Ariel Pink

The Best Concerts to See in Los Angeles This Weekend

Don't forget to check our constantly-updated Los Angeles Concert Calendar Friday, May 17 The International Swingers VIPER ROOM With New York's Met Gala "punk" event and exhibit dominating the media last week, it's sadly ironic that the innovators and music makers responsible for this in-your-face ... More >>

Bizarre Ride: Jeff's Humorous Predictions and Most Anticipated Albums for 2013

[Editor's note: Weekly scribe Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. His archives are available here.] Half of January has elapsed and we've survived. There was no collapse due to fiscal cliff, Central American apocalypse or dubstep deluge. A new year unfu ... More >>

My Favorite Albums of the Second Half of 2012, in Haiku Form

[Editor's note: Weekly scribe Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. His archives are available here.] Kendrick Lamar attributed L.A.'s primacy to the women, weed and weather. He was quoting Biggie, who consecrated the left coast via song, despite his long ... More >>

The Top 10 L.A. Albums of 2012

Los Angeles music was a big part of the national conversation this year, from Frank Ocean and Miguel's artisan R&B to Top Dawg Entertainment's hip-hop dominance to the electronic inspirations of Flying Lotus and Gaslamp Killer. Picking but ten albums from this crop as the West Coast Sound writers ha ... More >>

Light in the Attic Finds Old Records and Releases Them Like They're New

The offices of Light in the Attic live up to the label's name. Walk up the narrow stairwell of a nondescript Hollywood apartment building and you're immediately bathed by light-blue photons streaming through the second-floor window. Its cupboards are stuffed with pristine, vacuum-sealed vinyl, and i ... More >>

We Write About More Than Bad Hipster Bands. No Seriously

The internet's stomach continues to churn over our Top 20 Worst Hipster Bands post, which -- as I noted in our "correction" -- inspired widespread anger and funny death threats involving oral sex from sharks. Someone even whined that it made him want to quit writing about music. Boo hoo! Folks too ... More >>

The 20 Worst Hipster Bands: The Complete List

The 20 Worst Hipster Bands: 10-1 Top 20 Worst Bands of All Time Top 20 Musicians of All Time, in Any Genre Top 20 Whitest Musicians of All Time Who are these hipsters we see each day in the streets, on our Tumblr feeds, and on the local news? And why are so many in bands? It's not the mere existen ... More >>

The 20 Worst Hipster Bands: 10-1

Top 20 Worst Bands of All Time Top 20 Musicians of All Time, in Any Genre Top 20 Whitest Musicians of All Time 10. White Rabbits Why do bands need a second drummer? In recent years everyone from Local Natives to Bon Iver to fucking Radiohead has thrown a second kit out there, or at least a floor to ... More >>

Music Picks: Charli XCX, Polica, Esperanza Spalding and More

Ariel Pink Is the King of Whatever

Raised in Beverly Hills, he became the preeminent Eastside satirical musical madman

Ariel Pink on His Name, and Why He Hasn't Left L.A.

See also: Ariel Pink Is the King of Whatever: Raised in Beverly Hills, he became the preeminent Eastside satirical musical madman In our music feature this week we profile Ariel Pink, the enigmatic Beverly Hills-raised rocker whose 4AD-released latest album Mature Themes is one of the year's best. ... More >>

Simon Reynolds' Retromania: Critic Talks About Pop's Obsession with the Past and the Digiculture of Tomorrow

Courtesy of Simon ReynoldsThe cover of Retromania, released in May​ Isn't it ridiculous that it's now fair game to recycle the nineties and call your product retro? We've entered a phase where mashing up the sixties and the seventies is overdone -- now, the recent decades are up for grabs in t ... More >>

Ariel Pink's Birthday Meltdown and Fancy Space People, the Musical Version of Sex on X

photo by Cameron GrayFancy Space People​Nothin' like a blissful and theatrical performance of the indulgence of rock-n-roll to remind us why life is worth livin. Fans willing to sing your songs for you? Girls willing to flash their breasts to bulging security guards on Slauson Blvd? Friends wi ... More >>

Os Mutantes Ariel Pink: Return of the Weird

Os Mutantes​That Os Mutantes' edgy brand of psychedelia and Tropicalia continues to get big ups from today's hipster nation (after being championed for years by everybody from Kurt Cobain to Beck to David Byrne) is testimony to the unbending passion in their music. The seminal Brazilian band, ... More >>

Music Picks: The Hangmen, Brother Ali, Tommy Rock-A-Shacka, Weezer

Also, Hellride, Bonobo, New Kingdom and others

Ariel Pink's New Wayne Coyne Directed Video May Cause Seizures/ Mind Expansion

Ariel Pink's New Wayne Coyne Directed Video Will Cause Seizures/ Mind Expansion

Hipsters from Space: Ariel Pink, DJ Lance Rock, Leslie Hall and Spuds MacKenzie Star in Bizaare Cyberpunk Web Series, The Multinauts

"The Multinauts" -- the evil leather daddy is Oysters Rockefeller.​Now streaming on Vimeo (and in this post) is the debut episode of a strange futuristic web series called The Multinauts. In it, a ragtag bunch of heroes attempt to fight off the evil space dinosaurs unleashed by an angry/bored ... More >>

Over the Weekend: Mystery LA Supergroup The Highons Finally Play Show, Ariel Pink Might or Might Not Have Been One of Them (Possibly Not)

Esteban SchimpfNot Ariel Pink​With an art exhibit dedicated to the darker forces of Los Angeles, Esteban Schimpf may have gotten what he asked for inviting a mystery band called Highons to play his closing reception. The secret Schimpf set up was that Ariel Pink would be one of the masked mem ... More >>

The Best of FYF Fest: Best Fashions, Surprising Bands to Watch, Biggest Bummers (oh, and Ariel Pink: Still Crazy)

Timothy NorrisThere's a thin line between hipster and furry, wethink​[See also Timothy Norris' slideshow "FYF Fest 2010 with The Rapture, Dead Man's Bones, Panda Bear and More".] Given that I refuse to pair a word as lovely as "summer" near detractors such as cruel "end" or the gentler "fade, ... More >>

This weekend: FYF Fest, Dolly Parton Tribute, Mumiy Troll, Mark Burgess, Stereo Total

Amanda MertenSchool of Seven Bells​The best thing about Saturday's FYF Fest at Los Angeles State Historic Park downtown is that with its wildly diverse lineup and 36 bands, it's a bargain for 30 bucks. The worst thing about Saturday's FYF Fest is that there are only so many hours in the day. ... More >>

Local Natives and Janeane Garofalo Join FYF Fest

Local Natives and Janeane Garofalo Join FYF Fest

This Weekend: HARD Summer, Silversun Pickups, Weezer, New L.A. Folk Festival, Power of the Riff festival

Soulwax​The two most pressing questions about Saturday's HARD Summer in downtown Los Angeles have nothing to do with quality. With Soulwax, Crystal Castles and Major Lazer topping a bill that includes the likes of Flying Lotus and Diplo, promoter Gary Richards has assembled the kind of dance ... More >>

Catch Up or Die: An Open Letter to the Sunset Junction Festival (or, How FYF Fest is About to Own You, Big Time)

​Dear Sunset Junction,   What the hell happened? You used to be it. The local music festival. The best of local talent -- upcoming national acts, even music legends, they all beat a path to your door. You weren't just a music festival, you were a local institution. Hell, you were instrumenta ... More >>

Music Picks: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Bridget St. John, Bad Astronaut, Kings of Leon

Also, Lilith 2010, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Smokey Robinson, Antibalas and others

Listen: Nite Jewel Collaborates with Teen Inc. for Forthcoming EP, 'Am I Real?'

Nite Jewel, keyboard queen​Is there any question that Nite Jewel, a.k.a. keyboard queen Ramona Gonzales and crew, is a quintessential artist of the L.A. underground? She's got ties to Ariel Pink and Dâm-Funk -- in fact, the last time we heard new music from her, it was in collaboration with ... More >>

Vinyl of the Week: Vintage Psych-Pop and a Blondie Cover from L.A.'s Mini Mansions [MP3]

In the strange wake of music's digital rebirth, vinyl has experienced a modest boom in popularity, seen by many as a replacement for the awkward middleman that is the compact disc. INCHES reviews the output of L.A.'s healthy vinyl community, believing that good music deserves much more than a handfu ... More >>

The Crazy World of Ariel Pink

A predictably freaky afternoon with the Haunted Graffiti frontman

Vinyl of the Week: Captain Ahab's Grotesque Opus, 'The End of Irony' [MP3]

In the strange wake of music's digital rebirth, vinyl has experienced a modest boom in popularity, seen by many as a replacement for the awkward middleman that is the compact disc. INCHES reviews the output of L.A.'s healthy vinyl community, believing that good music deserves much more than a handfu ... More >>

Pitchfork Deliberately Quotes Ariel Pink Out of Context to Make Him Seem Anti-Semitic

heebmagazine.com​So Ariel Pink is about to put a new record now, and it's kind of awesome. So he's promoting it and he gives an interview to Heeb magazine, a really good, hip magazine about Jewish (and related) happenings. During that interview, Pink, who was born Jewish, says several contro ... More >>

Dublab Teams with ZubRangMa to Offer Wild-Ass Thai Psych-Funk Podcast [MP3]

For the past few years, the obsessive funk and psychedelic collectors have started venturing overseas to find the obscurities; having dug and dug in search of Stateside gems, the headz have found themselves dug all the way to the other side of the world pillaging Asia for rarities. Which is a cool a ... More >>

Dreaming of a Day-Glo Xmas

Doug Harvey’s mostly psychedelic shopping list

Video Feast: New Clips from Foreign Born, Nite Jewel Dam-Funk, We Are The World, and Edward Sharpe

In honor of, err, it being Thursday, West Coast Sound has rounded up a spate of newly released videos from around the L.A. underground -- and the Ugandan one as well, as the first clip illustrates. Need a feel-good moment? Look no further than this video, which shows the Gulu Widows Group of Ugand ... More >>

Ariel Pink Signs To 4AD, Readies Euro Tour

Ariel goes Juggalo?​Local freak-folk ambassadors Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti only just returned from touring Europe, and they're looking to head back across the pond on Friday. Consider this trip a victory lap, however, as the psychedelic five-piece has just been announced as the latest sign ... More >>

Trip Planner: Party in the Pines at Big Sur with Dungen, Gang Gang Dance, Ariel Pink

​Start looking for your hallucinogens now, folks. You've got a whole month to casually query your druggie buddies and loser brain-fried ex-boyfriends about, you know, maybe do they have a few extras, or maybe could they call that friend who lives in the RV and always seems to have liquid acid, ... More >>

Nite Jewel's 8-Track Hustle

Making lo-fi disco music on an analog tape recorder, creating beat-based fantasias and art-damaged breakdowns

Ten Coachella Picks: Ariel Pink, Genghis Tron, Vivian Girls, Mastodon

Plus, A Place to Bury Strangers, Mexican Institute of Sound, Gui Boratto, MSTRKFT and more

LA in SXSW Tip #2: Go See Nite Jewel (and Watch Her Fantastic Video, and Grab an MP3)

Nite Jewel MySpace profile views: 88,324 Nite Jewel is part of a fascinating little scene of lo-fi cheesy dance music coming out of one corner of LA's art community, one that has connections to the Italians Do It Better world of New York City -- but way more oblique and interesting. The pseudonym ... More >>

Maybe We're Amazed: Notes on the Fairly Odd Coachella 2009 Lineup

Our only hope — that Macca gets Ram tough

Last Minute Gang Gang Dance Show at the Smell Tonight with Ariel Pink and Night Jewel

When it rains it pours at the Smell, and though we didn't make it to see Calvin Johnson last night (too busy at CSU being totally floored by Mulatu Astatke's memorable set of Ethio jazz), tonight's semi-on-the-sly, somewhat last minute Gang Gang Dance show at the Smell promises to be pretty excell ... More >>

Coachella 2009 Announced: Amy Winehouse, Paul McCartney, My Bloody Valentine ... Throbbing Gristle! Leonard Cohen!

Yeah, so all the silly speculation probably isn't done yet, as Goldenvoice always adds a few heavy-hitters after the initial announcement, but the initial line-up is up. Click through to see it in all it's glory. We'll start analyzing it soon, but for now: Throbbing Gristle! No Pavement? Let the ... More >>

Dublab's Vision Version Series: Typically Inspired Offerings

Cluster "Live at Farmlab" (dublab VisionVersion) from dublab on Vimeo. The estimable dublab posse has carved an ornate little corner in Los Angeles in which to create, and has, over the course of its nearly decade-long existence, created beautiful sounds and images in their LA home. Their gathe ... More >>

Tonight at Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre: Dublab Goes Dark

This should be fantastic tonight: installment five of Dublab After Dark, an ongoing visual extension of the aurally amazing Dublab collective. They explain what will happen tonight better than we could: "The web radio super station your ears love also loves your eyes. This fifth in dublab’s scre ... More >>

Last Night: Architecture in Helsinki

Architecture in Helsinki June 19, 2007 Henry Fonda Theater In the overflow of Canadian and U.K. based indie-rock which currently floods the airwaves and play lists of American music lovers, it seems as though Australian indie-pop has been overlooked. Architecture in Helsinki proudly – and pai ... More >>

Penny Ante for Your Thoughts

Tour posters, photos of cracked-out Pete Doherty and scrawled lyrics to “Apple Pie and Genocide”

Smeared

''Why Aren't You Dancing?''

Ariel Pink at the Echo, February 10

Rock Picks

For February 9 - 16, 2006

Pick for Friday, February 10

Lost And Found

The future is history to an obsessive prodigy and heartbroken shut-in called Ariel Pink

The Weirdo

8-track magician Ariel Pink holds key of wisdom in his hand, public is unsure