Ohmpark.com > Randomness

Back Again

I had taken a little break from this website over the last four months, but now I’m feeling refreshed and ready to get back to blogging again. I have a lot of catching up to do because there’s been so many great local records released already this year. Speaking of which, if you are a local artist who sent a submission during my hiatus, even as far back as November of 2011, I would strongly suggest sending another email, as it’s possible that it might have gotten overlooked. To send a submission to Ohmpark, please click this link.

Thanks for reading.

Atlanta Music Roundtable Showcase #2

The music bloggers of Atlanta have united once again…

“When we put together last year’s Atlanta Music Roundtable show, we didn’t expect it to be anything more than a seasonal deal, just something to coincide with our year end coverage. But it went so well that we decided to put on events throughout the year. For our first show of 2012, we’ve got Nigredo, Lucy Dreams, and The Electric Nature, three of our favorite forward-thinking local acts. The bill is a mix of post-metal, shoegaze, and psychedelic drones, but there’s a shared exploratory spirit among all three acts that should provide a common thread for the evening.”

Facebook page and information

Half A Decade

Today marks exactly five years since I first launched this music blog. That’s kind of a long time. Over the last half a decade, I’ve put so much of my life into this website, studying and evaluating music, writing and blogging, navigating this ever-sprawling local music scene. It’s been exhausting. So, I’m celebrating this year’s anniversary with a little break. I’m going to take the next couple months off from Ohmpark and work on other projects. I wouldn’t call it a hiatus precisely, as I may occasionally post something here and there, but blogging will be rather infrequent for a little while.

Thanks for five fun years, y’all.

Atlanta Music Roundtable 2011 Concert

Buy Tickets

Atlanta Music Roundtable 2011

As you may remember from last year, many of us Atlanta music bloggers teamed up to do a collaborative year end discussion of 2010 music called the Atlanta Music Roundtable. If you missed it, you can read through it all here. Well, we’re doing it again this year, expanding the roundtable to include some new voices, and we’re even throwing a show at the Earl December 21st with some of the 2011′s best local artists, Little Tybee, Today the Moon, Tomorrow the Sun, New Animal, and Spirits and the Melchizedek Children. This year’s roundtable will include Little Advances, Latest Disgrace, Atlanta’s A-List, BeAtlanta, Hijacking Music, I’m A Bear Etc, Wholly Roller, Promising Chord, Max Blau of Paste Magazine, and myself. The roundtable discussion will sprawl out across all of our websites the week leading up to Christmas.

Atlanta Music Roundtable 2011 website

Buy tickets for Atlanta Music Roundtable 2011 Concert

[Contest] Free Year At The Earl

Scoutmob is running a contest where you can win $800 in concert tickets to The Earl. That’s a pretty awesome prize. For a chance to win, go sign up:

ENTER TO WIN

[Video] Wowser Bowser: “Water Story” (Acoustic Live)

Water Story by Wowser Bowser from LoganSayles on Vimeo.

Nothing Is Beyond

As many of you already know, over the last few years, I’ve branched out from music blogging and started writing science fiction. Today, I finally released my first piece of work. I know that many people who come here looking for local indie music suggestions aren’t necessarily going to want to read science fiction, but for those of you interested, this new project is called Nothing Is Beyond. It is an Internet series of science fiction prose, a website featuring an ongoing story with a new chapter each week. If you’d like to check it out, click on this link:

Nothing Is Beyond website

Tonight, I’ll be celebrating this new project with a launch party at the Goat Farm. Ambulances and Derek Burdette of New Animal will be performing music, and local writers Myke Johns, Andrew Page, Melysa Martinez, Lindsay Oberst, Matthew Gnann, and myself will be performing readings. And Ohmpark’s Joe Ennis will even be doing a little stand-up comedy. It’s free, and you’re invited.

Nothing Is Beyond Launch Party

Thanks, Again

I just wanted to thank everyone who cast a vote for us and helped us win Best Music Blog for the third year in a row. There are so many great local music blogs around here these days, so it’s an honour to continue to have so much support. Thanks, y’all.

Creative Loafing’s Best of Atlanta 2011

Third Atlanta SOUL Project

The Atlanta SOUL Project, a community building fundraiser and local music showcase that happens every two months, returns to the Goat Farm August 14 with New Animal and Small Reactions. For those of you not familiar with how this works, three Atlanta community building projects make a presentation, and then a vote is held deciding which project wins the door money. Also, dinner is provided, so don’t miss out on a great lineup for a good cause.

SOUL Project facebook

Atlanta SOUL Project

I just realized that I totally forgot to mention this here. This Sunday at the Goat Farm, the Atlanta SOUL Project launches, an event to help micro finance community building projects. In addition to a great lineup that includes Living Rooms and Abby Gogo, it also features food and a good cause, which those who attend get to choose. To better understand the concept behind this event, Justin Newton (This Piano Plays Itself, Black Panther Party) explains:

I was on tour last September and somehow found myself and my band stranded in Detroit. We played a show on Friday and after the show we found that our van was refusing to start. Long story short, we ended up being there three days longer than expected. Our friends.were nice enough to show us what Detroit had to offer, which is a lot. It is incredible how a city in such a crisis can offer up so much fun and free stuff. My favorite of all the things we did when we were in Detroit was an event that happens on the first Sunday of every month called SOUP. Although the event is not completely free, it is worth it for the food, fun, friends, and fuzzy feeling I felt in my heart. It works like this: you pay five dollars at the door, you get a ticket, eat food, and hear presentations from 3 individuals about community projects lasting 5 minutes each. The presentation is followed by a 5 minute q&a between people from the audience and the presenter.Everyone votes on which project is they feel is the most deserving of funding and the winning project gets the money from the door. The winning charity must then document how they used the money and present that at the beginning of the following month’s event.

As a metro Atlanta native I have seen the ups and downs of this beautiful city. Atlanta has seen a vast amount of growth and development in the last decade, especially in the last five years. Although this change has seen many positive outcomes, I believe that there is still so much more to be done. I have been heavily involved in the Atlanta underground music scene for the last 5 years. Every time I go out to a show I see the people, especially the young people, in the city care about what the future holds for Atlanta. I also see that most of these kids would love to be involved in the change. With the opening of the non-profit art houses Wonderroot, and the continued charity fundraising efforts of art spaces like Eyedrum, Beep Beep, and Min , it is easy to see that the city loves to combine art with charity within our metropolitan community. My idea is to continue this promotion by combining two other important art forms in our community: music and food (and let’s not forget a strong sense of community).

I fully admit that this is a pretty blatant rip-off of SOUP (to my credit, I did add a couple bands to the mix), but I really don’t care. Atlanta needs something like this. We need to see our city grow in a positive way, and this is the perfect way to give good people, and good organizations the proper way in which to do so.

How an event would run:
8pm open doors and serve food
9pm presentation of how the money was used by previous months winner.
9:15 3 New project proposals
9:45-VOTING BEGING
10:00-10:30pm 1st band plays,
10:45pm announce winner
11:00pm last band plays

Sounds pretty awesome. For more info, check out the tumblr:

Atlanta Soul Project tumblr

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