Valet, the recent recording moniker of Honey Owens, is seemingly caught between two ideals: playing ambient music and playing rock ‘n’ roll. On her 2007 debut, Blood Is Clean, she bounced back and forth between sedate, nebulous exercises and fl eshed-out pop songs, though she never clung to either.
Less than a year later on her second album, Naked Acid, Owens has a similar M.O. The record’s eight tracks teeter between atmospheric psych-rock songs built on loose foundations and mellow, ambient tracks that maintain a user-friendly sense of melody.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago recently closed Sympathy for the Devil, an exhibition on art and rock ‘n’ roll. The exhibition starts in 1967, the year when Andy Warhol began collaborating with The Velvet Underground, The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience released Are You Experienced. Along with the time frame, curator Dominic Molon placed parameters on what was to be included in the show, with an emphasis on the “art works themselves” instead of the aesthetics of record covers, club flyers, posters, and T-shirts we more comfortably relate to rock music. 
The Matana Roberts Quartet is led by saxophonist Matana Roberts, a Chicago-born New York resident that is accompanied by a list of Chicago luminaries: bassist Josh Abrams (Town and Country), guitarist Jeff Parker (Tortoise), drummer Frank Rosaly (The Dave Rempis Percussion Quartet), and 79-year-old saxophonist Fred Anderson.
Occupying the newly redesigned Feria de Madrid convention pavilion this week is Madrid’s annual International Contemporary Arts Fair, ARCO08. Expansions to this year’s program include all new allotments for performance art, media art, and works completed in the past three years. ARCO08 marks the ascent of Spain as an emerging artistic and culture center (akin to London and Paris). However, the belle of the ball this year is special guest country Brazil. From February 13th to the 18th, thirty two galleries comprise the collection of Brazil’s most prominent up and coming artists, immersing the once old world empire with new flavor. 
Comprised of seven members with a unique collective vision, Mahjongg makes Africaninspired left-wing dance music. The group speaks of a Matrix-inspired struggle between “The Grid” and “The Sphere,” and it gathers in performances dubbed “warning orbs.” Kontpab, a concept album on K Records, is the group’s second full-length.
Standing tall amongst slow-burn instrumental groups like Explosions in the Sky, Red Sparowes, and Do Make Say Think, the newest from Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band eschews the repetitive, amorphous soundscapes of their previous releases for more structure and thunder. Averaging fifteen minutes each, 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons’ quartet of aural epics demands the same undivided attention as a great novel, lest you miss its braided ebbs and flows that reach exhilarating, apocalyptic heights. 
When they were young, Irish natives Shaun Robinson and Rocky O’Reilly were probably the type of kids whose curiosity got the best of them, pushing buttons that read “Do Not Push” whenever possible. Years later, joining under the name Oppenheimer (supposedly because it sounded cool, not in reference to the famed Manhattan Project director), the two are still pushing buttons and tweaking control knobs, but with the purpose of producing their own gadget–infused tunes.
Die! Die! Die!’s second album, Promises, Promises, has all the characteristics of a postpunk revival. The New Zealand-based trio attacks with the highbrow snottiness of Wire’s Pink Flag, while brooding with the moroseness of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures.
Five-piece Americana outfit Fire on Fire is borne from the ashes of psych-prog-punk collective Cerberus Shoal, whose former members have abandoned their electric instruments for banjos, mandolins, and acoustic guitars. This debut EP, released via Young God Records, is long on the folk and short on the freakish tendencies that have characterized some of the label’s other bands. Cerberus Shoal thrived on an unpredictable, everything-but-thekitchen-sink approach; Fire on Fire relies on a straightforward brand of front-porch Americana.
With its debut full-length Dead Mountain Mouth in 2006, electro-grind trio Genghis Tron flashed compositional maturity while blending metal riffs, blast beats, synthesizers, and melodies. Board Up the House, their sophomore album and first release on Relapse, furthers the band’s development.