As the continued existence of the Warped Tour proves, I get older and the kids stay the same age. And as long as the latter is true, there will also be room for one more three-chord song based on a one-note joke. Hence the seventh full-length of pop-punk covers by…
Over the past few years, brothers Justin and Christian Martin, with their Dirtybird and Buzzin’ Fly crews, have harnessed their San Francisco hometown’s thermal currents to establish themselves and their city as an increasingly potent presence on the international techno circuit. Including cohort Claude VonStroke, the Dirtybird gang launched a…
It’s unlikely any band has as thoroughly modern and convoluted a resurgence story as these AOR mainstays pulled back into public consciousness by HBO and YouTube. Since former lead singer Steve Perry’s 1996 departure, Journey has gone through two frontmen, plucking current vocalist Arnel Pineda off the Internet via the…
David Bowie undoubtedly has been through some ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. From Ziggy Stardust to Aladdin Sane, from the Thin White Duke to an oddly mottled chameleon colored by postindustrial dissonance, Bowie and his personas have inspired many and outlasted far more. Now Rapster Records/!K7 strives to find out if Bowie’s songs can…
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. And nowhere is this more evident than in a Southern small-town thrift store, where beer helmets and broken furniture end up as impromptu amusement park rides on lawns and libidinous nights. It’s the place in a college town where students and townie kids…
Engineering postindustrial dub since the mid-Eighties, when he founded production conduit Meat Beat Manifesto with former partner Jonny Stephens, British expat Jack Dangers is a self-proclaimed, self-medicated OCD sufferer. And it has shown. He’s amalgamated a free-jazz sensibility with a hip-hop aesthetic, peppering in political overtones and unintentionally helping germinate…
Though an official label for only three years, dirtybird records and its quad crew of freq-y producer/DJs are no fledglings. San Francisco-based Claude VonStroke, Justin Martin, Christian Martin, and Worthy have been flapping their wings since around 2000. They first built a Yay Area reputation pushing air as support DJs…
Steve Bug will not make you run through the streets nude. Using digital production suite Ableton Live, Bug has strung together 22 druggy, dubby, minimal-funk tracks that will cause responsible rejoicing among tech-house fans. The head of German label Poker Flat, Bug has delivered to London’s Fabric an appropriate followup…
The production work of Scott Herren began as a study in diametric personalities. The Brooklyn- and Atlanta-based producer emerged full force in 2000 under the aliases Delarosa & Asora, Savath & Savalas, and Prefuse 73. With each compounding persona, he further established the contrast between crate-digging and digital-signal-processing, between pastoral…
Simian Mobile Disco apes much of what made the late Eighties fertile as well as fetid. On the British duo’s full-length debut, James Ford and James Shaw revel in the pure Hi-NRG and hip-house that propelled Todd Terry, Tommy Boy, and Technotronic. Peppered throughout the melodic electrohaus mélange are nods…
Gnarls Barkley’s debut single “Crazy” hit the Internet in late 2005 and was officially released this past spring in the UK, where it reigned at number one for nine weeks. The song — a honeyed, high-strung vamp on mental illness luxuriated in spaghetti-western strings — quickly gained a crossover market…
Japan’s chromatic quartet MONO balances bursts of catharsis and pleas for clemency. The groups exalts tone-rending reverence with the deft delivery of many Chicago postrock groups and equally hefty, heavenly bands including Boston’s Isis and Texans Explosions in the Sky. Six years in existence, MONO has established itself adroit at…
Since striking its own multithread trajectory off of the early Nineties breakbeat hardcore sound, drum ‘n’ bass has swung back and forth in popular opinion. There have been times when its hyperkinetic breakbeats and penchant for speaker- and tweaker-punishing malevolence have been labeled too insular, and other times when its…
Schematic Records. Upon seeing such a name, any rational consumer would deduce a record label with a distinct plan, a blueprint. And why not, considering the increasingly high degree of regimentation electronic music has exhibited over the past three decades. Except Miami-based Schematic Records — celebrating its tenth anniversary during…
Following in the almost absurd tradition of Teflon-coated, press-shy android-funk duo Daft Punk, Frenchman Pascal Arbez-Nicolas has maintained an ambiguity in the press as he produces under the name Vitalic. Lurking in the shadows, however, has not diminished the profile of Vitalic’s unrelenting electro-house singles (releases dating from 2001 to…
Who do that voodoo? Kudu so well. Founded in the Drrrty Drrrty (Atlanta, a.k.a. the A Game) but refined in the Borough of Kings (Brooklyn), Kudu shed all baby fat and jazz-fusion while producing the sinewy full-length, Death of the Party. Kudu — the collaboration of Deantoni Parks and Sylvia…
This year’s crop of electronic music seemed more concerned with looking in than locking in. For the most part top producers haven’t seemed as worried about innovation as connotation. It’s been a year of cobbling together old genres rather than molding new ones, and there’s a definite trend toward composing…
At a cursory look, dance clubs and health clubs are surprisingly similar. Both share equal space with sleek and lissome and burly and bulky physiques. Both play host to regimented physicality, insistent desire, and chiseled and huffing figures (though admittedly the lighting is better in a dance club). Following this…
Groucho Marx once remarked he’d never want to belong to a club that would accept him as a member. Detroit-based brittle-beat artists Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus — a duo married not just in the creative sense — have adopted a similar dictum while recording under the name Adult…
French DJ Caroline “Miss Kittin” Herve gained notoriety in the late Nineties/early Aughts for her droll, stilted delivery on swaggering collaborations with Swiss producer the Hacker and electroclash-associated DJs such as Felix Da Housecat. Her cocaine catcalls and limousine fuck-fests captured an urban Zeitgeist that was exhilarating, if not exactly…
Considering Oscar G hails from a town as exfoliated as Miami, it’s odd that the DJ/producer chooses to kick off his Made in Miami two-disc mix with a crepuscular track as introverted as Shani featuring Razor Cain’s “Adrenalin (Kut Mix).” Indeed, it takes five tracks of pointillist beats and bass…
Introduced to DJing by Mani (bassist for the Stone Roses and Primal Scream), New Order bassist Peter Hook initially resisted the temptation to follow in the footsteps of bandmate Bernard Sumner, who has been DJing for years. But as part of Factory Records’ biggest act of the Eighties, Hook helped…
