Features Posts

How Christopher Young Unlocked the Puzzle of a Classic Horror Score on a Shoestring Budget The 1980s didn't invent the horror movie genre, but there's little denying that horror movies characterized the '80s in a way that remains influential. For m…

Avishai Cohen is a genre-bending player, composer, and collaborator. Born in Israel in 1970, he has emerged as one of the most important bassists in contemporary jazz. Cohen began his musical journey on the piano at age nine, but switched to the ba…

While cleaning out some old browser bookmarks, I came across and re-read a 2009 New York Times profile of Lloyd Barnes. Barnes, with his Bronx-based studio and record label, Wackie’s, created a hub for Jamaican music in New York and made Barne…

         Hate is often seen as being a deep emotion. This depth sometimes alludes to the fact that hate is a deeply held emotion and/or that hate is buried deep within us. Kendrick Lamar's use of the diss trac…

The Unholy Trinity of Tim Burton, Danny Elfman, and... Prince? Love them or hate them, comic book and superhero media have been an inescapable feature of our culture for decades. The phenomenon reached a fever pitch in the 2010s with the staggerin…

What do 'It's a Wonderful Life,' 'Star Wars,' 'Back to the Future,' 'The Nightmare Before Christmas,' 'The Lion King,' 'Looney Tunes: Back in Action,' 'Harry Potter,' and 'Stranger Things' have in common? The answer: One of the most recognizable pi…

When considering the most current discoveries in astronomy one may not think about Hip-Hop. However, over the course of its first fifty years, Hip-Hop artists have rhymed about the movements of the sun, moon, and stars in multitudinous songs and fre…

How One of Hollywood's Most Legendary Composers Blazed His Own Trail When ranking the greatest film score composers of the 20th Century, you'll unanimously see the name 'Bernard Herrmann.' The famed film composer was born in New York City in 1911 …

Photo: Dave M. Benett/Getty Images Admittedly very late to the game, my introduction to Death Cab for Cutie (DCFC) was their 2015 single “The Ghosts of Beverly Drive”. Its driving rhythm, and the breakdown about two-thirds of the w…

Twenty five minutes into the 2022 documentary Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) Noel Gallagher, late of Oasis, says, “There’s a great quote from someone…’Vinyl is like the poor man’s art collection.’&r…