Author: Ed Johnson

Michael Gira makes music in moods—and nearly three decades into an uncompromising career, it is still this essential fact that defines his output.

Have you ever wondered what the slow mesmerizing grace of an Ennio Morricone score would sound like welded to some glacially paced ambient folk?

We don’t tend to think of folk music as the dominion of virtuoso guitar players—but when James Blackshaw plays, it’s hard not to take notice.

Gomorrah will make you think. It re-imagines and reexamines the gangster movie as we know it.

The 36-year-old singer-songwriter from Chicago does not predict our man-made apocalypse, and his lyrics, full of literary devices and a refreshing playfulness with language, are far too abstract to advance any political agenda.

with no previous filmmaking experience, Jeannie Magill helped spearhead the effort to create Milking the Rhino, a documentary about community-based conservation in Kenya and Namibia, which will be showing at the Portland International Film Festival this week.

The connection between music and religion is ancient—from choirs to chanting to straight-up gospel, humans habitually express their religious devotion in fervent meter. But I don’t believe in God, I believe in Om.

It’s easy to forget about Patrick Swayze.

It seems like every year the Portland International Film Festival jumps up and bites me in the ass.

Maybe punk and hip-hop were meant to be together. Clearly P.O.S. thinks so. On his newest album, Never Better, out yesterday, the Minneapolis rapper expertly mixes the pounding speed of punk breaks with the boom-bap nod of traditional hip-hop.