J. Poet

The title might lead one to believe that Songs of Mass Destruction is a collection of political tunes, but that's not the case. Annie Lennox has always been an outspoken feminist, but in her art she prefers to deal with individuals' lives. "Love Is Blind" uses a punishing beat to...

Konono No. 1 is from the Congo and is unlike anything you've ever heard. The group's music is based on the sound of the likembé, or Congolese thumb piano. Angola-born bandleader Mawangu Mingiedi moved to Kinshasa (Congo's capital) in the Seventies, starting the band with the intention of playing Bazombo...

Sax player Ori Kaplan, keyboard player Tamir Muskrat, and MC Tomer Yosef, the madmen behind Balkan Beat Box, are spearheading the latest underground music trend — Eastern European mashup. Like their New York compatriots in Gogol Bordello, the trio takes the fractured rhythms of the Eastern Bloc and drops in...

Maybe it's the long nights with nothing to do but take drugs and play music, or maybe it's the band's position outside of America's mainstream, but whatever the case, Norway's 120 Days has managed to create a murky, driving album that puts the relentless pulse of synthetic percussion and old,...

Although he hasn't made much of a splash on this side of the pond, Paul Weller's British career marks him as one the most successful artists to emerge from the punk/New Wave scene. This CD sampler culls 23 tunes from the four-CD, 67-track Hit Parade retrospective box, and although it's...