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Band/Artist Profile Festival Coverage

Artist interview & profile: Hannah Jadagu

Hannah Jadagu
Hannah Jadagu performing at Hopscotch

From her bedroom to the main stage at Hopscotch, Hannah Jadagu is starting to make a name for herself in the indie music scene. 

Hannah Jadagu is an indie-pop artist who now lives in New York City, but is originally from Mesquite, Texas. The 19-year-old singer only started her music career a few years ago when she was in High School. She was 16 when she first learned how to play guitar, and instantly felt connected to the instrument. She started writing songs and recording them on her iPhone and released a few online. 

Now, a few years later she is signed to Sub Pop Records and is starting to play live shows. Her first festival performance was at Hopscotch in Raleigh, and we got to share that sweet experience with her. 

As she took center stage she felt nervous about how the set would go over. She had two other people in her band, a drummer and a member who jumped around between playing guitar, bass, and samples on his computer. Overall she felt their set went really well and she was excited to play in Raleigh for the first time. 

With this show in the bag, Hannah felt ready and excited for her upcoming tours and projects. She is currently working on an album and is opening for Beach Fossils and Wild Nothing on their North American tour. She also announced that she will be opening for Ritt Momney in 2022. 

Because of Covid she wasn’t able to share her music with as many people face to face, but it gave her the opportunity to work on her music and create music videos and more content for fans. 

“I took a leave of absence from school so that I could tour and focus on my music,” Jadagu said. “It was too much to balance, and I’m so happy with my choice because now I get to have these amazing experiences like playing festivals.” 

Hannah started her musical career by putting the songs she was working on out, and spread the word through her instagram which landed her a record deal with Sub Pop. 

“It was such a surreal moment, I got a DM on instagram from a manager at Sub Pop saying they loved my music and wanted to work with me, I didn’t think it was real at first but after a few zoom calls I signed to Sub Pop and now they’re helping me put out my music,” Jadagu said. 

Jadagu takes inspiration from any music and media she is consuming at the moment and turns them into her own interpretation. 

“Usually I just start strumming my guitar and see where that takes me. I like to freestyle and record all of my ideas so I have a basis to work off of when I’m ready to put the song together. When I play something that makes me excited I hone in on that part and work around it.”

Hannah was excited that she could perform her songs to crowds again and not just for her computer in her bedroom. Many artists probably feel the same way now that shows are being set up again. 
You can listen to her new single “All my Time is Wasted” here. 

Categories
Concert Preview Festival Coverage Local Music

Preview: Chapel Hill’s Manifest Aims to Break Barriers

Promotional poster for Manifest 5
Promotional Poster for Manifest 5 in Chapel Hill from October 15-16, 2021

In my training class to become a WKNC DJ, among the many pieces of advice our then station general manager gave us was to “not just play music made by four white guys”. This was met by laughs, but that line stuck with me because of how relevant it still is. When I was a daytime DJ I tried to have sets with a strong female representation, but four or so guys still made up most of the songs aired from 10 to 11 p.m. on Thursdays. And that doesn’t even take into account the “white” part of that; many genres such as modern indie rock are overrepresented by white artists and artists of color will often have their work labeled as R&B even when that label doesn’t fit the music, which can box in both exposure and creative freedom.

Enter Manifest. This is a festival that, according to the website, is “focused on dismantling patriarchy, misogyny, and white supremacy” with a diverse lineup that draws from a wide variety of races, sexualities and gender identities. Now dismantling vast social hierarchies is a lofty goal, but they’ve definitely got the lineup down. This is a festival that has seen acts like Skylar Gudasz and Hopscotch 2021 attendee Sarah Shook, and this year the acts range from Basura who make minute-and-a-half long death metal bangers to trans experimental artist KHX05 who brings a nervy and rebellious energy to her mixtapes and remix EPs. 

Manifest bills itself as mostly a punk festival, and there are a number of punk bands making an appearance. Gown is a hardcore metallic punk band that has seven members, three of whom play the cello, while Fortezza is an doom punk band out of Asheville whose long guitar solos and verses screamed over a lone drumbeat create a chaotic and apocalyptic feel to fit their hand-drawn album covers. The artists have a distinctly local flavor too. Of the 28 acts coming to Chapel Hill this weekend, 21 are from the Triangle area, and five of them won’t have to leave their hometown to make it there. 

This is the fifth iteration of Manifest, and it’s the fifth time in these exact three venues. The festival is mostly based around Local 506, a bar and club that, when not hosting live acts, is known for having themed dance parties such as the 80s-style one that I went to this summer. This is where tickets and wristbands are picked up and where WKNC is running the merch table. When not at the Local 506, festivalgoers can head to two other locations, one of which is The Cave. This is another bar/club hybrid, iconic in Chapel Hill for its alley location and will often host rock and punk rock bands. 

Now despite having essentially grown up in downtown Chapel Hill, I’ll admit I had to look up the last venue, Rosemary Street’s The Nightlight. It’s the only one of the venues not located on Franklin Street, and its website is at time of writing a single page detailing its closures due to COVID and in the spirit of Manifest, a link to a mutual aid fund. All of these are within a quarter mile walk of each other so it should be easy to go between any of the simultaneous shows being played.

Continuity is a major theme here, and not just in the venues. Manifest 5 marks the fourth appearance of Raleigh’s Fruit Snack at the aforementioned festival, a band whose members work at multiple venues in the Triangle and whose themes of anti-capitalism, openness about sex and dislike of the police fit right in with Manifest’s mission statement. It also features a ukulele player. Meanwhile, punk act Pie Face Girls has attended every single iteration since the festival began in 2016. This in combination with its many local sponsors including Orange County Arts Commission, Chapel Hill’s own Midway Market and this radio station gives this festival a strong feeling of community that puts those goals of social change front and center.

I’m personally quite excited to cover Manifest. While I won’t be able to see every artist (The Cave being 21+ is unfortunate but understandable) there are a lot of acts I really want to see and blog about, and a lot of artists I had never heard of before and really want to get to know as part of my ongoing efforts to further connect with the local music scene here. After all, homegrown music with a message is the new punk rock. And the old one too.

-Erie

Categories
Concert Review Festival Coverage

Flying Lotus: Concert Review

Flying Lotus is an artist I first came across while working as the Underground Music Director for WKNC this Summer. I ended up loving his latest album “Yasuke” and added a bunch of his songs to the rotation, so when I found out he was performing at Hopscotch I couldn’t wait.

The Music

Throughout his set, Flying Lotus played an assortment of his more recent and his older projects. As a relatively new listener, I only recognized the tracks “Black Gold” and “Crust” which are from his latest album. Overall, his set was much more electronic than I had initially expected which was pleasant surprise. The bass was heavy, the music was loud, and the people were moshing.

The Performance

Unlike Caroline Polachek, the opener on Thursday night, Flying Lotus relied more on tech than choreography for his visuals. He stood alone behind a large DJ booth which had a transparent white tinted screen separating him and the audience. On this screen there flashed a crazy assortment of images and short videos that correlated to each song in his set. The visuals along with the heavy bass made for a pleasantly disorienting experience.



Categories
Blog Classic Album Review

Classic Album Review: “We Have the Facts and are Voting Yes” by Death Cab for Cutie

"We Have the Facts and Are Voting Yes" album cover
Death Cab for Cutie’s “We Have the Facts and Are Voting Yes” album cover

Death Cab for Cutie are synonymous with metaphorical songwriting and thought-provoking guitar work. Not thought-provoking as in so experimental you’ll think about music differently, more like sitting back and providing a canvas for the listener’s imagination to take over.

And while “Transatlanticism” and “Plans” are certified classics of the 2000s, it can be argued that their album that takes these strengths to the greatest extent is actually “We Have the Facts and are Voting Yes”, an album that came out a couple years before the band really blew up. It’s tied together conceptually with themes of breakup and modern urban life, specifically through a loosely-defined story of a hip Seattle couple and how their relationship slowly falls apart.

A defined concept album suits lead singer Ben Gibbard’s unique songwriting style perfectly. Verses are less of a defined set of lines and more of a section of a longer story arc. “Little Fury Bugs” is a winding tale of a road trip filled with uneasy friend group dynamics, while “For No Reason” makes powerful moments out of a barely raised voice. “Tracing the plot finds, skin touching skin” is an understated chorus with a lot of heart in the small vocal inflections. Meanwhile “No Joy in Mudville” reimagines a classic poem about baseball as a swan song of hipster life. 

Songs take on instrumental arcs as well as just narrative ones. “Title Track” starts with a narrow soundscape to fit the themes of weariness and cigarette filters before opening up with rich hi-hats and a strong bassline.

The narrative climax of the album, though, is the two-part epic “Company Calls” and “Company Calls Epilogue”. It goes from a rant about a relationship that is “so tired” with yells about crashing a “party line” to spiraling further into crashing an exes’ wedding, tying up the themes of the album with powerful metaphorical imagery.

All of this sounds heavy, and lyrically it is, but this is where Death Cab for Cutie’s breezy instrumentals come in. The lines that would be hard to listen to sound weightless when on top of a tight, minimal rhythm section and atmospheric guitars. All of this combines into an album that is the definition of a grower: you don’t even notice when you repeat “Title Track” for the fifth time in a row or whisper “what ghosts exist behind these attic walls” to yourself over and over.

-Erie

Categories
Blog

Afterhours Charts 10/12

Blue Hawaii Music Video Image
Image from Blue Hawaii Music Video "Feelin"
#ArtistAlbumLabel
1BLUE HAWAIIUnder 1 House [EP]Arbutus
2FJAAKSYS03 [EP]Self-Released
3DJ SABRINA THE TEENAGE DJCharmedSpells On The Telly
4ERIKA DE CASIERSensational4AD/Beggars Group
5LEON VYNEHALLRare, ForeverNinja Tune
6LOGIC1000You’ve Got The Whole Night To Go [EP]Therapy/Because
7MAGDALENA BAYMercurial WorldLuminelle
8SMERZBelieverXL/Beggars Group
9CFCFMemorylandSelf-Released
10DAWN RICHARDSecond LineMerge
Categories
Weekly Charts

Underground Charts 10/12

Lava La Rue Album Cover
Butter-fly Album Cover
#ArtistAlbumLabel
1LAVA LA RUEButter-fly [EP]Marathon
2TIERRA WHACK“Dora” [Single]Interscope
3FAT TONYExoticaCarpark
4JOESEFDoes It Make You Feel Good [EP]AWAL
5KOOLEY HIGHNever Come DownM.E.C.C.A.
6KXG“Emilio” [Single]Self-Released
7MARKEE STEELEVet & A Rook [EP]Thee Marquee
8PINK SIIFU AND FLY ANAKINFlySiifu’sLex
9RICO NASTYNightmare VacationSugar Trap
10STATIK SELEKTAHThe Balancing ActMass Appeal
Categories
Weekly Charts

Chainsaw Charts 10/13

Eyemaster's Charcoal Remains album cover
#ArtistAlbumLabel
1EYEMASTERCharcoaled Remains / Festering SlimeCaligari
2CREEPING DEATHThe Edge Of ExistenceEntertainment One
3HOODED MENACEThe Tritonus BellSeason Of Mist
4PREDICTOR…thus spoke death [EP]Iron Bonehead
5VENUS SYNDROMECannibal SarRockshots
6ANDREW WKGod Is PartyingNapalm
7AZZRIELL“Cycle of Shadows” [Single]Self-Released
8MASTIFFLeave Me The Ashes Of The EarthEntertainment One
9BORISNoThird Man
10CHARREDPrayers Of MaledictionEntertainment One
Categories
Music News and Interviews

Mitski’s Return to Music

Cover for Mitski's single, working for the knife.

On October 1, Mistki fans rejoiced as they noticed that she had made a return to Twitter and Instagram, which had both been deactivated by the artist since July of 2019. On October 4, she (or rather, her management, as the bios on both of these accounts read “Account run by Management”) posted a cryptic image indicating that music would be coming the next morning.

New music came indeed. At 10 a.m. ET on October 5, Mitski released a brand new single, “Working for the Knife.” I have been consistently disappointed by my favorite artist’s comebacks this year, but Mitski is an exception to that rule; she never disappoints. 

“Working for the Knife” Music Video

From the lyricism to the production to the nihilistic subject matter, this single is Mitski through and through. My favorite lyric comes in the very first verse: “I cry at the start of every movie / I guess ’cause I wish I was making things, too.”

Along with the single, she announced tour dates, and she begins her tour with two North Carolina stops, and I’m excited to say the least. She’ll be performing at The Orange Peel in Asheville on Feb 17, 2022 and at The Ritz in Raleigh on Feb 18, 2022. I was able to snag tickets to her Raleigh show, and am tentatively going to attend.

Here’s to good comebacks,

Caitlin

Categories
Concert Review

Concert Review: White Reaper (9/25/2021)

White Reaper onstage at Cat's Cradle
White Reaper at Cat’s Cradle on 9/25/2021

Late into the show, lead singer Tony Esposito remarked that “it feels a lot like 2019 again”. This moment of introspection stood out because it was a rare break in almost continuous stream of wailing guitars. Often Esposito would step away from the mic for extended headbanging solos powered by the three guitars, and even during breaks between songs someone would always be hammering a note or keeping a drum rhythm going. There was very little that stood between the five members of White Reaper and delivering the experience the audience paid for, which was for them to play now and loud.

This concert was a long time in the making. White Reaper was originally coming to the Cradle in March of 2020, this was rescheduled for obvious reasons to April 28 of this year, when it was rescheduled once more to Sept. 25. The hype was palpable, and one person I talked to said they drove all the way from Richmond. 

One of White Reaper’s signature traits is Esposito’s howling, passionate vocals, and they certainly put on a show that night. The Cat’s Cradle acoustics meant it was definitely hard to make every word out but that added to the experience, songs became experiences, crashing walls of sound, and everyone knew the lyrics anyway.

Their stage presence was immaculate, often someone would stand on a platform to almost come at the audience from a new dimension and there was always purpose behind actions as simple as walking around during a song, often coming within a few inches of the front row when a song reached its crescendo. 

The setlist was a nice blend of old and new, with songs like “Sheila” and “Pills” off their debut alongside “Raw” and “Headwind” off their most recent album, 2019’s “You Deserve Love”. “The Stack” was a particular crowd favorite, virtually everyone was jumping and singing along to it. And they wisely kept “Judy French”, one of their biggest crowd-pleasers, until the encore, answering the audience’s cries to hear it played with the familiar opening notes that had everyone cheering.

White Reaper are from Louisville, but they injected some local flair by dedicating “Might be Right” to two of their North Carolinian friends who are engaged to be married and were also in the audience, and their cover of “Aneurysm” was an homage to Nirvana’s 1991 concert at the Cradle. They also asked if anyone in the crowd were students and said to “stay in school otherwise you’ll end up like us”, which was ironic in the face of the absolute blast they seemed to be having onstage.

Opening act Glove set the tone for things to come and while I hadn’t heard its music beforehand I had a great time with its set. It’s a synth heavy band with a strong 80s influence and a lot of fun grooves and piano riffs. Its versatility of lineup was interesting to watch; the drummer switched from a larger drum set to synths to a smaller drum set to being the lead singer and about halfway through they keyboard player started playing sitting down, at eye level with the front row. White Reaper was the star of the show but Glove definitely earned its applause.

And Esposito was right: it really felt like 2019 again. While I along with a few others stayed in the back to keep distance between each other, the mosh pit was alive and well and pretty much the whole front half of the crowd was involved. While this concert had been rescheduled multiple times, everything about the actual event felt like a return to some version of normal, and even from the back, it was a pretty great version.

-Erie

Categories
Music Education

Planning a Long Set – What I Learned

A snapshot of my set on 10/1/2021

World College Radio Day was one of the craziest days of my life, and it came on the heels of a fever pitch of excitement at the station. Never have I been so excited about a holiday I had only heard of a week before it happened.

And in the midst of the hype, I decided to make a 5 hour set focused around dark techno and midtempo, which are genres I’m not exactly an expert in. Here are a few things I learned along the way for anyone who finds their set length exceeding the runtime of “Avengers: Endgame”. This is one for all the DJs out there.

  • Focus on the big picture. Have a set theme going into it, and having different subgenres within your overall set description. This is just personal preference, but you really don’t want to stick to one very specific niche for more than a few hours. If songs start to feel the same, you don’t want to be stuck having to play that same thing for an hour more than you want to. I wanted my theme to be a “descent into madness”, so I started with house music before going into techno and later into midtempo and dubstep, slowly getting darker while trying to make any given few songs feel like they should be in the same set.
  • Don’t worry about individual transitions that much, at least early on. 5 hours equated to around 90 songs for me, and that’s a lot to have to get in a hyper-specific order. Start by grouping songs into general categories like mood and tempo, which will narrow down the amount of ordering you have to do by a lot.
  • Don’t be afraid to throw in something off the wall. Putting a noise pop song by Black Dresses in the middle of a bunch of dubstep feels odd, but don’t sweat it. A change of pace after an hour of the same genre sounds a lot better than you might think.
  • Use your resources. In making this set I had to branch out a lot from my typical listening habits and ways of discovering music, Spotify radio stations of individual songs helped a lot with this. Music-map.com was also a great resource. This website lets you search an artist and showing a map of artists you’ll probably like if you like that artist, the closer together they are the more likely you’ll click with them. I came into this set liking Rezz a lot and wanted her style of midtempo music to be at least an hour of my set, so searching for Rezz on music-map let me find artists like Hlfmn and Whipped Cream whose songs became cornerstones of that time block.

And remember, don’t stress out too much. It might feel like a lot but doing a long set is about having fun and really getting to showcase a genre. If you’re genuinely enjoying the songs and how they’re flowing it’ll reflect in the end product. This is only my first set of this length and I definitely have a lot to learn, and that’s part of the fun of it, just scratching the surface of a new and exciting activity for me.

-Erie