The songs that soundtracked the game’s Build Mode introduced millions of unknowing kids to new age jazz. The musicians behind it were just trying to make something that wouldn’t interfere with your landscaping. In a home studio in a garage in a suburb east of San Francisco, some time in 1999, Jerry Martin set about making the most inconspicuous music that he could. As the … Continue reading The Untold Story of ‘The Sims,’ Your First Favorite Jazz Record

It’s 9 AM on a bright, frigid October morning in Greenwich, South East London, and a Thames Clipper river bus is floating gently down the water, past St John’s Wharf, carrying a few dozen bemused commuters to Waterloo. At the front of the boat, with the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf glistening in the background, The Darkness, once Britain’s biggest rock band, are playing “One Way … Continue reading The Darkness Want to Be Rockstars Again

Rebecca Sugar has been building new worlds for as long as she can remember. As a kid growing up in Baltimore, Maryland, she and her younger brother Steven would draw out fantasy stories. Inspired by Zelda games and Yoshi’s Island, as well as hours spent on the household Nintendo 64, the two nascent artists drew “fairies and forest adventures and glowing ethereal beings”. For Rebecca, it felt like … Continue reading The Story of Steven Universe: TV’s Smartest Cartoon

Patricia sits on a wooden chair in the sunlit ground-floor of the Zebra One gallery in Hampstead, London. Gucci spectacles are buried into her straw-red hair, which falls down as far as the shoulders of her powder blue coat. She points to a painting that’s standing on the floor. This one, she explains, is the work of Ria Pratt. It’s one of the four paintings … Continue reading The Woman Who Shares a Body with 14 Different Artists

[First published at Noisey] Sam Ray spent Christmas in Florida with his wife, Kitty, and her family. He sent some tweets about how nice the holidays were. Kitty’s stepmom got her a hoodie with Sam’s face on it; there were a few small dogs to hang out with. On New Year’s Eve, the 27-year-old remembered what things were like two years ago, when he’d impulsively flown to Los … Continue reading Sam Ray Knows What Heaven Feels Like

During Torres’s set at Brooklyn Steel in May, Mackenzie Scott seemed possessed. At the top of every crescendo, her voice spiralled out into a wild grunt or wail; she attacked her guitar like it was an industrial tool. She closed her set that night with “Strange Hellos,” a vengeful song of ominous non-apologies, a one-sided argument backed by clattering grunge guitars. She towered over the … Continue reading The Art Rock Rebellion of Torres

Beside the LED glow of the NYPD’s Times Square kiosk, in a penned-in plot of concrete between the 24-hour Starbucks and the Hard Rock Cafe, 200 people wander about with glowing blue headphones over their skulls, fiddling with the knobs behind their right ears, trying to find an empty fold-out chair. It’s 11.30pm on a Sunday and the majority of this crowd didn’t come to … Continue reading Wandering in Space: Jherek Bischoff Interviewed