Writer, Researcher, Editor, and Translator
Based in Berlin, Germany
Jan. 2022
The Freeway Fix [academic article]
Infrastructure, Affect, and the Politics and Aesthetics of Distance in Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays. SEE MORE.
Feb. 2022
TWIST Collection [translation]
Website copy for a home furnishing product manufactured and sold by a company based in France. I developed the copy from French source material and consulted on Lyon Beton's English-language branding and SEO as it begins its expansion into anglophone markets. SEE MORE.
Jan. 2020
Switched on Pop Schools the Academy [review]
The first book from Switched on Pop hosts Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan leans into the podcast's academic tendencies, as it makes the case for music fans to take all music a bit more seriously. SEE MORE.
Nov. 2019
Nell Zink Points and Jeers in Doxology [review]
To borrow a construction from Virginia Woolf: On or about September 11, 2001, American character changed. SEE MORE.
Feb. 2019
CLOUD Collection [translation]
Website copy for a home furnishing product manufactured and sold by a company based in France. I developed the copy from French source material and consulted on Lyon Beton's English-language branding and SEO as it begins its expansion into anglophone markets. SEE MORE.
Oct. 2018
In Conversation with Julia Holter [interview]
"How can I know what I think until I say it?" asks Julia Holter on "Les Jeux to You", an astonishing art-pop rhapsody and one of the 15 tracks that make up her new double LP, Aviary. It's a question that, like much of the album, is both playful and profound in the way that the best poetry often is. READ MORE.
Oct. 2018
Owls, Aliens, and Others:
Brian Phillips's Impossible Owls [review]
A flock of owls perch on a telephone wire, around the corner from a humming UFO that has just touched down in a small desert town and beckons you aboard. A single white owl appears in the dreams of alien abductees at 3:33 a.m. READ MORE.
Aug. 2018
Reactionary Rockism [article / blog post]
In the almost 15 years since Kalefa Sanneh took "rockism" to task, it seems like the music press has heeded his call to be, instead, "poptimists". There's a greater willingness today to evaluate music on its own terms rather than against standards set by rock 'n' roll [...] READ MORE.
June 2018
High-grade Lo-fi:
A preview of Ruins at Slippery Slope
The debut EP from Adam Schubert, alias Ruins, is the latest offering from local label Dumpster Tapes, which will put out the six-song collection both digitally and on cassette. The tape goes on sale at a release show hosted by the label [...] READ MORE.
Mar. 2018
Back in the Mix:
Chicago Mixtape Returns [interview]
Two years ago, Chicago Mixtape ceased regular operations. Since its founding in early 2011, the website had directly emailed subscribers a free “mixtape” each week in the form of a zip file of MP3s. The playlists featured tracks [...] READ MORE.
Nov. 2017
Dumpster Tapes [article / blog post]
Dumpster Tapes has a broader reach in the Chicago music community than might be expected, given the boutique nature of what they do: that is, making cassette tapes to be sold on the DIY circuit. Specializing in garage rock — specifically, the music coming out of [...] READ MORE.
Jan. 2012
Copyrights Wake [article / blog post]
When I was 17, I registered my first copyright. Unofficially. My three dearest friends and I were ready to share the recordings our rock band had made, but had some reservations about uploading them to the social media sites which were just then being retooled for independent musicians [...] READ MORE.