Receive Weekly Email and Text Message Updates:
Sign up for latest info on concerts, dining, promotions and more!
Go!

Reader's Picks

Top Recommendations

A short list of Miami's most popular hot spots.
user content provided by: LikeMe.net & Miami New Times

National Features >

  • City Pages

    Michele Bachmann, Unmuzzled

    You don't need to read Sarah Palin's book to hear the ravings of a mad woman.

    By Matt Snyders

  • Riverfront Times

    Babe 'n' Arms

    Tom was a hot-tempered cross-dresser with a garage full of guns--and then he became Rachel.

    By Nicholas Phillips

  • Dallas Observer

    The Fight for Texas

    Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison are locked in a battle over the soul of the GOP. They're also running for governor.

    By Sam Merten

Local Motion

Check out these South Florida releases.

Share

  • rss

By Abel Folgar

Published on May 14, 2008 at 8:30am

Fiyawater

Covert Propaganda (self-released)

www.myspace.com/fiyawater

Hailing from the culturally diverse hub of South Miami-Dade's Perrine (P-rrine!) comes the hip-hop duo Fiyawater, comprising rhymers Ne'Pom and Spit, with production work by Investigative Reports. Here you have 14 tracks serious on the minimalism flanked by a throwaway intro and outro. The stripped-down feel of the tracks allows the pair to work its flow without distraction while imbuing the album with a little Southern take on early-Nineties hip-hop. Think a little Snoop Dogg sneer and a comfortable blend of jazzy electronics married to some light rock over a nest of appropriate beats. Easy standouts that ought to grace club speakers are "Verbal Handoff," "Ride," and "Quote Dat Fire."

Lily Rubio

Entiéndeme (self-released)

www.myspace.com/lilyrubio

Lily Rubio aims to change my life through her music. While I sit here and wait for the moment to hit me, I'll say the lady can sing her Spanish songs in that Latin rock breathy treatment that female vocalists seem to like so much. Overall, this 10-track album is something like New Wave bolero that suffers from a little too much studio time. Skip over the first three tracks to "Que Sera," which opens

up the album for real with a Santana-circa-Blues-for-Salvador-era style. The back half of the disc flips to English-language songs, the better one being the R&B/hip-hop track "Dreams." Well, changing my life did seem like a tall order anyway. In the meantime, young miss, go to a studio without computers for your next record.

Various Artists

Indie Unplugged Miami (A-HA! Events)

www.myspace.com/indieunpluggedmiami

Indie Unplugged Miami was a nifty little show that went down at the Wallflower Gallery last July and was recorded for posterity. As far as a live recording is concerned, the quality is pretty good. It's not commercially available, so you have to get this South Florida sampler from the players involved, because it was a united effort by the artists to bring the disc to light. (Try their MySpace accounts.) The 17 tracks are split between five outfits: the rightly popular Raffa and Rainer, the like-minded Nacho and Johann, the rocking Alucard, the good vibes of Fitzroy, and the tripped-out sprechgesang rap of the Cornerstoners. Good sampler. Get it.