Sometimes you don’t have enough tracks for an album, but you want to put more music out into the world than a single. The EP is the awkward middle child of musical formats, but it’s endlessly useful for acts at every level of the industry, from rising new artists to one-off collaborations and experimental detours…
When Mike Sartain, who released his latest EP, Push On Through, in April and goes by the stage name Sartain, saw the back cover of Rancid’s 1994 album Let’s Go for the first time, in ninth grade — with a mohawked, leather-clad Tim Armstrong flipping off the camera — he knew that everything he had…
Gym Class Heroes’ Travie McCoy is the guest on the newest installment of the Lipps Service podcast, speaking with host Scott Lipps about the group’s in-progress new album with Asa Taccone of Electric Guest, growing up in Geneva, N.Y., time spent on the Vans Warped Tour and being mentored by Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz. McCoy also…
Amsterdam-based Turkish psych purveyors Altin Gün mine the catalog Anatolian legend Neşet Ertaş for the source material on their new album, Garip, which will be released Feb. 20 through ATO Records. Ertaş penned hundreds of songs and recorded more than 30 albums from 1957 onwards and is revered for updating the ashik folk tradition for…
“There was a site you probably remember called MP3.com, it was like pre-social media,” says Jon Ehrens, 41, thinking back to the music he made in high school. “I needed a name fast because I recorded four songs and just wanted to upload them immediately, and I used the name Repelican.” 25 years later, Ehrens…
In the life and work of artist Shepard Fairey, social justice and the musical counterculture have always collided, igniting many of his most striking images. Most famously, they have come in the form of 18-by-24-inch posters, with messages against police violence, war, and government surveillance, and calling for peace, civil rights, and multiculturalism. There are…
Fine Young Cannibals’ Roland Gift is leaning all the way to the left, so much so that he could be lying down. It’s unclear, as he’s on a video call from his native U.K. and his background is so blurred, he looks like he’s floating horizontally above his sofa. This is not how I expected…
A flame-haired, dirty white-suited Tyler Childers strides with intent through a standing, whooping, exultant ovation in Nashville and takes the stage to give his rejection speech at the Americana Music Association’s annual awards ceremony. Freshly anointed as Americana’s Emerging Artist of the Year, Childers wastes no time ripping the genre a new asshole. After declaring…
Frank Ockenfels III first crossed paths with David Bowie by chance. Ockenfels was assigned to photograph Bowie and his band Tin Machine for an early-’90s iteration of Creem magazine. It was the last of four photo sessions the band had endured that day in Los Angeles, and Ockenfels asked them to remove their shirts. Then,…
After 40 years of cutting-edge music and cultural coverage, SPIN celebrated its milestone birthday in style at Back to Basics’ debut event — a bespoke concert headlined by hip-hop luminaries Clipse and CeeLo Green at the SCOPE Art Show on the sands of Miami’s South Beach. The Dec. 4 Miami Art Week party was thrown…
