David Markey is not a film director. He is the kid down the street who is always trashing the neighborhood and chasing his clown-masked friends with a Super 8 video camera. He is the Southern California boy who was surrounded by moviemaking as a child, and who couldn’t think of any other way to have fun during the long, balmy summers. Cut Shorts, a compilation of Markey’s work, reeks of amateurism and mindlessness; but despite this (or because of it), it still captures the …

Every once in a while you read a review that describes the album in this manner: “it’s like [insert currently trendy band here] meets [incredibly obscure, vanity band] being raped by a bunch of aliens.” You can replace “being raped by a bunch of aliens” with “thrown in a blender” if you prefer your reviewers to be ashamed of their past Star Trek heritage. But either way, I always felt this was a lazy way of reviewing. I mean, who even really knows what …

Further proof that the hip-hop world moves too goddamned fast for us rockists: just when we’d gotten the whole “is DJing a legitimate art form” debate through our thick-as-Led skulls, along came Kanye, Danger Mouse, and the Neptunes, and they went and turned it into a producer’s medium.
Now, aspiring Timbalands can even create reputable music on their own home computer – aren’t those the things Jack White hates? – with just a vast MP3 collection, a decent sampling program and a good feel for …