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Piero Scaruffi: A Life in Knowledge, From Italian Rock Encyclopedias to a Vast Online Archive

Piero Scaruffi (born 1955) is an Italian-American polymath whose work spans cognitive science, artificial intelligence, cultural history, poetry, and, most famously, music criticism. Best known to the public for a sprawling website—often called the “Piero Scaruffi Knowledge Base”—that houses decades of reviews, essays, and syllabi, Scaruffi has also authored multi-volume histories of rock, jazz, and avant-garde music, as well as studies on consciousness, Silicon Valley, and the history of knowledge. […]

October 21, 2025 65

Avant-Garde

Drexciya’s Afrocentric Surrealism and the Re-Centering of US Electro

The Reissues as a Portal Journey of the Deep Sea Dweller (Clone, 2011–2013) is a four-volume reissue series that reintroduces Drexciya’s early EPs, singles, and deep cuts to new listeners while restoring historical context for longtime fans. Far more than archival housekeeping, the series functions as a curated portal into an undersea mythology—Drexciya as a Black Atlantis—which reframes Detroit electro not merely as machine funk but as speculative narrative and […]

October 17, 2025 66

2 5

Jazz

John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme: Recording & Pressings

Recording the suite On December 9, 1964, at Rudy Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs studio, John Coltrane’s classic quartet, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones, tracked the four-part suite in a single, charged evening. Coltrane then explored an alternate “Acknowledgement” the next day with Archie Shepp and Art Davis, but the released album preserves the intimate quartet performance, including small postproduction touches like the doubled chant on “Acknowledgement” and a second […]

October 13, 2025 80 5 2

2 4

Jazz

Bad Brains and the Discipline of Lightning

Bad Brains are a force-field in American music—speed, precision, and spiritual intent fused into a singular continuum that rerouted punk, widened metal, and folded reggae into the hardcore engine. Formed in Washington, D.C., in 1976 as the jazz-fusion outfit Mind Power, the core quartet—Dr. Know (Gary Miller, guitar), Darryl Jenifer (bass), H.R. (Paul Hudson, vocals), and Earl Hudson (drums)—began by studying the intricacies of Return to Forever and Mahavishnu Orchestra. […]

October 7, 2025 41 4 2

Uncategorized

The reclusive psychedelia of Kendra Smith

Kendra Smith’ s musical life reads like a dreamer’s continuum—alchemy and psychedelia braided through underground scenes, whispered departures, and quietly luminous returns. A founding force in the Paisley Underground, Smith co-created The Dream Syndicate in 1981 after a KDVS-era garage apprenticeship, shaping the group’s feedback-kissed minimalism and contributing bass and vocals to The Days of Wine and Roses (1982). Even at that origin point, her voice felt like a compass […]

October 6, 2025 112 5

Funk

Betty Davis: Funk’s Untamed Catalyst

Betty Davis (born Betty Mabry, 1944–2022) exploded onto the 1970s with a raw, erotic funk that made both record executives and censors sweat. A songwriter first, model second, and performer by her own admission “pushed” onto the stage, she wrote and arranged fierce grooves that put desire, power, and female autonomy at the center of the mix. Her voice was a rasp, her image all skin, sequins, and defiant stare—and […]

October 5, 2025 29

Folk

Rosa Balistreri ‘ I am not a singer, I am an activist with guitar’

Rosa Balistreri (1927–1990) was the indomitable voice of Sicily—hoarse, urgent, and incandescent with the stories of the island’s working poor. Born in Licata to a carpenter father and a housewife mother, she grew up without schooling, sent to menial work as a child. At sixteen she entered an arranged marriage with Gioacchino Torregrossa; when he gambled away their daughter Angela’s dowry, Rosa attempted to kill him. He did not die; […]

October 4, 2025 57 3

3 6

Avant-Garde

Masks, Mirrors, and a Night at The Cube

So here’s the deal: last night The Cube in Blacksburg wasn’t The Cube at all. It was a wormhole disguised as a black box, a dream-tunnel made of sound and reflections. You walk in, and the air’s already vibrating like it knows something you don’t. Front and center? My friend, Kyle Hutchins. Not just a sax player, an experimentalist sorcerer. A guy who knows the saxophone so well it might […]

October 3, 2025 121 6 3

Avant-Garde Jazz

Pete Cosey or the revolution of electric guitar

Pete Cosey (Chicago, October 9, 1943 – May 30, 2012) was a singular guitarist whose language fused South Side blues, psychedelic studio craft, experimental tunings, and pedal-driven orchestration. Revered among musicians and deep listeners, he stayed mostly off the mainstream grid, yet his impact marks him as a quiet architect of out‑there music. He began in an ebullient laboratory like Chicago in the late fifties, and he followed the transformations […]

September 27, 2025 611 1

3 6

Jazz

Jaco Pastorius: The Bright Comet That Burned Too Fast

Some bend the strings; Jaco Pastorius bent the entire instrument. He brought the electric bass out of hiding, stripped the frets off of it, and coaxed it to sing like a Coltrane horn or Mingus' heartbeat. With Weather Report, Joni Mitchell, or just soloing on stage with battered Jazz Bass in tow, he wasn't playing notes—he was painting with thunder. But like so many brilliant comets, Jaco's was turbulent. He […]

September 25, 2025 19 6 3