The British quartet Mojave 3’s new album, Spoon and Rafter, is so beautifully sad that one wonders why their outlook is so relentlessly downcast. The occasionally jaunty folk-pop and country arrangements of 2001’s Excuses for Travellers have been smoothed out into airy, melancholy backdrops; the four musicians’ playing has slowed…
Ever since Atmosphere’s Ford One and Ford Two EPs were released in 2000, rapper Sean “Slug” Daley has enjoyed a surprisingly large female following in sharp contrast to the droll, poorly dressed twentysomething youth at most indie rap shows. The presence of so many women around him has changed his…
Outkast’s new album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, is a perplexing work. At times it is sloppy and appealing; elsewhere it is masterful and programmatic. There’s a circuslike atmosphere that infects it, a disease contracted from Prince’s overwhelmingly diverse Sign O’ the Times and shared by other overachieving acts like the Roots…
In house music, the diva is usually faceless and unheralded, even though her voice drives a million dance floors around the world and her sheer force of personality lends color to bland 4/4 beats. Thank heavens then for New York vocalist Lisa Shaw, the rare woman outside of Martha Wash…
There is a cloud of grief wafting through the offices of XELA Entertainment in downtown Miami, but it’s not because today is September 11, two years after the World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks changed the course of American history. The sadness that lingers here is caused by something…
On July 4 at Revolver, the white-hot Friday-night party at the Design District’s Soho Lounge, Adam Johnson sequences beats from a laptop computer, formatting them into one long tapestry of melodies and softly percolating percussion. He rarely looks away from the computer screen, so he barely notices the 30-odd people…
There’s a reassuring familiarity about the way Leona Naess sings lyrics like “Roll up the carpet and pour out the wine/Treat me like I’m your valentine” on “Calling,” the opening track from her self-titled album. Who hasn’t gone through a spell of embracing melancholy, lovestruck folk-pop singers like Joni Mitchell…
Basshead has met many elitists during his travels. (Hell, I am an elitist.) I have argued over the merits of shoegazer-lite quartet Lush with Brit-pop fanatics; I have championed the artistic strengths of old-school trance producers like Future Sound of London to house aficionados; I have wrestled with East Coast…
As experimental hip-hop producers go, Damian “Req” Harris is pretty abstract. Many of the tracks on his fourth album, Car Paint Scheme, are simply bass and percussion, the latter represented by an 808 kick drum or light, computer-generated noises similar to a reverberating xylophone or a shaking cymbal. The music…
We all we got! “It’s a beautiful thing to see Miami in one room like this,” smiled Pitbull as he accepted an award for Hardest Working Artist at the inaugural Miami Music Awards on Wednesday, August 20. Actually he shouted when he spoke since everyone in the room, a who’s…
With Clones, the Neptunes have made another world of glitter and glamour, love as lust and lust as an end unto itself. This is illustrated on the cover of the album, a photo that superimposes Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo over planet Earth rotating in space, a none-too-subtle nod to…
Three years ago Chris St. Cavish, better known as DJ MTA, started his own record label. He called it Mass Transit, a name inspired by Miami’s Metro Transit Authority. He pressed up 1200 copies of the first release, Mode 1: Metrorail EP, with money he had been saving since he…
Since Elephant Man’s “Pon Di River, Pon Di Bank” was first released earlier this year, the barreling dance-friendly track has been a mainstay in all the local clubs, from South Beach hip-hop spots to Jamaican dance halls. For those who like a little reggae sprinkled in their rap diet, it…
Where else in sunny, politically embattled California could you find a loopy delight like CrankCase’s Model Arithmetic? Granted, none of the songs addresses the governor’s recall vote, but there is “The Tale of the Stolen Funk and How We Stole it Back,” one of several twelve-inch singles that helped the…
Mike West is an anomaly in the South Florida rap game. First of all, he’s not from Miami but Fort Lauderdale, as he’ll proudly tell you. Though born and raised in these parts, he’s spent most of his adult life bouncing between here and Los Angeles, save for brief stops…
For a subgenre that prides itself on innovation and a healthy dose of anti-establishment attitude, the underground hip-hop scene has yielded few breakout stars in 2003 — except for Little Brother. The North Carolina-based trio seemingly came out of nowhere to foist The Listening on unsuspecting hip-hop fans. A sumptuous…
Last week I got a call from DJ EFN of Crazy Hood Productions, who was upset about the article that I wrote about his crew (“None of Dem,” July 31). He claimed that, instead of discussing the musical projects C.H.P. has released in the past several months, including his group…
After two years of trailblazing work by incendiary artists like RJD2, Cannibal Ox, and label owner El-P, Definitive Jux has spent 2003 issuing work by the underground’s underdogs, hardworking MCs who have never earned their just due. As a freestyle animal familiar to New York heads, C-Rayz Walz falls into…
Vincent Falco, a tall, gawky 31-year-old clad in a T-shirt and shorts, sits at a computer in a North Beach office. He hardly looks like a CEO, but here he is, showing Basshead the popular online peer-to-peer (P2P) software known as BearShare. “I’ll just walk you through the user experience,”…
Every Wednesday Crazy Hood Productions’ various members, friends, and associates meet in a warehouse office in Kendall to talk about their many projects. These meetings aren’t staid, sit-down affairs, though. Generally they’re an excuse for the crew to hang out, drink copious amounts of Bacardi rum and Coca-Cola, smoke a…
Last week my editor suggested I write about South Beach clubs that have a similar vibe or crowd to Miami hot spots like I/O and Slak Lounge. She argued that I would be “doing my readers a service.” So let’s see … are there any cool clubs in SoBe unprotected…
Chingy’s debut album, Jackpot, rides into record stores on the strength of “Right Thurr,” an insanely catchy single full of chest-swelling keyboard melodies. It sounds like the inside of a strip club, spewing out snare effects and lewd drum patterns inspired by the Neptunes that twirl and clap like dancers…
