Jeff Terich is a San Diego-based freelance writer. His writing has appeared on Bandcamp Daily, SPIN, The Pit, Kerrang and Reverb.
When Tom Waits warned on "Underground," the first song on his transformational 1983 album Swordfishtrombones, "there’s a rumblin’ groan down below," he very well could have been describing the artistic awakening that made him a legend. Once an earnest yet good-humored singer/songwriter, Tom Waits is the rare artist in the past 50 years to successfully pull off something as radical…
Rhythm is at the core of everything Makaya McCraven does. The eclectic Chicago jazz composer and producer is also a drummer, and he points to the invention of the drum kit as a turning point in popular music — one whose first ripples still cause waves in modern sounds. "Even electronic music today is still kick-snare-hat," he says. Rhythm is…
Sun Ra's music transcends genre and generation, time and space. The Alabama-born jazz legend, musical chameleon and Afrofuturist icon—who would have turned 106 in May—began performing in the swing and big band era and kept up a career for five decades, traveling the spaceways through cosmic ambient jazz, intense bursts of free jazz in the ‘60s, disco in the ‘70s…
