Music

Tony’s ‘Animated Persona’

July 31st, 2014

Photo by Dan Eisenhauer

“Animated Personas,” rapper Tony the Butcher’s first solo album, combines the energy and sound of his live shows with thoughtful, introspective tracks. Though it only took two years to record, Tony Motzerelli describes the album as 29 years in the making.

“Those tracks are about my life and growing up,” Tony told HPR.

Before moving to the Fargo-Moorhead area in 2006, Tony bounced around towns in South Dakota and Minnesota. It was in South Dakota where he first began rapping…

Gone swimming: Into the Lake presents “The Pre-Flight EP”

July 24th, 2014

Over the river and through the woods, Into The Lake we go.

Indeed, within a matter of months, this “lake band” has recorded a 5-track EP, “The Pre-Flight,” released two of the EP’s singles and gained more than 400 fans on Facebook without having performed a single live show. The full EP will be released digitally, through Spotify, iTunes, BandCamp, Amazon and Google, this July 29. And the band will perform live for the first time this July 24 at The Aquarium.

Into The Lake…

Tim Sparks’ “Chasin’ the Boogie”

July 17th, 2014

By Tom Johnson

Guitarist and longtime Minnesota resident Tim Sparks has made a name for himself for many years by taking on ambitious concepts on the guitar.

Whether it be taking the music of avant-garde composer and saxophonist John Zorn’s band Masada Quartet and condensing it to solo acoustic guitar, or when, in 2009, Sparks released “Little Princess” rearranging and deconstructing the music of Naftule Brandwein -- a klezmer clarinetist from the ‘20s dubbed “The King of the…

Flame on: Q&A with Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips

July 10th, 2014

The band that battled pink robots, surfed crowds with a giant bubble, glitter-punk-rocked the snot out of stadiums and tripped fans’ badonks off all over the world for the past three decades will entertain, to say the least, Fargo-Moorhead for the first time ever on July 16.

Currently, The Flaming Lips are in the middle of a fiery Internet explosion. Be sure to check out their outrageous and rad new “SuperFreak” video with Miley Cyrus and Moby. But hide your kids first!

Read the…

Vampire in the sun: Sharon Van Etten reveals her secrets through music

July 10th, 2014

“I am a vampire, I don’t know if you knew that,” Sharon Van Etten semi joked and revealed to the High Plains Reader this past week.

Truly, the Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter makes it sound like she is a vampire in her crazy infectious tune “Every Time The Sun Comes Up (I’m in trouble).”

Knowing that she’s continually and gradually getting more popular, perhaps we should be more worried about just how much trouble she’s going to get in. How can someone so dark and so…

Chevelle: Rockers of Future Past

June 19th, 2014

By Austin Kettelhut

Chevelle, the hard rocking trio from Chicago, has established itself as one of the few bands that has not only survived the “post-grunge rock” phase of the early 2000s, but has also separated itself from the era entirely. Once upon a time the group would have been lumped into a genre of music that was quickly becoming a desolate, unoriginal wasteland. Rock was dying, and maybe it did die in some sense, but Chevelle has refused to get swept under by the current.…

Nekododos

May 15th, 2014

This Friday, May 16, San Francisco alternative-rock group The Dodos will open for alternative singer/songwriter Neko Case at The Fargo Theatre for one of the most highly anticipated alternative concerts of the year.

Alternative, indeed. Both The Dodos and Neko Case dig deep into their unconventional minds to express strange, yet endearing rhythms, words and phrases, while connecting with their audience through glorious melodies and harmonies.

The Dodos are well known for their releases…

Acoustic aspirations

May 8th, 2014

New guitar shop Flatland specializing in guitar repair, maintenance and sales

Is your guitar buzzing, wildly out of tune or sounding less vibrant? If you live in the Fargo-Moorhead area and you own a guitar, chances are, your instrument(s) is suffering from post-winter trauma and is need of some optimizing.

Flatland Guitar and Lutherie, located next to Addictions Tattoo and The Great Wall on University Dr. in Fargo, can help with that – and just about anything guitar related: neck…

Wild Hands: New Dakota bluegrass

May 8th, 2014

Young Minot musicians to tour the Midwest and Europe

By Konner Johnson

Minot’s own Wild Hands have been playing music for only a few years but already have established themselves in the Midwest bluegrass scene. The group will play their first show at The Aquarium with the award-winning Minnesota string band Roe Family Singers.

Wild Hands are known for their rock-Americana-bluegrass style that delivers compellingly honest songs about this area of the country. For a smaller, isolated North…

Experiments in hip-hop

April 24th, 2014

Kill the Vultures to twist beats at The Aquarium

Alexei Moon Casselle is a born and bred Minneapolis rapper. He’s been a hype man for Twin-Cities legends Atmosphere and Eyedea & Abilities, an acoustic guitarist for the indie group Roma Di Luna and an emcee for the hip-hop party group Odd Jobs. Nowadays he spends time “killing vultures,” so to speak, with experimental beats, rhymes and poetry.

This Saturday, April 26, Casselle’s hip-hop group Kill the Vultures will perform its very…