Andy Beta

Before he trusted his own heart-quivering voice, James Blake deftly made taffy out of those of others. He stretched out shape-note singing on his very…

Back in 1992, Sade Adu personally asked Larry Heard to produce her next album, something her label rejected out of hand. And with that, the…

"God save the Queen/ she ain’t no human being!" Johnny Rotten once sneered, but for British-Barbadian reedsman Shabaka Hutchings, he has the guile to go…

Pop quiz: name the four members of Gorillaz. Nearly twenty years after their creation by Britpop war vet Damon Albarn and indie comic book artist…

While Alejandro Ghersi already had amassed production credits ranging from FKA twigs and Kelela to Kanye by the time he turned 25, it was his…

No matter the election cycle, there comes a moment when the campaign bus pulls up in front of a church in a predominantly African-American neighborhood…

6SPIN Rating: 6 of 10Release Date: August 23, 2016Label: Anti-There’s a story Cass McCombs has told about how in his older days, he would never…

7SPIN Rating: 7 of 10Release Date: May 12, 2016Label: PolydorAs the old saying goes: a rising TIDAL of Lemonade lifts all boats. Thanks to the rising…

It's a hallucinatory 110 degrees in a parking lot in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Glendale, where Brian Reitzell stands outside of a nondescript recording…

With a résumé that begins with the epochal recording of Terry Riley's minimalist zenith In C in 1968 and stretches into the 21st century, trumpeter…

Ever since his 1980 debut feature film, Permanent Vacation, writer/director Jim Jarmusch has deployed his idiosyncratic, underground films to detail the lives of fringe characters, be…

7SPIN Rating: 7 of 10Release Date: April 08, 2014Label: DominoAs half the songwriting force in Animal Collective, Avey Tare is the Trogg to Panda Bear's…

Since 1999, guitarist Mark Smith has been beholden to his post-rock outfit, Explosions in the Sky, applying post-Spiderland dynamics to cinematic grandeur worthy of a…

7SPIN Rating: 7 of 10Release Date: December 09, 2013Label: Stones ThrowPlay a drinking game — or, perhaps, a puffing game — where you take a…

Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of songwriter Elliott Smith's death by his own hand, a still-painful moment for both Gen-Xers and twentysomethings alike. It was…