D.C. resident Richard Chartier, above, uses computers and synths to create ambient art that hums like a chorus of charged particles. Chartier’s latest release, “Built Thro...

“The Beatles: The Lost Concert” is a 92-minute documentary about the Fab Four’s first show in America, right here in D.C. But based on the film’s trailer, it’s 60 mi...

I’m not religious, but I am devoted to religious music. Bach’s sacred works, Burning Spear’s odes to Jah, the Sufi trances of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, John Coltrane’s �...

Blogs can be tough work. Not the personal-journal kind, where you detail last night’s meal, but the regularly updated professional-looking type you have to maintain on time ...

Some folks adore the charm of the highway. I find driving long distances an affront to my neuromusculoskeletal system and spend the whole time wishing a “Star Trek” transp...

This year features two big reunions for me. My high school’s 25th is in August, and my indie-pop-reunion rendezvous goes down this weekend, when the much-loved zine Chickfac...

The iPad offers a stunning array of accomplished educational games, and its interface is intuitive to toddlers, making it the perfect computer to facilitate learning. But ou...

Avant-garde musician Genesis P-Orridge and his wife, Lady Jaye, were in the process of becoming one when she died in 2007. Their surgical body modifications were an artistic a...

Being smacked in the nose with a strong, random scent is usually … unpleasant. But it feels like aromatherapy at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Md. As you walk the public par...

I’m being followed. An army of algorithms is working silently behind the scenes to document my ever-changing moods. It’s not paranoia, either: I signed up for it. The bot...

White reggae groups and black rock bands have something in common: Critics are usually describing their members’ skin color before addressing their music. It will be this wa...

Growing older and still loving punk rock aren’t mutually exclusive conditions. But at some point, the admiration usually shifts to listening in the privacy of your home or o...

I trust no current label more than ECM Records, in part because I know what I’m getting to a certain degree. Since 1969, German producer Manfred Eicher has honed his very sp...

Before the Internet enabled us to document anything with the mere press of a button, it took dedicated labor to make sure the world’s cultural history wasn’t lost to the w...

D.C. has produced its share of musical heroes, including go-go’s Chuck Brown, punk’s Ian MacKaye and jazz’s Duke Ellington. And if eight-string guitarist Tosin Abasi, ab...