Fables of the Reconstruction 25th Anniversary

R.E.M. celebrates the quarter century b-day of their third album with a bonus feature-packed reissue

Putting opinions on reunion tours (and the entire fate of rock) aside, a good reissue makes the perfect excuse to revisit an old favorite or get into it for the first time—and gives die-hard fans something new to obsess about. Fables of the Reconstruction, digitally remasters the original 1985 R.E.M. release, pairing it with 14 previously-unreleased demos (including the debut of “Throw Those Trolls Away”) …

Punk Jews

A miniseries documents an alt-Jewish cultural scene emerging in NYC

Brooklyn-based filmmaker Jesse Zook Mann’s latest documentary project delves into the radical Judaism scene in New York. Originally announced on the crowd-sourced funding site Kickstarter, Punk Jews just reached their goal of raising $10,000 to make the film. Featuring musicians, artists, fashion designers and philosophers, Zook Mann describes Punk Jews as, “People owning their heritage, being creative with it, having fun with it—and doing so …

It’ll Be Better

Stream Francis and the Lights' new album from a pioneering HTML5 site

The world’s first HTML5 embeddable album, Francis and the Lights’ It’ll Be Better site simplifies the music listening process for Apple’s new less Flash-friendly digital world. Developed by Muxtape founder Justin Ouellette, he created it specifically to play on the iPad and new iPhone 4, which otherwise can’t stream most music because of the operating system’s lack of Flash support. And, with this new site …