Marc Masters

Lyrics tend to be what we remember most about Christmas music, but a song doesn't need to have words to evoke the holidays. In the case of North Texas-based musician Derek Rogers, all he had to do was put Christmas in the title of one of his rich, suggestive ...

Mike Connelly has spent most of his musical life in the land of dissonant noise, primarily with his spectacularly cacophonous Kentucky-based trio Hair Police. But there's often been an undercurrent of drama beneath the din, especially during his seven-year stint in the pounding, industrial-tinged Michigan group

Fifteen years into its existence, Maserati might have finally found its time. One side of the Georgia band's sound — a dramatic soar that evokes '80s movie-thriller soundtracks — is currently back in style, with horror scores getting reissued on vinyl and a master of the form, director John ...

Over the past five years, the groups Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas have become staples of Chicago underground music, but from opposite ends. NIS leader Joshua Abrams has one foot in the city's improvisational jazz scene, a communal tradition that extends back 50 years to ...

Soul and punk are rarely cozy with each other, but at their best, both deal in raw emotion that shoots straight for the gut. That similarity isn't always obvious when comparing the two genres, but when one band combines them, the connection can be bracingly clear. Australia's Royal Headache is ...

There's always some degree of obscurity to the layered music of Bristol, England's Flying Saucer Attack. But for a long time now, the band itself has been virtually unknown: Dave Pearce, the lone member since Rachel Brook left in 1996, hasn't made a new album since 2000's The Mirror. So ...

Guitarist Daniel Bachman opens River with long, slow strums, as if he's summoning energy for a daunting journey. Beginning that way is common in fingerpicked acoustic guitar — what John Fahey, a pioneer of the form, called "American Primitive." But Bachman's patient notes seem to carry extra weight, ...

Wrapping your head around Tyondai Braxton's HIVE1 is like trying to catch a fly with your hands: It feels as if you could just reach out and grab it, but every time you lunge, it darts away. Braxton's busy electronic sounds are engaging, but his arrangements are consistently unpredictable. ...

John Carpenter is famous for directing movie thrillers such as Halloween, Escape From New York and Big Trouble In Little China. But to a swath of underground musicians, he's just as venerable for those films' soundtracks, which he composed and performed himself. The ominous synth throb he used to inject ...