Under the Radar Magazine Under the Radar | Music Blog for the Indie Music Magazine
Thursday, March 28th, 2024  
Late of the Pier

Nov 01, 2008 Year End 2008 - Best of 2008

Back in their home base of Donnington, England, Late of the Pier’s career started with a jumbled mess of dusty synthesizer equipment, guitars in various states of disrepair, and scattershot drum kits. The band’s keyboardist/sampler, Sam Potter, remembers those early days stuck in a musty attic well. “Our singer/guitarist Sam [Eastgate]’s dad played in a couple bands in the ’80s,” Potter explains. “A lot of the original instruments we played came from that attic. We used to practice with this old battered blue drum kit and this old guitar that was covered in comics. We used to get stoned and just go crazy.” More

Amazing Baby

Nov 01, 2008 Year End 2008 - Best of 2008

Life was looking grim for Will Roan last winter. “A year ago, I was working making raincoats and just trying to be able to pay rent and being really scared because my band was breaking up. It’s a really strange place to be in now—recording a full-length record. Bizarre,” says the singer for Brooklyn’s Amazing Baby. More

Danny Boyle

Nov 01, 2008 Danny Boyle

“You know when you smell something, and it’s like a really vivid recollection?” asks director Danny Boyle. “You get a memory throwback. I wanted to try and create that intensity in film.” More

The Dears

Nov 01, 2008 Year End 2008 - Best of 2008

“Like all Dears records, there’s a grand theme,” says Murray Lightburn, referring to the feeling of being under threat, the underlying idea behind his band’s fourth album, Missiles. It’s a universal enough concept, in step with the record’s mid-paced marvels of melody, harmony, rhythm, and riffage, located at one of the more soulful intersections of pop and rock. Missiles may not seem a particularly fitting title for such romantically inclined music (“paced to love-making,” says the band’s blog), but melodrama remains at the core of The Dears’ oeuvre. More

Franz Ferdinand

Nov 01, 2008 Year End 2008 - Best of 2008

It took a few years, but as the lines between genres and cultures have blurred, it seems like we’re now finally at a place where fans of loud guitars and shouted vocals can admit to liking dance music. Hot Chip, Of Montreal, Girl Talk—these are all acts that have designed songs for the dance floor only to be accepted and celebrated by the kind of listeners who likely once would have cringed when rock bands embraced disco. More

TV on the Radio

Nov 01, 2008 Year End 2008 - Best of 2008

“I feel dumb for being on the road promoting a record; I feel like I should be learning how to grow my own food,” says TV on the Radio’s vocalist/guitarist Kyp Malone, referring to the economic crisis in the United States. “The whole thing seems like a big card game played with a bunch of cheaters. The worst thing about it, from a human perspective, is the people who have been suffering from the injustices of the economic system are going to bear the brunt of the greedy pigs’ tomfoolery at the top. If there isn’t some complete change of value systems, there is going to be a lot of pain and suffering ahead.” More

Arnaud Desplechin

Nov 01, 2008 Arnaud Desplechin

French director Arnaud Desplechin, whose first film was titled La Vie des morts (Life of the Dead), acknowledges that there appears to be a preoccupation with death in his work. More

Lance Hammer

Nov 01, 2008 Web Exclusive

Ballast, a meditative and visually eloquent film about death and renewal, is an unlikely work from a Los Angeles filmmaker. Shot on 35mm film in the Mississippi Delta while using only available light, Ballast has been linked to the films of Belgium’s Dardenne brothers, not only because writer-director Lance Hammer employed handheld camera, jump cuts and nonprofessional actors, but also for the naturalistic way the film depicts the emotional and psychological effects of impoverished living. More

Fleet Foxes

Nov 01, 2008 Fleet Foxes

Imagine that you’re feeling a little overwhelmed. Imagine you and your band have made a first album that is arguably the most widely acclaimed release of the year. Imagine you’re Robin Pecknold, and you write the songs for Fleet Foxes. More