Listen Now

We also have a super-special, bonus interview with Tony Rolando; founder of the pioneering modular manufacturing company, Make Noise. It is required listening for anyone interested in the industry of modular synthesis, both the current exemplar of independent music manufacturing and experimental music: Read the full story on RandomNerds.com

Moogfest — the 4-day festival celebrating electronic and experimental music in Durham, NC — wants attendees to be intelligent music consumers. Unlike your typical mega-festival, which attempts to numb the minds of audiences with a roster of market-tested, unprovocative mainstream acts, it provides an event where music is contextualized in culture and framed by dynamic discussion, self reflection, and collaboration. Read the full story on RandomNerds.com

Last year, we found ourselves smitten with Moogfest; the 4-day, Durham-based, electronic music-centric festival. So it is without hesitation that we (your host, Lindsay Hogan and synth-literate contributor Alex Tebeleff) made plans to return and report on this year’s festival. But before we dive into the avant-garde sets, artist lectures, activist workshops, and tech installation that define Moogfest, we wanted to have a conversation about the 2018 lineup, our most anticipated shows, and the changes and challenges the festival faces this year. Read the full story on RandomNerds.com

In this episode of Talking Like a Jerk, I invite back my panel of journalists — Bryce Rudow and Marcus Dowling — to discuss the disruptions, for both artists and listeners, caused by the dominance of Spotify and other music streaming services. Read the full story on RandomNerds.com

The music journalist with integrity is a modern rarity beset by obstacles: the slow death of their industry, defensive hostility from artists, and the easy temptation to lower their standards in the name of potential virality. So, for this episode, I invited prolific writer Marcus Dowling and RN Editor-in-Chief Bryce Rudow to join me in choosing a recently-published piece of music journalism/writing that either exemplifies the under-appreciated diligence of talented music writers orexposes the journalistic flops and cheap editorials that get published in our current era of hyperbolic clickbait and media commodification: Read the full story on RandomNerds.com

Late December and early January have become so plagued with excess retrospections and perfectly-adequate “best of” lists no music fan could possibly keep up with them all. Thus, the Talking Like a Jerk braintrust (Editor-in-Chief Bryce Rudow and I) decided to let our personal 2017 superlatives cool on the rack for a bit before yanking them out of the hype oven. Read the full story on RandomNerds.com

In Part Two, we lighten up, keep it musical and eclectic, and share our favorite artists, songs, and live shows from the past year in the 202: Read the full story on RandomNerds.com

In Part One, we discuss the daunting challenges to making art in this city in 2017, including the recent changes to DC’s media landscape, fluctuating audience engagement, and the struggle to provide responsible context for the city’s musical past and present: Read the full story on RandomNerds.com

In the 21 years since Pitchfork’s launch, the Chicago-based music website has crafted itself into an essential outlet for criticism (and discovery) of independent music. Forging their own style of editorial authenticity through overly-passionate and often irreverent reviews of your favorite band — and eventually branching out into the curation of music festivals, coverage of mainstream artists, and the publication of more diverse music-related content — its influence has grown exponentially, to the point that it was brought under the Condé Nast media empire back in 2015. Read the full story on RandomNerds.com

Immediately after LCD Soundsystem announced their rumored yet ultimately unexpected return in early 2016, the Random Nerds dance-punk braintrust — composed of Editor-in-Chief Bryce Rudow, contributing writer and editor Justin McCarthy, and I — wrote passionately about the emotions and consequences their reunion yielded. But now, after 18 months of festival headlining shows, sold out Brooklyn gigs, and quietly growing skepticism from critics and audiences, we finally have a new album: american dream. Read the full story on RandomNerds.com

Random Nerds’ marbled home of Washington D.C. masks an underexposed music scene that’s extended well beyond the cultural touchstones of its go-go and punk roots yet still struggles to break out of its at-capacity borders. For this podcast episode of Talking Like a Jerk, I tapped two of the city’s most loquacious minds — Marcus Dowling, cultural creative and concept designer behind Decades Nightclub, and Alex Tebeleff, DIY show organizer and member of such musical projects as Paperhaus and Black Lodge — to find out what’s holding our musicians back and explore how a select few artists have found a way to make it work. Read the full story on RandomNerds.com

U2 is a band whose bloated ambition and oblivious business acumen has, for the past decade, nearly eradicated all memory of their uplifting, cinematic rock in the 80’s and inventive, genre-melding rock in the 90s. That’s why, for the past decade, I have decided to keep my lifelong love for them buried under stacks of more avant, and vastly hipper music. Read the full story on RandomNerds.com

Last month, I attended Moogfest, the 4-day music festival (or is it a music conference?) that took place in Durham, North Carolina. And while fellow journalist Alex Tebeleff and I have already shared our thoughts on the career-affirming event dubbed a “synthesis of music, art and technology,” I wanted to use this episode of Talking Like A Jerk as an opportunity to share some the eclectic auditory offerings of Moogfest through a collection of conversations (both had and overheard), sight-specific sounds, and progressive music. Read the full story on RandomNerds.com

What happened to the music festival? What was once a pastoral escape has now become a bloated corporate opportunity for profit, more commonly marketed towards wealthy high schoolers than engaged music fans. For us music die-hards who still attend festivals, every year becomes more of a struggle to find meaning and defend our decisions… Read the full story on RandomNerds.com

Father John Misty: the ex Fleet Foxes drummer may not be a household name on par with Bob Dylan, but over the course of three albums, he’s sunk his claws into the ears and nerves of a purportedly intellectual audience. His penchant for high-brow commentary drenched in cynicism and satire, along with his at times outlandish public appearances, have exacerbated critics while forging a cult of ensconced fans. Following his latest release Pure Comedy, I assembled three of DC’s most opinionated music wonks, Alli Vega (Songbyrd Music House), Peter Lillis (Babe City Records), and Bryce Rudow (Random Nerds) to discuss Misty while trudging through their first listen of Pure Comedy. Read the full story on RandomNerds.com

Following November’s election of a bullying, nationalist, anti-arts, anti-free press president who perpetually rejects objective truth, the above audiophilic sentiment was echoed in cafes and think pieces across the country; a faint silver lining extracted from the foreboding horizon. And Washington D.C., the nation’s capital and (second) home to the President, is being tapped as a possible ground zero for this musical (read: “punk”) reawakening. For those of us living here on the front lines of political resistance, however, that juvenile perspective naively ignores the nuanced reality of living, and creating, in the 202. Read the full story on RandomNerds.com