Curators

1010benja

Very musical stuff that has a peaceful enthusiasm. Songs that help the listener to feel vital

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Abe Burmeister

Abe Burmeister (born in NYC) is the founder and creative director of Outlier. Beginning with a single pair of pants in 2008 and growing into an international direct-to-consumer brand focused on making high-quality, technically-minded clothing of all stripes. Prior to starting Outlier, he cofounded a digital animation studio and ran Abstractdynamics.org, an early blogging network focused on music and radical cultural theory, where he hosted the likes of pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones (Herb 37), philosopher Reza Negarestani and the late political theorist Mark Fisher. In 2001, realizing all this work was done on a laptop/cellphone, he reduced his life's possessions down to a single carry-on bag. Cycling to work, he would inevitably shred his clothes, which was the aha moment for the brand. He got obsessed with creating a better pair of pants that both looked and performed better, ahead of most major brands moving into “active wear” in general. In 2008 the barista at his local coffee shop connected him to future co-founder Tyler Clemens who was working on similar issues with shirts. Within months they had incorporated and began bootstrapping Outlier into existence.

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Allison P. Davis

Allison P. Davis is a magazine features writer who has worked with GQ, The California Sunday Magazine, The Economist’s 1843, The New York Times, and Esquire, but is best known for her work for New York Magazine. She's currently working on a book of essays about sex in New York ("which is harder to crank out than I thought").

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Amedeo Pace

Amedeo Pace is an accomplished musician, composer, and arranger. The Italian-born vocalist/guitarist is one-third of the New York City band Blonde Redhead. The way some people see David Byrne bop around NYC on his bicycle, I feel that I've seen one or both of the twin Pace brothers, Amedeo and Simone, in action often. It's usually in quiet hero mode, carrying some bread or a bag of records, dressed up at a Halloween party (together), or zooming by on a motorbike on the Williamsburg Bridge while wearing a big scarf, etc.

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Ami Dang

Amrita “Ami” Kaur Dang is a South Asian-American vocalist, sitarist, composer, and producer from Baltimore. Her sound blends elements of North Indian classical, noise/ambient electronics, beat-driven psych, and experimental dance pop. The work references her hybrid identity as a first-generation South Asian-American, her Sikh upbringing and musical education, as well as the chaos and spirituality of both the landscapes of Baltimore and urban India. Picking up her first sitar when she was twelve years old, Dang studied North Indian classical music (voice and sitar) in both New Delhi and Maryland. She cites the work of Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass as forebears in her musical practice and seeks to gel contemporary experimental, pop, and electronic music with the sounds of South Asia—through vocals and sitar, ragas, and sampling. This rigor has allowed for collaborations with artists such as Animal Collective, William Cashion (of Future Islands), James Acaster, and Thor Harris, and in supporting live roles for Beach House, black midi, Grimes, and Florist.

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Andy Kellman

From the advent of this series, a mix that simply had to happen was from one Andrew Kellman, a mix maker of the highest grade. Andy has been a writer and metadata technical editor for over 20 years. If you've read a great artist bio online, there's a decent chance he wrote it. Previously, he worked in Ann Arbor record stores, and managed Wherehouse Records, where he sold a copy of "MyBabyDaddy" by B-Rock & the Bizz to Herb Sundays 15 selector Fred Thomas. In addition to his work for AllMusic and other Xperi licensees, Kellman has contributed liner notes to Big Break Records reissues of albums by the likes of Billy Paul, Deniece Williams, and Enchantment, and our (Grammy™️ nominated) VMP Anthology: The Story of Ghostly International boxset. He DJ'd in public once, in 1992, for approximately two minutes. He maintains that MC Breed & DFC's "Ain't No Future in Yo' Frontin'" was what the wedding crowd needed to hear.

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Ann Powers

Ann Powers is NPR Music's critic and correspondent. Throughout a long career she has worked at the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice and many other publications. A former curator at Seattle's Museum of Popular Music, she is the author of four books, most recently Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell (2024). With Evelyn McDonnell, she edited the classic anthology Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Rap, and Pop (1995). Her essays have been widely anthologized and she has also written for television, radio and podcasts. In 2017 she co-founded the award-winning NPR series Turning the Tables, which shed light on marginalized, underestimated and forgotten voices in popular music. She lives with her family in Nashville.

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Ari Kuschnir

From 2002 to 2005, I hosted a radio show in Miami called "Nu-groove" and would DJ around town. By day, I was editing somewhat cheesy Latin music videos, and by night, I embarked on a quest to discover fresh sounds emerging from Latin America while immersing myself in the classics. This unique blend of the emergent and the timeless became the distinctive essence of the radio show. During the winter music conference of 2005, as I was preparing to relocate to New York to start the business that became m ss ng p eces, I crossed paths with Sam Valenti. Sam shared some mesmerizing Ghostly records and concluded our meeting with the words, "I believe we're destined to be friends." Eighteen years on, we’re still friends sharing music and life advice. This mix, which translates to, "A Subtle, Tropical Vibration to Enjoy," offers a seamless blend of old and new. Classic Latin harmonies are woven in with the latest movements in Folktronica, Andes Step, and other forms of psychedelic-infused, Latin, electronic vibes that have evolved over the past 15 years, spearheaded by labels like ZZK. As a personal touch, I’ve included some favorites from Colombia, the country where I was born and spent the first half of my life. I hope you enjoy this mellow trip. Latin America then and now. Thanks, Sam.

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Ash Lauryn

Born in Detroit and based in Atlanta, Ash Lauryn is a wide-ranging d.j. whose remit is embedded in the title of her monthly show on NTS Radio, “Underground and Black.” She specializes in house and techno with heavy jazz tinges—a very Detroit feature—and moves afield at will, as exemplified on a recent episode featuring roots material from Dawn Penn, Bootsy Collins, and Lou Donaldson. In addition to her dynamic DJ sets, she’s also a writer (with work in publications like The Face Magazine, Mixmag, and Resident Advisor), curator, radio host, and producer (her debut solo EP ‘Truth’ was co-produced with Stefan Ringer). All of this is done to champion incredible music and promote incredible black music.

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Avalon Emerson

Raised in Arizona (I remember her describing herself as a “desert rat”), Avalon Emerson started her career in earnest in San Francisco before moving to Berlin in 2014 where things kicked off steadily as a DJ of major repute and as a producer with a battery of great 12” releases. You can start to hear the echoes of her new album sound in 2014’s “Church Of Soma” on the elegant Spring Theory label (label owner Guillaume’s The Lot Radio shows are always worth a listen). In 2016, Avalon also released an EP, Narcissus in Retrograde, on the Ghostly imprint, Spectral Sound, and her release “The Frontier” nearly topped Resident Advisor's Top 10 Tracks of the Decade list. Now splitting her time between Berlin and the Catskill Mountains, she’s settling into herself both as a passionate music fan and a macro-level producer of sound and sight, with her long-delayed Saturn’s Return album reflecting the chaos and calm after a decade of global travel and diverse creative encounters.

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Barbie Bertisch

Born in Buenos Aires, moved to Miami at 14 when Argentina underwent a turbulent crisis. Grew up naturally attracted to dancing, making mixtapes and coordinating dance routines throughout elementary school. Lived in Miami another 8 years before moving to NY in early 2011. In Miami, I had my first nightclub experience at 16 and went out every night between 2007 and 2010, pretty much. Got heavily into punk, post punk, new wave and inevitably, 00s dance music until one night around '09 hearing Louie Vega at the now defunct club Vagabond changed my life. Upon graduating with a degree in fashion design in early 2011, I moved to NY. I wound up disillusioned with the endless stream of sketchy internships that was the norm at the time. Switched careers around 2014, when DJing found me via friends and extended Loft family members. I threw myself fully into learning more about this music, New York music, and it led me down a path of self-discovery. I began to DJ, stringing Salsoul singles together at (the also defunct) Kinfolk 90 on Thursday nights. 10,000 hours. In early 2015 I met Paul who mentioned he was starting a fanzine dedicated to NY dance music past and present. I told him we should throw a release party. The rest unfolded quickly and beautifully. In 2018 I lost my remote tech job and rode off into the unemployment sunset to learn to play bass. Joined a band. Wrote some songs. Discovered I had a lot more music in me than I first imagined. In 2019, after another short job stint, quit and decided to fulfill my dream of working at a record store. I ran the place for two years and broadened my horizons greatly. Covid happened, first band kinda fizzled. Then, life got hectic so that ended. Started a new band and gathered enough courage to embrace music I made on my own. Here we are today. I run a label with the aforementioned Paul, have a solo album out June 17th on our label, zine is 65 issues in, we have a weekly radio show on Brooklyn's finest, I write a lot of words (obviously), still DJ and am finishing another album. Curiosity is a powerful thing.

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Bradley Zero

The post describes Bradley Zero’s work as that of a record label runner and community organizer. As the founder of the Rhythm Section label and community, he has carved out a unique space in global dance and music circles. From his beginnings in Peckham via Leeds, his entrance into the scene marked a shift in British dance music—infusing it with influences of jazz and soul. He started the Rhythm Section radio show in 2009, which quickly evolved into a fortnightly dance party at Canavan’s Peckham Pool Club, spawning the rallying cry 'Peckham Strong' and fueling a new wave of youth energy and collaboration.

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Cina

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Clémence Polès

Polès is a Creative Director, Photographer & Curator, whose international upbringing informs her perspective. Half French and half Iranian, and raised in a pre-skyscraper Dubai, she started in 2015 a website/magazine that looks inside the lives and homes of diverse women around the world (and also spins up some great playlists).

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Cory Arcangel

Cory Arcangel (born 1978, Buffalo, NY) is an artist, composer, curator, and entrepreneur living and working in Stavanger, Norway. From his bio: “Arcangel explores the potential and failures of old and new technologies, highlighting their obsolescence, humor, aesthetic attributes, and, at times, eerie influence in contemporary life. Applying a semi‐archeological methodology, his practice explores, encodes, and hacks the structural language of video games, software, social media, and machine learning, treating them as subject matter and medium.”

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Craig Jenkins

Craig Jenkins grew up in New York City as a band geek with an interest in writing that took center stage when he “flaked on practicing instruments.” He rode the school newspaper-to-blogspot-to-Tumblr pipeline, catching the attention of editors which would lead him to freelance at outlets such as Pitchfork, Complex, Spin, and Billboard, and then as a writer/editor at Noisey. He started his first staff job in 2016 at New York Magazine and Vulture, which Herbheads know I ride for (see Allison P. Davis’s Herb 57). His continuing work there made him a Pulitzer finalist for criticism in 2021.

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Daisy Alioto

Daisy Alioto is the CEO of Dirt Media, a media company or “next-generation entertainment brand using emerging technology to tell the coolest stories about culture and collecting.” Alioto has built a lane at companies such as Time Inc., Condé Nast, HODINKEE, Air Mail, and New York Magazine, while her writing chops have been on display in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, and more.

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Dan Charnas

Dan Charnas is a music industry veteran, writer, and curator with a deep connection to hip‐hop culture. He is the author of The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop (2011) and Work Clean, a book on chefs’ organization techniques. His career began in the mailroom at Profile Records in 1989, later expanding into comedy writing for MTV’s Lyricist Lounge Show and BET’s Comic View, and ultimately led him to create and executive produce the VH1 series The Breaks. Today, Charnas lives in Harlem and shares his expertise as an instructor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

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Daniel Dorsa

Daniel Dorsa is a Los Angeles photographer who works across portraiture, fashion, landscape and visual reportage. A fascination with the cultural and aesthetic flatness of modern America permeates Dorsa’s work, which is tied to his upbringing in suburban Florida as a child of Cuban and Italian immigrants. He discovered photography in high school, taking a class with the intention of documenting his friends in the skateboarding scene. Inspired by skate magazine action imagery and the freedom skateboarding itself offered as a vehicle for both environmental engagement and creative expression, Dorsa’s first book, Paradise, draws together photographs made between 2017 and 2020 in south and central Florida, exploring isolation and environmental decay. He currently has a new zine out, The Sun Was Gold Like A Yolk Dripping, about self-exploration while traveling in Japan.

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Dante Ross

Dante Ross is a Grammy-winning record producer and legendary A&R for labels such as Tommy Boy, Elektra, and Loud Records. Born in San Francisco and raised in New York City, he ran with the first wave of characters who would take Hip-Hop into its Golden Era in the ‘90s and beyond. Ross’s major signings proved that the genre’s most powerful thinkers could also be chart-friendly and was responsible in part for the elevation of artists such as De La Soul, Queen Latifah, Digital Underground, Brand Nubian, Grand Puba, Del the Funky Homosapien, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, KMD, Leaders of the New School, Busta Rhymes, and Ol' Dirty Bastard, amongst many others.

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