Cody Ernst assesses how the funk hurricane that is The Big Mean Sound Machine impacted Castaways on Saturday night.

Dara Littig, member of newly formed band Snorkel Party talks to the Sun about her music, the band and their upcoming show at The Shop.

Located on South Cayuga Street, slightly off the Commons, the Wildfire Lounge has the potential to become one of Ithaca’s premier music venues. This is a place with multiple options: you can sit a good distance away from the action and talk while enjoying a drink from the bar; you can relax on plush couches, put your legs up and rest your eyes; you can sit or stand as close to the music as you want and share the experience with like-minded friends and friends-to-be; and Saturday night, the up and coming Wildfire Lounge was host to one of Cornell’s up and coming bands —Blow! The band opened for Brooklyn group Asobi Seksu, and did not fail to impress with their innovative set.

Last Sunday night at The Haunt, Ithaca Underground brought a touring trio of bands to town that represent a subgenre of music loosely dubbed as “post-metal.” Essentially, post-metal is the umbrella term for the expansive sound of heavy music in the wake of ’90s Neurosis, a wide range of influences from post-rock (another loaded term) to space rock to sludge to doom metal and psychedelic rock.

The face of music is changing. Quite literally. It used to look like this: :o$ but now it looks like this: :~) You see? Seriously though, the music industry is not the same as it was when Backstreet Boys were all the rage and the Hansen boys actually seemed attractive.

Beneath the white-capped surface of Ithaca’s music scene, a whale has been swimming around our campus, gathering steam as it prepares to unleash a torrent of hip-hop innovation the likes of which will flip the space between your ears. A musical collective that combines minds from all of Ithaca’s corners, Time Out Club is more of a harmonious think tank than a group of musicians.

OK, kids. I’m writing this at 9 p.m. the night before the deadline, during what has been by far the craziest week of the semester. I have hours of work ahead of me, I haven’t gotten more than four hours of sleep in several days and I have no idea what to write about. It’s times like this that are liable to send you one of two ways musically: to something über-über depressing or to insane death metal that you can scream “F— YOU CORNELL” along to.

Wednesday night, Daniel Francis Doyle along with local musicians Why the Wires, Elsa and the awesomeAWESOMES and the semi-local onemanriot will play The Shop. The show will be stop eight on Doyle’s 17-show tour, and I was lucky enough to speak with him about his music and the upcoming Ithaca show as he drove from Chicago to Pittsburgh.

The Sun: How did you get into playing music and the solo project you’re doing now?

Some of you may remember my column last Friday when I waxed eloquent about the myriad of musical big-wigs who are en route to our humble town. You may also recall that included in that extra-ordinary line-up were two bands known respectively as The Hold Steady and Deer Tick, and that I gave a shout out to man-of-the-hour Dan Smalls, founder of Dan Smalls Presents, Inc. Well, this weekend, Dan Small Presents … the Positive Jam. Drawing a blank? Please, allow me to explain.

This past Saturday night, the Cornell Concert Commission welcomed both new and old students alike with a free concert at Barton Hall. The contenders were Ithaca’s own Hubcap and California based Rogue Wave. While the former tried to intrigue new and old students with their alternative rock music and mentions of the ever so fine tastes of Ithaca, such as the all day music festival in Stewart Park next Sunday, the latter spent the majority of their set trying to rouse the Cornell corpses from their zombie like trance, which could have been attributed to the bleak weather outside or a general dissatisfaction with entering into or coming back to Cornell life.