Though South Florida guitarist/singer/songwriter Diego Jinkus’s debut full-length is self-released, it sounds professional, capturing a jam-heavy but song-oriented slice of the local world beat scene. The ten tunes rest on a laid-back pop-rock vibe spiced up with Latin percussion and a heavy dose of contemporary jazz. The driving force is…
Ah, Finland. Frozen tundra of absolute mystery. The country that even the rest of Scandinavia makes fun of. The place whose most recent major international musical offering is Lordi, winner of the 2006 Eurovision song contest. (In case you missed that competition, Lordi is a metal band whose members dress…
In ice-cool genre-mashup circles, Brazil is the de rigueur frontier for new hard-hitting, urban-sexy dance beats. Bonde do Rolê, hailing from Curitiba, is the first group from the baile funk scene to make international inroads, thanks to a chance discovery by American DJ/producer Diplo, of Hollertronix. On its first full-length,…
For a onetime habitué of late-night discos, Vince Clarke sure is an early bird. At 11:00 a.m. on a recent Friday, he’s up and alert-sounding over the phone from his room in a lavish Atlantic City hotel. “Oh, I’m a 5:00 a.m. riser these days,” he says in a sardonic…
Tonight’s stop of Jesse Malin’s “Death and Taxes” tour, at Studio A, promises a bonus: openers Acute are hometown boys. Well, at least singer Isaac Lekach, 26, is. (Remember the basically one-man act, Poulain? That was him). Lekach went on a sort of vacation to Los Angeles a few years…
It’s a straight-up L.A. invasion of Miami this weekend. The attack on Friday’s edition of the weekly Revolver party comes from the the tag team duo with the gentle moniker Guns ‘n’ Bombs. While New York and Paris get all the techno/electro revival attention, Flip Turbotito and Johnny Love come…
Miami and Los Angeles, they’re not so different. On the obvious tip, there’s all the bling and the pneumatic bodies on balmy beaches. On the not-so-obvious tip, there are the chin-scratching musical movements bubbling under those shiny surfaces. Still, there’s no question that we party harder, later, and dirtier than…
If you’ve dipped your toes in the waters of the Florida rave scene during the past, oh, fifteen years, you’ve probably collected some warm, fuzzy half-memories of Rabbit in the Moon. Remember the time at Ultra when that space man landed onstage and showered the crowd with sparks from his…
“You need input to get output,” Jesse Malin insists during a scarce private moment on the pool deck of a Salt Lake City hotel. Over a cracking cell phone connection, he holds forth on his main songwriting influences. “I’m always reading novels, reading plays, going to see movies, listening to…
Jacob Miller and Longwave June 23, 2007 Studio A Photo by Jeffrey Delannoy Better Than: Waiting around for prime Saturday going-out time; the show got going around 10:00 and was over by about midnight. The club doors opened at 8:00, and opener Jacob Miller took the stage at nearly 10:00…
Issac Delgado June 23, 2007 Knight Center An energetic and from-the-heart Cuban rumbón broke out Saturday night as a delirious and receptive crowd welcomed one of the island’s grandest and most innovative musicians ever at the James L. Knight Center. As a result the man responsible for keeping close to…
Martini Bar, at the Shops of Sunset Place (5701 Sunset Dr, South Miami) has become the unofficial spot for a freestyle revival. Check it, in the last few months they’ve had Stevie B. and Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam! (And on the non-freestyle, but still late-Eighties/early-Nineties tip, Jordan Knight, of…
Hey, you get a key chain! “In order to give fans the best possible experience for both The Police and the Miami club show, the Maroon 5 show at Studio A has been rescheduled for Wednesday, July 11 at 3:00pm. Maroon5 will offer fans a rare and intimate acoustic performance…
While the rest of hipsterdom in their native London was going flashy neon, the Horrors did what any endearingly bratty, contrary children would do. They looked inside themselves and saw their hearts were black. Well, not really, but the quartet kicked aside the dance-rock trend in favor of raw, throat-ripping…
On its third album, this Chicago quartet continues its quest to incorporate the best bits of shoegaze, stoner rock, and heavy music — and then flip the bird at the genre conventions of all three. Since debut album Australasia, the staunch road dogs have progressively drifted away from their earliest,…
Photo by Jeffrey Delannoy Battles June 18, 2007 Studio A Better Than: Sitting inside, listening to the evening’s torrential rain, and pulling bong hits by yourself. Openers Dance, Jenny have long been championed by Lolo Reskin, the fiery-maned proprietor of Sweat Records who also organized the show. Their earlier material…
Our latest writer is looking for Ricky Williams, whom she describes as a “blind pianist.” Her husband, now deceased, used to play guitar in a band with him in the Nineties. Any tips can be sent to me here. — Arielle Castillo…
This next letter is about the hallowed, now defunct Miami rock venue, Washington Square. “I used to live in Miami around 93/94, and I use to go see shows at the Square. I had the live disc, I was wondering if there is a way to get my hands on…
I’ve gotten a few messages recently from people trying to track down musicians, friends, etc from the South Florida music scene. Hence, a new public service of this blog … If you’re looking for a person, copies of an old rare local album, whatever, send me all the info and…
Did you hear what recently happened at the G-8 in Germany? Anarchists from around the world tried to overthrow the fascist global police summit with a punk rock revolution! Black masked protesters wearing Crimethinc and Leftover Crack T-shirts threw grapefruit-size stones and bottles at police and torched overturned cars. But…
Only a city like London could produce a pop artist like Mika, and only in England could he become a bona fide chart star. Bless our onetime colonizers for that: Thanks to the buzz in his native land for his debut album, Life in Cartoon Motion, the Beirut-born singer is…
“Electric Porkchop is a fluctuating DJ collective that plays everything under the sun in varying configurations. I cover mostly dub, breaks, house and techno, and other members mix in hip hop, funk, soul, acapellas, mashups and more. This mix is something of a “disc 2” sampler, highlighting some of the…
