, where brand-new pickup...
Viking's Choice Guide To Bandcamp Friday (March 2021)
“Does Lars really think newsletter subscribers want 40 album recommendations?” “Like, doesn’t he have a kid to care of?” Welcome to the 7th guide to Bandcamp...
Indonesian Ritual Drone, German Post-Punk, Russian Hardcore
Senyawa’s ‘Alkisah,’ in a 44-label split, as released by Australia’s Stock Records. No one will listen to Jandek CDs with me. Early in the pandemic, I DGAF....
Pakistani Pop, South African Jazz, French Synth-Punk
How do I get this Instagram filter? Aux cord missing and nothing good’s on the radio. What 4 CDs you got in the car? Here's my entry to Question Twitter,...
Hear The Hands That Make Your Record
My copy of Witch Prophet’s ‘DNA ACTIVATION,’ as hand cut by Robyn Raymond For a while there, it seemed like the only person who'd make lathe cut records was...
Viking's Choice Guide To Bandcamp Friday (February 2021)
“Take a shot every time Lars drops the words cosmic, shred, weird or electroacoustic?” “You’re on.” It's always Bandcamp Friday if you chip in an extra buck...
Tone Worlds, Noise-Rock Spew, Passion Fruit Dub
“Who are your guys?” Gendered question aside, I always found this prompt from Marc Maron's WTF podcast amusing, eye rolling and useful. (Can't say I've...
Cubist Dance, Hag Blues, Heavy Shoegaze
Emmanuelle Parrenin's new album features German producer Detlef Weinrich, Gilbert Cohen, saxophonist Quentin Rollet and Ghédalia Tazartès. I mind my grits....
Bummer Jangle, Gnawan Blues, Reckless Hardcore
Let me know if y'all with me, y'all By way of the late, great MF DOOM, welcome to Viking's Choice. (I'm still a mess about this… DOOM's music means the world...
In 2020, I cried, I sought other worlds...
The view from our remote solace out in West Virginia. Grief has a way of making obstacles out of the things you love. I’m still spinning that idea around in...
In 2020, I raged, I sunk into soft sounds...
As much as I missed people and missed touch... as much as I quietly and not-so-quietly raged, as much as anxiety rendered me hopeless, as much as the too-big...
A Dark Noel, Anarcho-Christian Black Metal, Portal-Opening Techno
We strung lights to Loretta Lynn, then watched the Christmas tree glow to A Dark Noël. When Projekt Records released Excelsis: A Dark Noël in 1995, the...
Viking's Choice Guide To Bandcamp Friday (December Edition)
Y'all, it's the last Bandcamp Friday of 2020, when the platform waives its revenue fees so that artists and labels keep that extra 10-12% cash. While y'all...
When Karen Peris Sings, "Are You All Right?" 😢
Karen Peris on The Innocence Mission’s ‘Glow’ tour in 1995. In bedrooms and on highways, these were my coping mechanisms with grief. 2020 is not over, yet,...
Black Metal Misandry, Iranian Dub, Cello Shred
Some newsletters I read: Constellations: Marissa Lorusso's tender lists of loves, loss and memory put me in a reflective mood every Tuesday morning, just as...
Viking's Choice Podcast: Gnarly Rae Jepsen
For me, the Halloween cover band is hallowed ground. In them, the true colors of your favorite artists, your friends, the cool kids you see at shows but dare...
Russian Mosh & Gloom, Spanish Psych, Brazilian Black Metal
In 2020, I fell down the rabbit hole of Russian Bandcamp.It started innocently, as one does, with a throwback ’90s vegan straight-edge metalcore band. Turns...
Airbending Autumn
The foliage moved like murmuration.Sitting with a cup of oolong tea, looking up at a mountain with autumn colors, I witnessed a patch of yellow’d trees move...
Viking's Choice Guide To Bandcamp Friday (October Edition)
I swear when this whole thing started that it was called Bandcamp Day, then at some point, the collective unconscious (aka Twitter) decided it’s Bandcamp...
Pipe Organ Drone, Lava Lamp Jazz, Serene Hardcore
20 years later, I still listen to When the World Sings more than Kid A. Fine China’s debut album is one of those under-heard, underrated and under-loved gems...
Loudness Is Next To Godliness
I was born partially deaf.Folks are always surprised to hear this, considering my love for music and that I’ve made writing and producing stories about music...
Lifelines Out Of A Bored, Teenage Suburbia
As a teenager in the Atlanta suburbs, the mail was my way into punk. Occasionally, Media Play or Turtle Music would carry CDs from Polyvinyl and Victory...
Viking's Choice Guide To Bandcamp Day (September Edition)
I didn’t write a Viking’s Choice Guide to Bandcamp Day for August, though my wallet says otherwise. Let’s keep this short: on the first Friday of every month...
The Night Pylon Returned (And WUOG Shut Down)
Pylon is one of my favorite bands of all time, discovered while watching a VHS copy of documentary Athens, Ga.: Inside/Out at Wuxtry Records in the summer of...
Tunisian Nu-Metal, Swedish Freak-Folk, Chaos Pop
Has a bass line ever broken your heart?I had to get out of the house. Took the car out to a brewery an hour away just to pick up a case of nerdy beers,...
Void-Cracking Metal, Kenyan Grindcore, Russian Hardcore
The boys are back in town. Krallice inspires intense reaction. Not just from metal gatekeepers pounding on keyboards — does anyone actually care about them...
When The Microphones Became Mount Eerie
“Universe, I know you.”The Microphones’ Mount Eerie was released in 2003, smack dab in the middle of my college years — you know, when everyone’s an...
Christian Horrorcore, Auto-Tuned Minimalism, Convulsive Screamo
Midwestern by birth; Southern by the grace of God. My family moved to the Atlanta suburbs in 1990 and, within months, I knew: This feels right. The humidity,...
I Want To Rewrite History
If you ever want to feel an acute sense of impostor syndrome,sit on a panel about the future of radio with actual public/community radio vets when you’ve...
Vietnamese Drone, Madrid Punk, Soft Glitch
How to have a quintessentially D.C. summer: devour a bushel of crabs accompanied by Natty Boh and friendsget a soft-serve cone (with sprinkles) as local...
Thick And Sticky
Like the muddy Maryland waters from which crabs are spawned, there is a gleaming sweat to Old Bay’s hot sauce. Paprika, cayenne, celery salt, black pepper,...
Lizard Brain Metal, Weirdo Rap, Goth Heartache
Corny is a corny word.Yet whenever someone cool on Twitter calls something corny, it’s devastating. The Discourse around Hamilton returned to the timeline in...
Viking's Choice Guide To Bandcamp Day (July Edition)
Hey y’all, it’s been a minute, so let’s get right into it. It is, once again, Bandcamp Day, when that platform waives its revenue fees for 24 hours to help...
Unnerving Punk, Urdu Goth, MIDI Synth-Pop
“Sensitive people have a hard time negotiating the world sometimes.”Beauty Pill’s Chad Clark was musing on his bandmate, the talented saxophonist Sarah...
Nepalese Grindcore, Pocket-Busting Free Jazz, Boot-To-Throat Punk
“Tough to stay present when the present feels wrong.” — Shannen MoserFew recent songs cut into our real-life Groundhog Day as “World’s Best Magician.” Philly...
Shredded Fusion, Burnt Screamo, A Sonic Anaconda
“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” (KJV, Ecclesiastes 1:9)“It’s a wild...
Slimy Garage-Rock, Cornholio Grind, Anime Noise
The room was already dark, with someone hunched over portable cassette players, effects pedals and a tangle of patch cords. I handed the door person $10 and...
Annihilation Jazz, Buchla Pop, Atmospheric Pedal Steel
“We must become an unrelenting blast furnace.”Not every musician knows how to talk about their music. That’s understandable: so much of the creative process...
Viking's Choice Guide To Bandcamp Day
Y’all, two weeks in and we already have a special edition. I mentioned in the previous newsletter that today, May 1, Bandcamp is waiving all of its revenue...
Stargate Drone, Snotty Punk, Black Metal Romance
Hi. This is how I use Bandcamp: Bandcamp, one of the few don't-call-it-a-streaming-services that actually cares about the well-being of the musicians who use...
Improvised Punk, Liberation Noise, Bummer Doom
Hi. If you’re getting this newsletter, it’s because I like you. (Not like you-like you, but you know.) You filled out an extremely informal survey on what...