Author: Ethan Myers

In this very recent track from Travis Miller (aka Lil Ugly Mane), Miller goes completely left-field to create a plunderphonics pop song based around ragtime samples. His unique mixing emphasizes and recontextualizes the feelings of 1920s-40s pop music. The whimsy turns to melancholy with Travis’ despondent vocals, mixed to sound similarly like a dusty, obscure… Continue reading Lil Ugly Mane – styrofoam

Andre Nickatina utilizes lots of stereo effects, ambient found sounds, and off-kilter, distant melodies in this eerie rap track. The instrumental is comprised of layers of hazy sounds in each channel. The core “melodies” are defeated sounding and never resolve, just coming up and down. Around this are chimes and disembodied vocal chops scratched by… Continue reading Andre Nickatina – Train With No Love

Chapel Hill’s own Archers of Loaf kick off their 1994 EP “vs. The Greatest of All Time” with “Audiowhore,” a blistering, gigantic anthem defined by its dramatic shifts in dynamics. It opens with a semi-ambient one minute intro, offering scraps of found noises and distant, dissonant guitar sounds. This creates a foreboding atmosphere, contextually very… Continue reading Archers of Loaf – Audiowhore

Despite some variance among the different interviews, StoryCorps follow a fairly predictable and clean formula. It opens on light music with a narrator giving 10-30sec of background information, or it cold opens on an interviewee with no music, usually if its a particularly striking “hook.” While I initially thought that many of these were more… Continue reading Story Corps Analysis