Sebastian Modak
ARTICLES
Music
Defibrillator
One of the major turning points in my life was when I stopped listening to my dad’s music. At the age of seven, with two older brothers shoveling grunge, metal and punk into my eardrums, my music tastes switched drastically.
Music
A Paranormal Experience
It’s about time we all started believing in ghosts. In the posthumous release of Valleys of Neptune, the phantom of Jimi Hendrix has entered the airwaves to show that forty years on, he still deserves one of the highest thrones in the pantheon of rock deities.
Music
It's A Small World After All
It’s easy to forget that there is a whole musical world out there full of artists who are taking their own traditional styles and fashioning them into contemporary masterpieces that challenge our preconceptions of what music is, has been and will be.
Music
Back To Basics
It’s probably too late to start liking Alkaline Trio. But for the many who count Goddamnit and Good Mourning as integral parts of their high-school soundtracks, the Trio’s most recent release, This Addiction, is the perfect opportunity to get reacquainted with these punk rockers.
Alkaline Trio’s last two releases, Crimson and Agony & Irony, saw them stepping away from their roots.
What Philly Sounds Like
Jeff Woloszyn is sitting outside of his establishment at 15th and South streets playing the guitar. It’s 10 a.m.
Music
Puntal/ Contrapuntal: Lady GaGa
LADY GAGA IS USHERING IN A NEW, FAR MORE REFRESHING, ERA OF POP
I am an outsider to pop.
Music
Monster of Pop
At first glance, Lady Gaga’s most recent release, The Fame Monster, looks like a typical moneymaking B-sides release attached at the hip to her debut hit-machine, The Fame. But don’t be fooled.
Music
¡OMARVELOUS!
Nearly 20 years into his career as a genre-defying, envelope-pushing musician, Omar Rodríguez-López has yet to run out of ideas.
Music
When Metal and Genius Collide
In the vast world of metal, few bands have the versatility of North Carolina’s Between the Buried and Me.
Music
Turning Up the Chaos
Sometimes, the best kind of music doesn’t make sense. The Flaming Lips are veterans of testing the capabilities of listeners to piece together cohesion out of collages of musical chaos.
Music
Back in Business
In a blur of breakups, overdoses and suicides, grunge died in the late '90s. What followed was a wave of aural garbage in the form of bands fronted by Eddie Vedder wannabes who just couldn’t cut it — Creed, Nickelback, 3 Doors Down and (unfortunately) the list goes on and on.
Music
Defibrillator: Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation (1988)
In the world of sellable indie rock, there is a thin line between chaos and bliss. With 1988's Daydream Nation, it was as if Sonic Youth had perfected the art of balancing between the two and, to show the world, plunged headfirst into their own amps.
Like a fine bottle of wine, the album should be ingested whole, but “Teenage Riot,” “Eric’s Trip” and “Trilogy” stand out as the standard bearers of Sonic Youth’s attempted aural uprising.
Music
Music 101
You’ve been at Penn for a few weeks now, and you're finally back in the school-time groove. Unfortunately, you’re most likely grooving to the same old songs.
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