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Music Journalism

My experience as a music journalist in Austin, Texas over the last three years has culminated in more than 40 interviews, features, concert nd album reviews in the alternative weekly print newspaper The Austin Chronicle. Notably, my six-page feature story "Top Ten Bands Under 25 That Make Me Feel Alive" was the cover story for their June 10, 2022 publication.

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Mars Media Club

Mars Media Club is a company I am launching with a focusing on producing multimedia projects for music organizations, companies, and related clients. This includes marketing and public relations, Electronic Press Kits, web design and social media management, photography and video services, and providing media consulting on personalized projects.

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Marketing & PR

Previous experience in Marketing and Public Relations involve consulting musical artists on media and press exposure, as well as multimedia projects related to the launching of albums, singles, and national tours. I have built a network of contacts to deliver a series of interactive multimedia products and maintain their overall brand identity of the client.

Digital Portfolio
The Austin Chronicle •

Nolan Potter’s Nightmare Band Album Review

Synth-drenched symphonic power ballad "One Eye Flees Aquapolis" pours rose petals on the path that traverses the soundscape of Nolan Potter's third eye. This recent source of distortion soul food, bearing the Nietzsche-esque title Music Is Dead, counts as the NP's third release of 2021 – following perfunctory Bandcamp offerings Eggbound and Nolan's Quarantine Quovers Quollection. More of a followup to 2019 breakout Nightmare Forever, this six-track full-band effort thrusts easy listening upon th
The Austin Chronicle •

Post Animal Elevates Levitation Fest with a Psych-Punk Score

My first live show at “heaven or Hotel Vegas” felt as spiritually liberating as a christening and as artistically violating as a musical deflowering.

On and on did tunes whip through the air along with the violent winds of a changing season as Austin nursed day one of Levitation, the 13-year-running event co-founded by members of Austin’s Black Angels. As a 19-year-old “on the list” for a concert at the mid-20s mecca on East Sixth, the experience was akin to a mask-clad Mars sauntering into an
The Austin Chronicle •

New Gathering MoFest Brings Austin Music and Art Culture to the Country

It’s that sweet spot in Central Texas: post SXSW and pre sweltering summer, where the weekends becken for adventure, live music resounds far and wide, and that tent in your closet begs to be used. If you’re looking for that Austin-but-not-actually-in-Austin vibe, MoFest might hit the spot.

The intimate music, camping, and art festival debuts this weekend on a 300-acre ranch outside the microscopic town of Lexington, TX – 50 miles east of the capital. MoFest’s music lineup transports a select se
The Austin Chronicle •

Album Review: Zero Percent APR

The Being Dead musical multiverse extends with alter ego side project Zero Percent APR's Higher and Higher Forever, a 44-minute tape-recorded minefield. The prelude and interlude theatrics of Cody Dosier and Juli Keller hearken to Sixties Shangri-Las melodrama warped with charming post-ironic self-awareness. The duo epitomizes music made for the joy of making music, expressed in a collage of home- and field-recorded samples washed in nostalgic tape saturation, taking prime form in "Don't Steal My Bike." Satire-laced track "Smoke Bongs" jolts synth, trap drums, and Gregorian chant to bend genre, while soliloquy skit "Who Am I?" laments ultra-relatable existential dread in stating: "Sometimes it feels like the only thing that's getting me through all of this is coming home and loading up a big fat bong, and smoking a bong all day." The album oscillates between ethereally laced vocals on "Hot Topic Philosophy" and slap-back echoes in "Kevin Curtin," an homage to our former Chronicle Music editor, alongside crushing fuzz in "Midnight" – all in all, a vibrant love letter to creation in Austin DIY.  – Mars Salazar
The Austin Chronicle •

Hi How Are You Day Connects Young Audiences With Daniel Johnston’s Work

Commemorating the birthday of late Austin musician Daniel Johnston, the fifth annual Hi How Are You Day took stage at Emo’s Sunday night.

Held by the nonprofit Hi, How Are You Project, the annual fundraiser streamlined from past long-billed Moody Theater events to host two young acts due at Coachella 2023. At the event, Dick Johnston told the Chronicle that the board of directors made the decision to move away from showcasing musicians that are notably fond of his younger brother’s work (such a
The Austin Chronicle •

Album Review: Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol

My mom doesn't like it, and yours might not either, but the savage sacrilege littering Doom Wop teaches an undeniable master class in hard-rock hedonism, marking the second full-length by knucklehead trio Rickshaw Billie's Burger Patrol. Teasing a goddamn heart attack like grease dripping down the arm from a grilled patty, veins clog with the heavy metal sludge embalming this communion of gnawing distortion. The seething howls of Leo Lydon, wrenching bass tones of Aaron Metzdorf, and Sean St. Germain's spitfire drums christen them the grimy kingpins of local scum rock.
The Austin Chronicle •

Witches Exist On the Patio

The blasphemous depravity soon to befoul the Hotel Vegas patio would make an 18th century Puritan blush – dancing, singing, laughing. They knew it all along: Witches Exist. The new fourpiece noisegaze band will rendezvous for the final 2022 installment of the free outdoor show series that the cherished venue has hosted every Thursday, 9:30pm, with preceding bands in this concert sequence being Water Damage and Castle Club. Fronted by audio production starchild Jackson Baker, Witches' late-Novemb
The Austin Chronicle •

Album Review: The Stacks

Bold ambitions carry a heavy burden in the lost idealism of Lay Me Down to Rest. The Stacks' debut album flows a steady folk and Americana style in falsetto waves from vocalist and songwriter Jake Ames, hearkening back to the Kerrville roots of him and brother Lucas Ames on drums. The swing rhythms – propelled by bassist Tyler Jordan in harmony-laced "Wasted Nostalgia" and surf rock-inspired "Chicon" – drive a persistent optimism, which wears thin in "Western Expanse." Haunting and iridescent, t
The Austin Chronicle •

Black Fret Rebrands As Sonic Guild

Black Fret announced a rebrand as Sonic Guild while awarding $260,000 in grants to local artists at their ninth annual ball last Saturday. Donor-nominated artists graced the stage at ACL Live at the Moody Theater with two-song sets ranging from modern rap to soft country, broken up by co-founder Matt Ott and select Black Fret members awarding the 20 local acts $10,000 to $15,000 grants. Along with the milestone of donating over $5 million in support of the creation and performance of local music
The Austin Chronicle •

Album Review: The Black Angels

The lasting spiritual experience of the Black Angels continues to stroke transcendent psych-rock with 58-minute ego death Wilderness of Mirrors, their sixth scripture since forming in 2004. The fivepiece creates a didactic road map to escape beyond radical contemporary anxieties, undercut by cool reverberation. Their first in five years, the album ruminates on the human experience during times of exponential social and economic discontent where improvement seems futile, the individual feels increasingly disconnected, and a pacifying end appears nowhere in sight. The hypnotic vocals of Alex Maas bleed an eerie hymn in "The River," befitting the droning organ laced throughout the compositions. Thick fuzz distortion in "La Pared (Govt. Wall Blues)" launches an interstellar metamorphosis spun by guitarists Christian Bland and Jake Garcia, calling back to the dark tumult of 2006 originator Passover. Stephanie Bailey pushes intense percussion on "Empires Falling," a frenzied neo-psychedelia spiral of spitfire tambourine with wailing bass by Ramiro Verdooren. The soul-ache of "Suffocation" concludes with a melancholic rumination on the paralysis of self within a modern hellscape, where each breath hopefully grasps at the next moment. The art deco vinyl sleeve consecrates the group's growth: "We encourage you to rethink your preconceived notions, question authority, and create other methods for survival."  – Mars Salazar
The Austin Chronicle •

SXSW Music Spotlight: LAUNDRY DAY

Henry Pearl: We are when we’re in Austin.

Jude Ciulla: We do get a little chameleon, we like playing dress up, so I could see us just going full cowboy for a day.

HP: I think that wherever we go, the five of us in the band end up becoming this blob that you can’t ignore in the streets. Whether we’re in Austin or in New York City, we’re just kind of a huge distraction on the street. That’s the shenanigans we’re always getting into.

AC: How do you think your music will translate to the Austin a
The Austin Chronicle •

SXSW Music Spotlight: Jerry Paper

Austin Chronicle: Do you feel that your work is art more so than it is traditional music?

Jerry Paper: I think music in itself is a very expressive art form. When I intellectualize it, I tend to stunt my creative process and that creates obstacles. I try to not think about it too much and leave my music as a place to play and not worry about fitting into a genre. When I was younger, I had a tendency to have an idea and set out to actualize it, but over my life I’ve realized that, by doing that,
The Austin Chronicle •

Album Review: Stunts

Stunts' sophomore release is ambient catharsis, revealing a growing artistic vulnerability as Font guitarist Anthony Laurence lays bare the weight of mid-20s introversion in this atmospheric solo project. The EP feels like 22 minutes of voyeurism into an inward-drawn mind through sincere and stylistic digital production – likenable to bedroom- pop with wavy trap vocal effects. The disjointed and syncopated tones in "panoramic (like instances)" examine the relatable experience of directionless rumination with an appreciation for the beauty within the chaos. Lo-fi brain medicine "coinsup" and "neighbor" echo the soulful production of Frank Ocean's Blonde with equally personal overtones and doses of weary anxiety. – Mars Salazar

Top Ten Bands Under 25 That Make Me Feel Alive