Features

Rewind: Adult.

The media can be ruthless with its prescription of genre labels—once something has been assigned a particular stylistic tag, it's often an uphill struggle for an artist to grow out of it. Just ask Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus, the married couple who, for the past 19 years, have recorded together as Adult. Both art-school trained artists, Miller's and Kuperus' anxiety-addled sound and unique, extra-musical narrative was brought to popular attention in the early aughts when members of the press began lumping them in with Larry Tee's then-nascent electroclash movement. Granted, the association did bring the group a lot of attention, but it also threatened to pigeonhole the two Detroiters into the New York club-kid culture's fad of the moment. Much of Adult.'s career since has found the pair pushing against the electroclash tag and the expectations that come with it—resulting in a body of work that's unconventional in the way it consistently defies expectation. This week marks the release of The Way Things Fall, the duo's first LP since 2007, so we asked Miller and Kuperus to sit down with us and recount many of the pivotal moments of their long career. Read more »

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05/15/2013

B2B: Secret Circuit and Tim Sweeney

It may come as a surprise to many that Eddie Ruscha has made music for decades. The Los Angeles native has led a quietly prolific career since the early 1990s; he's worked with legends like John Cale and DJ Harvey, he's toured with the Flaming Lips, and he's released a bevy of experimental music on major labels as well as homemade cassettes. But his latest record, a full-length solo album released under his Secret Circuit moniker via Tim Sweeney's Beats in Space label, feels like the most polished piece in his sprawling catalog. Having made his Beats in Space debut when he provided a mix for Sweeney's WNYU radio show in 2010, Ruscha is responsible for two of the imprint's 12"s, both of which are included on Tactile Galactics, the label's recently issued first LP. Although it's been a long road for Ruscha, the terrain has hardly been mapped, so we sat down with both Sweeney and Ruscha just prior to the album's release date to get the untold full story behind Secret Circuit and his many guises. Read more »

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05/13/2013

Press Play: Stacey Pullen, Nosaj Thing, Salva, James Holden, and More

Another week has passed, so another edition of Press Play is once again available to peruse. Having culled the best streaming audio and video which recently appeared on the internet, we've got a lineup of artists that's not to be sniffed at. Motor City mainstay Stacey Pullen is sharing his forthcoming EP; Salva has a wild mix of club-ready jams; James Holden is teasing his second album with a brand-new single; we've got a fresh video from London technoist Max Cooper; LA beatmaker Ras G is giving everyone a taste of his latest beat tape; and there are plenty of other bits from the likes of Nosaj Thing, Benjamin Damage & Doc Daneeka, Suzanne Kraft, Recondite, and Clouds, among others. It's all available to experience with the push of a button, after the jump. Read more »

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05/10/2013

Hi, Doctor Nick! - A Doctor's Guide to Buying Your First Bits of Analog Gear

Nick Hook is here to help. More specifically, he's here to answer our readers' questions. Regardless of where he is in the world, regardless of the topic, regardless of what projects he's working on, our resident advice columnist takes time out every week to field inquiries from people in search of his knowledge about music, DJing, production, travel, gear, and more. Got a question? Send it to doctornick@xlr8r.com. As we've said, the good doctor is here to help.

Aiiiiiite. First off, I almost completely forgot to write this column, but our favorite superheroine Jubilee reminded me that we are working together to keep music journalism thriving. Read more »

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Tags: Doctor Nick
05/09/2013

Trainwreck: Juan Maclean

As the Discogs page for "Juan Maclean" makes patently clear, there is the man Juan Maclean (born John Maclean), and then there is his band, The Juan Maclean. The project fuses robotic synth-pop with well-honed, genre-neutral dancefloor instincts, and has been marked by a host of collaborators. The most prominent of those is vocalist and keyboardist Nancy Whang, who anchors The Juan Maclean's latest hooky single and nineteenth release for DFA, "You Are My Destiny." This edition of Trainwreck finds Maclean out on his own, however. And though there is probably no great moral to this story, it does prove that the artist will go to violent lengths to ensure a quality party—even if it means paradoxically wrecking said party in the process. Read more »

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05/08/2013