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Review: Reggie Watts in San Francisco, 08/17/11
Watts's particular genius is tied to the way pop artists sound, both on the track and at the dinner table, away from the glare of celebrity. Reggie Watts is obsessed with how our voices reflect our identities, not just our images. The set of sounds that capture a rapper's intonation when discussing how he came up in the business or an R&B crooner's hesitancy when talking about anything but love in the club is then chopped up as the raw material of song.
-- Ryan Mixtape
10 Albums, 10 Beers
I compile a list of my favorite albums every year, but this is the first time I've tried to explain my choices. Taking my burgeoning curatorial efforts a bit further, I'm sort of pulling back the curtain on genius, so to speak, by revealing some of the delicious beverages I consumed during the course of last year's music discovery and making recommendations on a pairing for each album.
-- Thomas J. Carlson
Pitchfork Music Festival 2011
Although the Pitchfork Music Festival has lost some of its DIY scruff and has begun to succumb to the gilded charms of a few large brands, the three-day festival in a small park in Chicago's West Loop still feels humane (free bottled water, affordable vegan meals) and remains the best value of any event on the summer festival circuit.
-- Ryan Mixtape