David Cotner

Photos by Wild Don LewisCARTER-TUTTI, CHESSMACHINE at REDCAT, February 25 Richard Chartier’s and Ivan Pavlov’s Chessmachine is an even less rockist version of professional chess (they get their kicks above the waistline, Sunshine) — with all the snores that that implies, as one zzzz calls from the peanut gallery. Split......

Photo by Susanna Howe The reason you’re reading this is that, in a dive bar in downtown Los Angeles two years ago, Becky Stark hit two very pure, crisp, clear tones. That’s all it takes. Hearing them again (or something like them) on her recent self-released CD, Artifacts of the......

photo by wild don lewis MOMUS at Spaceland, August 1 Momus battles with murderous glitches on laptop and theremin while “London 1888” dissolves into a poetry reading. Levels are checked, and he leans into the wind of the slower rhythms, remonstrating with the audience like an incessantly put-upon statue in......

The banality-battling bunker known as the Smell boasts one of the most idiosyncratic voices tearing across the cultural cosmos today -- collecting artists and musicians who might otherwise know nothing of one another, filling the all-ages void left by similar venues such as Jabberjaw, the Alligator Lounge and the long-deceased......