​Sandro Perri speaks through his music. The soft-spoken Toronto-based musician is genre-less in his approach, preferring to mold his song to his unique tastes and learnings as a way to express himself. His 2011 album Impossible Spaces (Constellation) earned him new levels of critical praise for its subtle approach to combining electronic dance music, jazz, and Brazilian tunes, as well as quite a few other influences. His tour in support of the record starts with a stop at the Mercury Lounge on Saturday.

SOTC caught up with Perri earlier this month over the phone, as he rested in Toronto before heading out on the road. He filled us in on his musical upbringing, his plans, and his love for one of last year's big collaborative rap albums (hint: it was not Ferrari Boyz).

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"We went to [Jack White's] mansion--his fresh, huge, gated mansion--I'm talking for real, man, a real-deal mansion, you know? An old colonial huge house. The whole thing, all fresh, was white and red. White house with a big, red chimney!"

Going to find as many excuses to use this picture as possible.

Yesterday, the Internet blew up when Third Man Records announced a Jack White collaboration with Insane Clown Posse on a Mozart song. "We knew it was a pairing of one of the most respected, loved, you know, hippest artists in the world, meets one of the most hated bands in the world," says Violent J today, the first time we've talked since we ran into him in the airport. "And I think that's what he set out to do. He knew what he was going for." We'll let him tell you the rest.

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Katie Coleslaw

​Tom Vek released his debut album We Have Sound in 2005, and the British musician's distillation of his influences was catchy enough to make him stand out from the crowd—he even appeared on the soapy Fox drama The O.C.. But in the years that followed, Vek kept quiet—that is, until mid-April, when he returned with news of a new album, Leisure Seizure (V2 / Cooperative Music USA / Downtown). (It's available digitally now; the physical release is currently slated for September 13.) In response, the Internet proved that yes, it does have something resembling a collective memory by engaging in a freakout (one that included the author of this post) and welcoming him back with open arms. We chatted with Vek about social networking, what it's like to work on songs for half a decade, and why more people should be influenced by Cake. (The band, that is.)

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​First there's the owl; then there's the enormous afro. The sight of the two in close proximity means you've likely entered Roberto Carlos Lange's domain, whether it be through the front door of his Brooklyn home or by hearing one of the dozens of sound sculptures and animated films he's completed in little more than a half-decade. I rang him one recent overcast morning to talk about Canta Lechuza, the album of pop songs he's recorded as Helado Negro (or "Black Ice Cream" in Spanish), which is out today on Asthmatic Kitty. Helado Negro's music is built upon a foundation of blips and bleeps over which Lange croons in Spanish. Each of the album's tracks presents a compelling concentration of the rich, off-register world he's constructed to date.

I first heard about you a couple of years ago, when I saw a kinetic sculpture of yours called "The Message."

That was 2007 and it was something I did with David Ellis. At the time, he had been working on a variation on this idea of kinetic musical found sculptures. They were pretty different from what he and I started doing. "The Message" was something he thought of in terms of making a typewriter automatically type the lyrics to a song--in this case the famous Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five song--within the beat and cadence of the original recording.

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"Encyclopedias of rock, rap--I see them all the time at the bookstore. Like, when you look at the 'I's and you get to the 'In's and you see 'Incubus,' just to see our name included in there would be so cool."

Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope. . . on a boat.

It's been since six months a certain Village Voice cover story, about a certain widely maligned, fundamentally ludicrous horrorcore duo and their earnestly intentioned family of facepainted, hatchet-swinging outcast fans was foisted into the world. Since then, a lot has changed for Insane Clown Posse. For one, the wicked clowns have been welcomed back to New York City after many years of being shut out. (Even Violent J, the duo's Costello, can't seem to remember how many it's been.) For two, Bamboozle organizers invited ICP to perform at the Festival this year, this coming weekend, on the same day as Lil' Wayne, Mötley Crüe, and Bruno Mars (?). Also, since last September, ICP has been profiled extensively everywhere from Wired to the Guardian to the pages of our West Coast foils LA Weekly. Even friend-of-SOTC Sean Fennessey connected the dots between the Juggalos and Tyler the Creator, in the Pitchfork piece that got anyone to care about Odd Future in the first place.

Violent J is very, very grateful that anyone outside the band's Psychopathic Records circle still knows ICP exists, as he told us over the phone. So grateful that the band decided, at the very last minute, to celebrate the band's Manhattan return with a Juggalo Midnight Cruise leaving early this Saturday morning. Tickets are here. Fingers crossed this isn't the Juggalo Titanic.

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"They found me guilty as an accomplice to murder and a co-conspirator for felony murder and robbery, which they had no proof of whatsoever." Max B is talking on the phone from Bergen County Prison in New Jersey, where he's serving out a 40-year sentence for these charges. The offenses relate to an incident on September 22nd, 2006, when a man named David Taylor was shot and killed as Max B's fellow defendants Gina Conway and Kelvin Leerdam attempted to rob Taylor and his associate Allan Plowden of $30,000 at a Holiday Inn in Fort Lee, New Jersey. It's a spell of incarceration the rapper is appealing -- not least because he says he was back home in New York when the fatal robbery took place. Max B is confident his appeal will be approved, and estimates he could be a free man as early as this July.

In the interim, he's just released Vigilante Season, his debut album via the Amalgam Digital label. Recorded before he was locked up, the project sees Max, who came to prominence by helping one-time Dipset capo Jim Jones write 2006's summer smash single "We Fly High (Ballin')," teaming up with the producer Dame Grease, who crafted many of DMX's early hits. (According to Amalgam Digital's DJ Next, Jones sent out a cease and desist order when Max B attempted to sign to the label, claiming that he still owned rights to Max B's contract; following a lawsuit, a judge ruled against Jones's claim.) Unable to promote the album and its first single, "Money Make Me Feel Better," in person, Max B says, "We just got to ride on this one, hopefully it do good and I can come out and give you the next one and be behind it 100%."

In the days leading up to the album's release, Max B engaged in two phone calls from Bergen County Prison to speak about the rigors of his incarceration, anomalies in his trial, the perceived foulness of the New Jersey prison system, and the days when he held down a pre-rap nine-to-five at the World Trade Center.

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Mike Watt (center) and his Missingmen

To dig up some remotely negative bluster thrown at flannel-flyin,' bass-pluckin' Minutemen/fIREHOSE/Stooges punk-rock guru and super-nice dude Mike Watt is no small feat. Enter Watt's ol' SST Records pal Henry Rollins for lighthearted jabs at Watt, found in Rollins's legendary memoir of Black Flag life on the road, Get In The Van. Besides bassist Chuck Dukowski wanting to "pull over and punch [Watt] out" for not shutting up driving across Italy in 1983, while both Black Flag and Minutemen were piled together in a vehicle, the hyperbole about Watt's infamous congeniality is, in fact, right on.

On his current tour with his Missingmen (Slovenly/Red Krayola/SST Recs vet guitarist Tom Watson and San Pedro punk drummer Raul Morales), in support of the awesomely Minutemen-esque, hook-obsessed Hyphenated-Man, he's made it a point to do an interview a day, even as he's trekked across the States and Canada doing 51 gigs in 52 days. When Watt pulled a no-show on the night of our phone interview, he hunted me down a couple days later, leaving me messages (it was no "Providence" but darn cool, nonetheless) and politely offered that it was an honor to talk to me.

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Talibam! with Sam Kulik

The ubiquitous brainiacs behind Brooklyn's maniacally creative and hilarious duo Talibam!--beardo keyboards squelcher Matt Mottel and bizarro drums wizard Kevin Shea--are airing out their gripes, sort of, as they chill in their Wall Street studio at the Swing Space, an underground bank vault turned artistic bunker. First packaged as 'avant-jazz' when Talibam! formed in 2003, the term has stuck, and alas, Mottel and Shea are ready for something different. Enter their preferred calling-card: 'Stylish Production Team.' "We're creative musicians," says Mottel. That term, 'creative music,' is a William Parker term. He'd say 'I am not playing free jazz. I play creative music.' I like to think we play creative music."

Calling Talibam!'s 2009 apotheosis, Boogie in the Breeze Blocks "creative music" is quite the understatement. That LP firmed their current trajectory towards dead serious experimentalism fused with shits-n-giggles trippiness. On their ESP-Disk debut, the twosome melded their aesthetic to perfection: the free jazz moxie, the classic rock and metal flash and the Zappa meets Peanuts fuckfoolery. "Our band started in 2003 primarily as a free improv unit," Mottel says. "But as a band should do--develop and grow--we basically became, as a duo, an extreme punk rock organ-drums psych unit with free elements and been playing a tight set list the last two years. Once you get tagged with 'avant-jazz,' especially by critics, that really stays and that's the only thing they associate with the band."

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Courtesy VICE Books

From Neu Sex

Sasha Grey is one of the most famous porn stars of our generation, and perhaps the first to achieve true crossover success, with starring roles in Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience and HBO's Entourage. You probably know her by name, face, and maybe even vagina (no judgments), but did you know that she's also a music nerd? Be still our hearts.

With a minimal/electronic project called aTelecine and an ever-growing music collection, Grey shows an impressive range for someone so young-and especially for someone involved in the adult industry. She's currently promoting her brand-new photo book, Neü Sex, which documents her recent life in self portraits: From post-coital stupors to silly faces snapped in mirrors, the book is an intimate look at what it's like to be Sasha Grey, as well as what it's like to be her husband, filmmaker Ian Cinnamon, who helped create many of the photos.

This past Monday at the Standard Hotel's Living Room, in a strictly enforced 20-minute time slot squashed between seven other journalists eager to discuss the book, we took advantage of Neü Sex's release to talk with Grey about rock-and-roll, aTelecine, and the pervasive abuse of Auto-Tune. Cinnamon hung out nearby, as he often does.

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He just turned 40, but the Dears' frontman Murray Lightburn isn't planning on hanging up the microphone any time soon. In fact, after a U.S. label change (from Arts & Crafts to Dangerbird Records) and some line-up tinkering that saw bassist Roberto Arquilla and guitar players Patrick Krief and Rob Benvie leave the band at various times only to return in 2008, Lightburn says that the Montreal orchestral pop rock band, whose 2003 release No Cities Left earned it the title of "probably the best new band in the world" from NME, feels like it's been born again. After the release of this past February's Degeneration Street, the band's fifth studio album, the Dears took off on a whirlwind tour of the West Coast before wrapping up at South by Southwest in Austin with six shows in three days.

The Voice checked in with Lightburn before the Dears head back out to the Atlantic coast, including tonight's stop at Music Hall of Williamsburg. The husband, father, and preacher's son schooled us on cheese-making, Louis C.K., and the art of aging gracefully.

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