Author: Gage Taylor

Last Friday night, the cozy Margaret Fowler Memorial Garden at Scripps College hosted two distinctly un-cozy sets of snotty punk courtesy of San Francisco’s Cold Beat and Los Angeles’ very own Girlpool. “What?!” You might have just yelled out. “I would have gone to that. Why are you telling me

Welcome to another wonderful semester of TSL’s music column, where good tunes of all kinds are always plentiful. Whether you’re into pop, jazz, jungle, ear-destroying metal, vaguely surfy punk or post-proto-vaporwave, I’ve got you covered. This semester, I’m going to ratchet up the Claremont coverage, but I can’t cover any

We lost one of the greats this week. Rashad Hanif Harden, who produced and performed under the name DJ Rashad, passed away at only 34 years old last Saturday in Chicago’s Lower West Side.  To put it lightly, DJ Rashad was a legend. Beginning with his entry into the scene

Finally, we’ve arrived at the end of live-music-literally-every-weekend April, as the Kohoutek Music & Arts Festival is going down on the mounds at Pitzer College tonight and tomorrow, April 25-26. Like No-Chella a couple weeks ago, Kohoutek features a metric ton of underground acts of all shapes, sizes, and sounds.

I’ll admit it. I was this close to writing a think-piece about Dean Spunt’s performance piece at last week’s No-Chella, during which he and his band “sound-checked” for their entire half-hour set. Fortunately for you, not even I could manage the insufferable demands of writing such a piece. And besides,

I know what you’re thinking. The Pomona Events Committee (PEC) failed you. I mean, how couldn’t they? After a year featuring future bass gurus Nguzunguzu, downtempo pop whizzes Blue Hawaii, the perennial hipster favorite Mac DeMarco, and the incredible, inimitable Pitzer College alum EMA, No-Chella was already stepping on the

I don’t think I’m alone in having mixed feelings about April. On one hand, work is piling up as the end of the semester approaches. On the other, the end of the semester’s actually approaching. And anyway, the pain of preparing for papers and tests is eased by the absolutely

Four Tet (real name Kieran Hebden) is a genius. How do I know that? Well, for one, I’ve heard his music. From his early down-tempo “folktronica” jams to the house-clangers he makes now, he has always been one for reinvention and progression. He doesn’t stick to the rules—he hasn’t had his

The art of running a record label in 2014 is an interesting one. In times of yore, labels had a clearly established role: They found the new artists, signed them, and threw record deals and funding at them. Now? Not so much. That whole Internet thing, combined with the spread