Independent, major label, garage bands; rock, hip-hop, jazz, world, electronica; we cover it all.
By Spencer Rouse Time to pack up your animal costumes, glitter and hula hoops and make the trek up to Quincy for the High Sierra Music Festival (HSMF). Not only will you get the opportunity to see nationally touring acts like Ben Harper, Galactic, Soulive and Toots and the Maytals in intimate settings, you also [...]
By Jacob Sprecher Dabbling in a mixture of hard rock and psychadelia is a tenuous tightrope. The peaks are incredibly high, while the lows are flat-out embarrassing. Both genres have overwhelming qualities of ambiguity, and it’s the few and the proud that are able to avoid tired clichés and pull off genuine sensibility. Sleepy Sun [...]
By Jacob Sprecher For the eighth largest city in the entire United States, San Diego tends to fly well under the national musical radar. I’m not saying that San Diego is anything like San Jose, where being in a band worth one single damn is apparently outlawed; I’m just saying that for a populace of [...]
By Jacob Sprecher Of all the alternative bands to explode onto MTV and into the mainstream in the early ‘90s, you’d have a hard time coming up with one more bizarre and seemingly off-putting than Primus. From Les Claypool’s guttural and impossible bass mastery to the helter-skelter squeals of Larry LaLonde’s guitar to the monkey-wrench [...]
By Jacob Sprecher Oh, the sweet lullabies of an English voice sung in the key of pop. Well, Elizabeth Morris is actually a Queenslander, but after relocating to the United Kingdom seven years ago and jumping full-force into the vast musical pool, she pretty much qualifies. As for the group she fronts alongside Paul Rains, [...]
By Eric Wendt Escape the Fate is a paradox. They have rabid, die-hard fans the world over, yet many people have never heard of them. Judging by the name of their current co-headlining tour, “This World is Ours,” it looks like the band is aiming to change that. Synthesis spoke with the post-hardcore 5-piece’s frontman, [...]
By Melissa Hahn With the aptitude to go viral on the Internet these days, word of mouth and YouTube is all you really need to stumble upon a wild card in a deck of hopeful fame-chasers. Aaron Bruno, the mastermind behind electro-rock band AWOLNATION, is one of those wild cards. After playing with bands Under [...]
By Eric Wendt Eligh and Amp Live might just be the peanut butter and chocolate of hip hop. Both are great on their own, but together…(kisses fingers)…tres magnifique. Eligh is probably best known as part of the Living Legends crew, as well as half of popular duo The Grouch & Eligh. Amp Live’s claim to [...]
By Jacob Sprecher It’s earlier than I’d like it to be. Last night’s Terry Malts show was at Club DaDa in Dallas with Real Estate and the Twerps which turned out around 350 people, and the four of us wound up getting quite drunk. At The Drive In was playing a last-minute one-off directly across [...]
By Melissa Hahn The demonic overlords known as Gwar are nearing their third decade of savagery with their 13th record. Synthesis chatted with Oderus Urungus, frontman of Gwar and intergalactic mutant of Scumdogia, about the band’s history, the passing of guitarist Flattus Maximus, and some key environmental issues to help us celebrate Earth Month. You [...]
