Xela Zaid has been lurking on the Miami music scene longer than some regular local musicians have been on Earth. More important, in that time his music has grown ever more subversively brilliant, finding an increasingly vital, comfortable niche in Dade's noise underground. Lest you accuse Zaid of diving off some musical deep end, he's maintained a characteristic sound that has never strayed far from his distinctive style. From writing catchy songs in his early years (before he decided to spell his name backward) to his current experiments in ambient dissonance, Zaid remains an original. He's never been one to take any instrument at face value; early experiments included shoving a mike into the sound hole of an acoustic guitar and inventing a unique tuning for the instrument. His strums conjure the aural illusion of a spectral bassist accompanying his hushed, raspy voice. His mid-'90s CD, Motorama, released under the moniker "Ho Chi Minh," remains one of the indie masterpieces that most people have never heard. His even lesser-known followup, 2001's Summerwood, proved he was no flash in the pan. The dude should have become a household name by the time this millennium arrived, but those planets never aligned — or maybe he was ahead of his time. Zaid continued his evolution through a few noteworthy EPs. Nowadays, you might hear him twiddling knobs on a small transistor radio hooked up to a pitch shifter while exploring a new form of ambient music on the back patio of Churchill's, his preferred venue. Few musicians on Miami's scene are as devoted to the journey of music on as pure a level.