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Billy Corgan shining with his Reverend Z One.

The Smashing Pumpkins frontman balances a busy creative life working as a wrestling producer, café/tea company owner, and a collaborator on his forward-thinking, far-reaching line of signature guitars. Decades into his career, Corgan continues to evolve his songcraft and guitar sound for the modern era on the band’s latest, Aghori Mhori Mei.

“Form follows function,” explains Billy Corgan when asked about the evolution of his songwriting. These three words seem to serve as his creative dictum. “Early Pumpkins was more about playing in clubs and effecting a response from the live audience, because that’s where we could get attention."

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Chat Pile—from left, Cap’n Ron, Raygun Busch, Stin, and Luther Manhole—are at the crest of a new wave of angry American guitar music.

Photo by Bayley Hanes

On their second full-length record, the Oklahoma City noise-rock band prove that angry music isn’t going anywhere.

Listening to Oklahoma City band Chat Pile is thrilling in the same way watching a particularly transgressive or unflinching horror movie is. Their music has a lot in common with the unsettling, avant-garde throat-singing of Inuit artist Tanya Tagaq: In the absence of an immediate narrative and overt lyrics in favor of fragmented, thematic collages of phrases and energies, we’re confronted with a subconscious, cellular sense of discomfort, one that compels our imagination to fill in some of the blanks. That can get scary.

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John Mayer Silver Slinky Strings feature a unique 10.5-47 gauge combination, crafted to meet John's standards for tone and tension.

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