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Type of site | Online magazine |
---|---|
Owner | David Harris |
Created by | David Harris (based in Portland, Oregon, US) |
URL | spectrumculture |
Launched | 2008 |
Current status | Active |
Spectrum Culture is an online music, film, food, and print media webzine that provides weekly reviews and a variety of special features in these areas. It is characterized by its in-depth and sometimes irreverent cultural criticism of both indie and mainstream cultural topics. Spectrum Culture's work has been featured on the official websites of various artists, [1] films, [2] and restaurants [3] across the internet.
It is also a featured reviewer on music aggregator sites Cloudspeakers.com [4] and Any Decent Music. [5]
Spectrum Culture was founded in October 2008 by David Harris, who had previously served as the managing editor for the Film section of Tiny Mix Tapes. Harris is the site's editor-in-chief. [6] Spectrum Culture's staff contributors are located throughout North America. Writers are free to write for any of the site's sections, but each writer focuses primarily on his or her area of expertise within one section. Current solo artist and former Hold Steady member Franz Nicolay has contributed to the Music and Film sections.
Spectrum Culture publishes music, film, food, and print media reviews and features. New music [7] and film [8] and film reviews are published daily, while a new feature in each section is published several times each week. New albums, films, and books are rated on a 1.0 to 5.0 scale. [9]
Spectrum Culture's Music section offers daily reviews of both new indie and mainstream albums. Recurring special features in this section include interviews, [10] , [11] concert reviews [12] music festival reviews, [13] and re-examinations of previously released or underappreciated albums that now deserve re-appraisal. [14]
The site also publishes other features, including Year-by-Year, [15] which revisits a specific genre or musical era and chooses the song from each year that most clearly defines that topic; and Playlist, [16] which looks at an artist's entire recorded output and chooses the best song from each of that artist's albums.
Similar to the Music section, Spectrum Culture's Film section provides daily reviews of indie and mainstream films as well as revisits of previously released films. [17]
The section also has multiple recurring special features, such as Oeuvre, [18] which is published weekly and reviews a film director's work in chronological order; Film Dunce, [19] in which a staff member watches a classic film for the first time and reviews it; and Career Assessment, [20] which humorously looks at the career highs and lows of actors from seminal films.
Spectrum Culture's Food section is split between reviews of restaurants throughout the country and staff member recipes. [21] An emphasis is placed on eclectic or otherwise unique restaurants. [22]
The Print section is Spectrum Culture's newest addition and provides one new article each week. This section includes upcoming book reviews, [23] revisits of previously published works [24] (similar to the Music and Film sections), or interviews with a published author. [25]
In 2009 Spectrum Culture organized a musical benefit for JOIN, [26] a Portland, Oregon-based charity that works to help transition that city's homeless into permanent housing. The concert included performances from Ramona Falls, Jason Webley, and K Records founder and former Beat Happening frontman Calvin Johnson. [27]
Indie rock is a genre of rock music that originated in the United States and United Kingdom in the 1970s. Originally used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the music they produced and was initially used interchangeably with alternative rock or "guitar pop rock". In the 1980s, the use of the term "indie" started to shift from its reference to recording companies to describe the style of music produced on punk and post-punk labels. During the 1990s, grunge and punk revival bands in the US and Britpop bands in the UK broke into the mainstream, and the term "alternative" lost its original counter-cultural meaning. The term "indie rock" became associated with the bands and genres that remained dedicated to their independent status. By the end of the 1990s, indie rock developed several subgenres and related styles, including lo-fi, noise pop, emo, slowcore, post-rock, and math rock. In the 2000s, changes in the music industry and a growing importance of the internet enabled a new wave of indie rock bands to achieve mainstream success, leading to questions about its meaningfulness as a term.
A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel by American novelist John Kennedy Toole which reached publication in 1980, eleven years after Toole's suicide. Published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy and Toole's mother, Thelma, the book became first a cult classic, then a mainstream success; it earned Toole a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981, and is now considered a canonical work of modern literature of the Southern United States.
Entertainment Weekly is an American monthly entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Meredith Corporation, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular culture. The magazine debuted on February 16, 1990, in New York City.
Indie pop is a music genre and subculture that combines guitar pop with DIY ethic in opposition to the style and tone of mainstream pop music. It originated from British post-punk in the late 1970s and subsequently generated a thriving fanzine, label, and club and gig circuit. Compared to its counterpart, indie rock, the genre is more melodic, less abrasive, and relatively angst-free. In later years, the definition of indie pop has bifurcated to also mean bands from unrelated DIY scenes/movements with pop leanings. Subgenres include chamber pop and twee pop.
Pitchfork is an American online music publication launched in 1995 by Ryan Schreiber. It was first based in suburban Minneapolis, then Chicago, later moved to Greenpoint, is currently in One World Trade Center, and is owned by Condé Nast.
The Kills are an English-American rock duo formed by American singer Alison "VV" Mosshart and English guitarist Jamie "Hotel" Hince. They are signed to Domino Records. Their first four albums, Keep On Your Mean Side, No Wow, Midnight Boom, and Blood Pressures, all reached the UK album chart. Their fifth and most recent studio album, Ash & Ice, was released in 2016 and reached the UK Top 20 album chart.
Mark Mallman is a Minnesota musician, film composer, and memoirist. Since 1998, he has released eight full-length studio albums, The End Is Not the End (2016) being his most recent.
Gamasutra is a website founded in 1997 that focuses on all aspects of video game development. It is owned and operated by Informa and acted as the online sister publication to the print magazine Game Developer.
Saturate is the debut studio album by American rock band Breaking Benjamin. It was released on August 27, 2002. The album features three singles, including "Polyamorous", "Skin", and "Medicate". The album was certified gold by the RIAA on September 15, 2015.
FILTER was a seasonal American music and off-beat entertainment magazine which was founded in 2002. It featured commentary and photos of up-and-coming musicians and filmmakers ranging from actors to writer-directors. Each season's issue highlighted a reasonably well-known cover artist while also taking a look at smaller artists under the heading "Getting to Know". The magazine also included reviews of forthcoming albums and DVDs.
Slant Magazine is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.
Under the Radar is an American music magazine that features interviews with accompanying photo-shoots. Each issue includes opinion and commentary of the indie music scene as well as reviews of books, DVDs, and albums. The magazine posts web-exclusive interviews and reviews on its website.
Dauði Baldrs is the fifth album by the Norwegian solo act Burzum. Unlike Burzum's previous work, which was mostly black metal, this is a dark ambient album. It was recorded using a synthesizer and a normal tape recorder by Varg Vikernes while he was in prison, as he was not allowed to have any other instruments or recording equipment. It was completed in a few months due to his limited access to synthesizers, which was also the case with the following album, Hliðskjálf.
Plan B was a monthly music magazine based in London, England. It catered mainly towards independent music but did not discriminate between the relative popularity of the bands it features. Plan B also documented alternative culture such as film, comics, video games, visual art and books. It was founded by editor-in-chief Everett True, art director Andrew Clare and publisher Chris Houghton, although later editor and publisher Frances Morgan was also a major influence.
Tiny Mix Tapes is an online music and film webzine that focuses primarily on new music and related news. In addition to its reviews, it is noted for its subversive, political, and sometimes surreal news, as well as a podcast and its mixtape generator.
L.A. Record is an independent music magazine originally published weekly as a broadsheet poster. The poster usually depicts a local Los Angeles musicians and according to the magazine editors is meant to recreate an iconic album cover. In March 2008, it began publishing as a monthly magazine with a poster inside. The magazine is available to the public free of charge at local community spots in Southern California.
Sputnikmusic is an American music community website offering music criticism and music news alongside features commonly associated with wiki-style websites. The format of the website is unusual in that it includes both professional and amateur content, distinguishing it from professionally written music websites such as Pitchfork and Tiny Mix Tapes, as well as collecting and presenting a wiki-style metadata database in a manner comparable to Rate Your Music and Discogs.
h Magazine was an American magazine, published by Apple Ridge Films, a company founded by photographer, Robert Todd Williamson. The publication covered entertainment news, film, television, music, theater, books, multimedia, and popular culture. h's primary focus was entertainment media and critical reviews, and, while it was aimed at the wider consumer market, the magazine's viewpoint was from an industry insider perspective.
No. 5 Collaborations Project is an extended play (EP) by British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran. It was the fifth out of five EP’s he recorded with the hope of being signed by a record label. Sheeran wanted each song to act as a musical and tried to avoid lyrics about women.
Louder Than War is a music and culture website and magazine focusing on mainly alternative arts news, reviews, and features. The site is an editorially independent publication that was started by journalist John Robb in 2010 and is now run by a team of other journalists with a worldwide team of freelancers. There has been a print edition since 2015.