Work

GuitarJack

Like a Scientist designed the logo and packaging for Sonoma Wire Works' GuitarJack. Visit

Outer Spaces

Like a Scientist curated and designed the Outer Spaces music project for Retronyms. Visit

Shlohmo

Keith Pishnery interviewed Shlohmo for Sonic Router. Read

Dropping Gems

Keith Pishnery interviewed the Dropping Gems crew for Sonic Router. Read

Little White Earbuds

Keith Pishnery is a regular contributor to music website Little White Earbuds. Read

Jimmy Edgar: access rhythm

Keith Pishnery interviewed Jimmy Edgar for FACT Magazine. Read

Deru Says Hello To The New School

Keith Pishnery wrote an article profiling Los Angeles producer Deru for The Independent. Read

Emeralds In The Rough: The Sound of Cleveland, Captured

Keith Pishnery wrote an article profiling ambient musicians Emeralds for The Independent. Read

RiffWorks

Like a Scientist worked with Scheme on the packaging and promotional materials for Sonoma Wire Works' RiffWorks software. Visit

SonomaKey

Like a Scientist designed the logo for SonomaKey, the online account service of Sonoma Wire Works. Visit

Kojak Creative

Like a Scientist designed the logo for film company Kojak Creative.

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Fancy Mike — Sigma Chi Primavera (King Deluxe)

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Late last year, Mid­west pro­ducer Fancy Mike released the great Madi­son Square Gard­ner EP on King Deluxe, full of thick pro­gram­ming and effer­ves­cent synths. One of the most notable aspects to his music, though, was an affin­ity with orches­tral sounds and com­po­si­tion. While the music had its heart in hip-hop, the under­ly­ing struc­ture was in the sym­phony. It lends his music a weight some­times not found in the bright, spas­tic beat con­struc­tions that cir­cle the globe today. Not one to rest on his lau­rels, the new Sigma Chi Pri­mav­era EP is a var­ied and com­plex col­lec­tion of remixes, col­lab­o­ra­tions, and new tracks. More

Recent Reviews — May 2011

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May has been a busy month of reviews for me. I’ve had reviews pub­lished in three dif­fer­ent places: Lit­tle White Ear­buds, FACT Mag­a­zine, and Sonic Router, who I just started writ­ing for. In case any­thing was missed I wanted to run them down here. More

Sanso-Xtro — Fountain Fountain Joyous Mountain (Digitalis)

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All too often a promis­ing young artist releases a bril­liant album and then dis­ap­pears for­ever, almost like the process of that first album was too much like cap­tur­ing light­ning in a bot­tle, to use a cliche. For the past cou­ple years, I had wor­ried that was going to hap­pen with Sanso-Xtro (Melissa Agate), whose Sen­ti­men­tal­ist for Type Records in 2005 is eas­ily one of their best releases and def­i­nitely one of my per­sonal favorites. Slightly influ­enced from the IDM and electro-acoustical com­mu­ni­ties that birthed Type, Sen­ti­men­tal­ist set itself apart from other releases by hav­ing an organic and tex­tural qual­ity brought on by a pick of loose per­cus­sion and dreamy synths that didn’t quite match up in the same way that most music did at the time. There was cer­tainly an ele­ment of jazz here, mixed with post-rock, mixed with folk, mixed with… every­thing. And for the past six years, that’s all there was, one per­fect album, in dan­ger of never being expanded upon. For­tu­nately, Agate has resur­faced this year with the won­der­ful Foun­tain Foun­tain Joy­ous Moun­tain album, pick­ing right up where she left off, but more mature and more beau­ti­ful. More

M.Mercer — Pianissimo Possibile

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My first con­tact with Matthew Mer­cer came about almost ten years ago through mutual friends. We imme­di­ately bonded over criss-crossing musi­cal tastes and a con­stant hunger for new stuff to lis­ten to. He was also an extremely tal­ented com­poser with for­mal train­ing and a real ear for ten­sion. Early music was under the Systm name and fit in with the IDM sound of Autechre, Phonem, Arovane, etc. His pro­gres­sion into dance music was soon piqued by the glitch techno work of Akufen and the way that IDM sounds were given a new lease through 4/4. Soon enough he was releas­ing sin­gles on Forte and Neu­ton­mu­sic which bridged the gaps between techno, IDM, glitch, and elec­tro. More

Even More Downloads, Tigers, and Bears

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Doesn’t seem like that long ago that I posted about a bunch of great down­load­able releases for free. Some of the below are free, or name your price, with one or two that are ben­e­fit com­pi­la­tions. It’s all pretty great stuff in the beats and synths range of hip-hop and elec­tronic arena. Big fan of all of these. More

Moa Pillar — The Moon and Thunder Dance (Gimme5)

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One of the tracks on Moa Pillar’s new EP, The Moon and Thun­der Dance, first appeared on the excel­lent free com­pi­la­tion from Error Broad­cast called Fly Rus­sia, which I pre­vi­ously reviewed. About that par­tic­u­lar track I said: “I can’t really think of any­thing in imme­di­ate mem­ory that bangs quite so hard as Moa Pillar’s “Water Lily” (with the excep­tion of Slu­gabed, maybe), a track that goes along way to mak­ing chirp­ing bleeps the most men­ac­ing sound in exis­tence. Per­haps it’s the tum­bling drums behind it? Or the blunt instru­ment bass rolling along under­neath it all? This is def­i­nitely how you start a com­pi­la­tion.” More

V/A — Nihon Kizuna — Benefit for Japan

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100% of the pro­ceeds from this new dig­i­tal com­pi­la­tion will go to the Japan Red Cross to help with the relief effort there. 49 tracks, many of them exclu­sive, avail­able for about $15.00. As of this morn­ing, they have raised about $9,000.00 and are hop­ing to get to $10,000.00 in the next 24 hours. Amaz­ing artists that have been cov­ered here such as Rudi Zygadlo, Slu­gabed, Kode9, Illum Sphere, kid­kanevil, Doshy, Pete Sasqwax, Kper, Vir­tual Boy, etc. Please go here to read more: Nihon Kizuna and go here to pur­chase via Band­camp: V/A — Nihon Kizuna. It’s quite amaz­ing to think that this huge col­lec­tion of music came together in only 5 days and has already raised a large amount of money.

Chicken, Waffles, and Robots — A Mix

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Decided to do a quick badly-mixed mix today. A bunch of stuff I’m really enjoy­ing at the moment. Most of this music is from the first 3 or 4 months of 2011, includ­ing a cou­ple yet-to-be-released tracks. Like I said above: it’s badly mixed, so don’t expect too much. Track list and down­load link below. More

Oh My, Them Downloads

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Trawl­ing my Face­book feed today, I noticed that Doshy linked to a com­pi­la­tion he has a track on. When I got home, I down­loaded Mad-Hop Vol. 1 and started lis­ten­ing to it…always pays to lis­ten to a free com­pi­la­tion, of course. Holy shit, there is some ridicu­lous beats on this thing. Any­way, it reminded me I hadn’t posted any­thing in awhile and I thought I would look through my 2011 down­loads and mixes fold­ers to see what’s up. Check these gratis music releases.…now! More

LAS, 2010 — MVP: Starkey

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When I was putting together my lists for the end of the year, I noticed one par­tic­u­lar name that kept com­ing up again and again: Starkey. It led me to think­ing about all of his out­put for 2010 and even­tu­ally the idea of a most valu­able player in bass music formed. I can’t think of any­one more deserv­ing. Read why. More