Bwog music metacritic Bryan Mochizuki critiques the iTunes valentines day mixes, and offers his own. The advanced minds of the iTunes Music Store have put together a collection of mixes for Valentine’s Day, and they’re…pretty crappy.  It’s bad enough that some people will actually give their dude “Rock Love Songs For Him” – so does […]

Bwog music critic Bryan Mochizuki explains the world of mixtapes, the reasons to buy them, and how to choose them well. You used to be able to walk up to 125th any time of day and there’d be half-a-dozen guys camped out between 7th and Lenox selling mixtapes – five bucks a pop, four for […]

Composer Portraits – Frank Zappa Miller Theatre February 2, 2007 I often try to think about things in terms of how I would explain them to Benjamin Franklin. On Friday night, I attended the latest in the Miller Theatre’s Composer Portrait series, in which Fireworks Ensemble and Zephyros Winds (a string quintet and a chamber […]

Bits and pieces gathered from the musical universe by Bwog music critic Bryan Mochizuki: The new Norah Jones comes out today, and her two parallel existences continue. One is the more popular Norah “always a safe bet for Mom” Jones, or Snorah for naysayers. The other is her insanely cred-garnering alter-ego, the one who covered […]

Gail Archer, associate professor, organist, and music director of the Barnard/Columbia Chorus, played a concert Sunday evening, January 21 as a way of thanking her mentor who continues to mean so much to her. Archer commissioned her onetime teacher, the avant-garde composer David Noon to write an organ piece on the Pascal plainchant, Pange Lingua. […]

Why Lee C turned the Harvard job down? Whopping salary still derided for paucity by admiring SEAS kids Free downloadable music! Just for us! No, wait, scratch that, you can only stream it. And it doesn’t work on your iPod. Student reaction: as long as it “isn’t mainstream” or “have janky strings” After Bwog commenters’ aesthetic […]

In which Bwog music critic Bryan Mochizuki forgives the Shins their trespasses and disses the music blogosphere…oh wait… “Phantom Limb” – The Shins Depending on whom you talk to, the new Shins album is either lethargic and dull or some more euphemistic variation on those words.  Except for this song.  This is THE SHINS.  This […]

Bwog music critic Bryan Mochizuki would really like to have a mixtape review for you this week. Unfortunately, this happened two nights ago, and since Drama is the biggest DJ in the game, everyone is clamming up. www.datpiff.com, the site that streams them for free, didn’t stream anything yesterday, and all of the places to […]

Bwog music critic Bryan Mochizuki took the pulse of Columbia’s musical authorities–his findings follow.  Last week, we asked members of the Columbia music community – singers, DJs, Spec writers, snobs – to tell us their top 10 lists for 2006.  They did.  We’ve been sitting on the ballots for a few days – mostly correcting […]

In which Bwog Music Critic Bryan Mochizuki reads the Grammy Noms, witholds a Corinne Bailey Rae tirade, and gets down to business with this week’s new MP3’s.  The Grammy nominees were announced yesterday, and they’re worse than usual.  Like a lot of people, I watch the Grammys because I want to believe in them – […]

There’s a lot of music out there to rip off–Bwog music critic Bryan Mochizuki gives us the run down on the downloads. “Careful” – Hot Chip  As I’m writing this, Hot Chip is the 4th most blogged act on Hype-Machine (Google-sort-of-thing for MP3 blogs) and it’s also the 4th most searched for.  They’ve been somewhere […]

In 1997, Men in Black was a monster of a hit.  It would soon be near- forgotten in the society’s collective consciousness, but later became the inspiration for The Tycho Treaty.  Bwog took a load off with the band, Sam Rosenthal C’079 on bass and vocals, Mason Felton-Reid NYU ‘09 on guitar, and Miles on percussion, […]

There’s a lot of music out there to rip off–Bwog music critic Bryan Mochizuki gives us the run down on the downloads. The new Jay-Z album, Kingdom Come, leaked last weekend in its entirety.  The first five tracks? Awesome, with hints of incredible.  The back ten? Pepsi One. Or New Coke.  Drinketh:  Beach Chair (ft. […]

In anticipation of their first fall show, Bwog sat down with two members of Ava Luna, a band that bends genres even as it redefines them.  Carlos Hernandez C’07 does guitar and vocals, while Nate Tompkins C’05 plays bass.  Can you describe the band’s birth?  Who was the midwife? Carlos:  My mother is a professional […]

In a world where college bands seem to be perpetuating the same ol’ indie trend, Beilis serves as a refreshing reminder that not all college bands want to be The Walkmen 2.0.  The band, fronted by Matt Beilis SEAS ’07, is composed of guitarist Pete Couto C ’07, drummer Matt DeWit NJIT ’07, and bassist […]