Q&A: Aesthetic Apparatus distills beauty from poor choices

In a decade that will be characterized by staggering unemployment and one of the greatest recessions in recent history, it is refreshing to hear Aesthetic Apparatus’s story.  Forging a partnership based on a shared love of music, art, and design, Dan Ibarra and Michael Byzewski left their jobs at a Madison, Wisconsin, graphic-design firm in 2002 to do things their way.

Their creation — Aesthetic Apparatus — is a Minneapolis-based commercial art and printmaking studio that has designed everything from gallery art to logos for local pizza shops to concert posters for bands such as Cake and The Black Keys. Leaving a successful graphic-design studio to start something for themselves didn’t promise Ibarra and Byzewski immediate success, but it did set the stage for Aesthetic Apparatus to become modern-day purveyors of pop-culture cool.

Ibarra recently took some time to talk about Aesthetic Apparatus’s unique vision.

Interview: Salem metalcore vets Converge send home the guests for an explosive new album

This content appears in ALARM #40. Subscribe here to get your copy!

Converge: All We Love We Leave Behind (Epitaph, 10/9/12)

“Sadness Comes Home”

Converge: “Sadness Comes Home”

Being one of the most consistently devastating and innovative hardcore bands on the planet doesn’t come easy. In fact, it requires countless hours of hard work, a highly disciplined work ethic, and a level of stamina that even the youngest punks in the game can’t always muster.

For nearly 20 years, Salem, Massachusetts-based metalcore titan Converge has continually pushed its intense sound to new and progressively head-spinning extremes, hammering out 90-second explosions of speed and energy on one track, while delving into a gut-wrenching mixture of emotion and melody the next. Though expectations are best left wide open when approaching a new album from the group, two things remain constant: it’ll never be half-assed, and it most certainly won’t be boring.

ALARM's 50 Favorite Songs of 2012

ALARM’s 50 (+5) Favorite Songs of 2012

Last month ALARM presented its 50 favorite albums of 2012, an eclectic, rock-heavy selection of discs that were in steady rotation in our downtown-Chicago premises. Now, to give some love to tunes that were left out, we have our 50 (+5) favorite songs of last year — singles, B-sides, EP standouts, soundtrack cuts, and more.

Jesca Hoop

Review: Jesca Hoop’s The House That Jack Built

Jesca Hoop: The House That Jack BuiltJesca Hoop: The House That Jack Built (Bella Union, 6/26/12)

“Born To”

Jesca Hoop: “Born To”

Northern California-born signer/songwriter Jesca Hoop (a current resident of Manchester, England) has made quite the impression on people in high places. Garnering endorsements from the likes of Elbow’s Guy Garvey, Peter Gabriel, and Tom Waits (for whom she used to nanny, and who has described her music as being “like going swimming in a lake at night”), Hoop has established herself as well-crafted songstress who relies on her strong voice and pop sensibilities to impel her songs forward. But the support from her tried-and-true forebears isn’t unfounded; on her new album, The House That Jack Built, Hoop disinters the raw talent and musical vision to back up all the hype surrounding her.

50 Unheralded Albums from 2011

50 Unheralded Albums from 2011

In just one more trip around the sun, another swarm of immensely talented but under-recognized musicians has harnessed its collective talents and discharged its creations into the void. This list is but one fraction of those dedicated individuals who caught our ears with some serious jams.

Tom Waits

Record Review: Tom Waits’ Bad as Me

Tom Waits: Bad as MeTom Waits: Bad as Me (Anti-, 10/25/11)

Tom Waits: “Bad as Me”

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Tom Waits is legend, larger than life. Few musicians are as cloaked in mythology. Yet his music has always been what music should be: comforting in places, jarring in others, pushing boundaries while always honoring the legacy of American songwriting. Bad as Me, Waits’ first studio album in seven years, is all of these things, continuing the direction that he established with Closing Time in 1973 and hammered into the ground with Swordfishtrombones a decade later.

At the time, Swordfishtrombones signified a new Waits, a man unafraid to be confronted. The confidence came in large part from his marriage to Kathleen Brennan. They’re still married, and Waits credits Brennan as his support, collaborator, and muse. Here, every track was written and produced by Brennan and Waits together. Those tracks oscillate between manic and maudlin, flip-flopping throughout the entire album. Where a Depression-era blues tune ends, a ballad begins. Waits’ voice is a freight train and then a frail leaf.

That voice, of course, is a wonder. Waits can sound like a woman down on her luck, a Mississippi blues man, a possessed mule, and an army of brokenhearted ogres. Every harsh word has been employed to make sense of the ragged clatter that emerges from Waits’ throat. It’s as if his voice has always been 60 years old and his body only now caught up.

DeVotchKa

DeVotchKa: Gypsy-Fusion Quartet Hits the Big Time

Achieving public familiarity through featured songs in Little Miss Sunshine, DeVotchKa has worked hard to make a name for itself. Its Gypsy-influenced sound employs a wide variety of styles and instrumentation, celebrating a genre that has been around for hundreds of years.