Ten years ago Sven Väth was trying to conquer America. He had a contract with Warner Bros. and a Los Angeles outpost for his acclaimed Frankfurt-based record labels Harthouse and Eye Q. But America wasn’t ready for the techno and trance sounds of Germany. Väth’s Warner Bros. contract fizzled after…
Each conference brings a buzzword for the latest micro-strain. In 2004 it was grime, a hybrid of hip-hop and jungle with UK MC Dizzee Rascal as its poster boy. This year finds hipsters talking about dirty house, a more electro-leaning, rhythmically playful incarnation of good ol’ fashioned house. The music…
In the seven years since the Ultra Music Festival began as a neat little block party starring Florida’s own Rabbit in the Moon on a fenced-off section of sand behind the Outback Steakhouse on Collins Avenue, some of its most outspoken critics have been those people you’d expect to have…
If you haven’t heard the music of Maya Arulpragasam, you aren’t alone. But visit any online music-geek mecca, like the MP3 post Fluxblog (www.fluxblog.org) or the tempest-in-a-text-post board ILM (I Love Music) (ilx.wh3rd.net), and you’ll be smacked with the feeling of missing out. As the definitive word-of-fingers sensation, her debut…
There are only a handful of DJs whose names resonate beyond dance music: John Digweed is one of them. Back in the salad days of the late Nineties, when the genre exploded from an underground cultural renaissance to a global industry, the British-born Digweed and his frequent partner Sasha invaded…
The shoe-gazer phenomenon of the early Nineties exploded out of the UK like a giant sunburst of swirling guitars, distorted synths, and cascades of feedback. By the end of the decade the heat of the movement had waned. Now Germany’s Ulrich Schnauss is breathing new life into its ethereal textures…
Most internationally respected DJs are known for spinning only one genre of dance music. Not so with San Francisco’s Mark Farina, who is comfortable plying nightclubs with jackin’ grooves one night and down-tempo, instrumental hip-hop flavored “Mushroom Jazz” the next. In the late Eighties the Chicago native participated in the…
German house producer Ian Pooley’s repertoire ranges from the airy, ambient Euro-house of his brilliant Meridian to his Brazilian house anthem with Esthero “Balmes (A Better Life).” As one of a handful of house producers to earn a major-label deal in the past few years (via his now-defunct relationship with…
Do all the New York hipsters and Miami club kids know where mash-up — mixing up records from disparate genres — really came from? It’s something hip-hop and disco DJs have been doing for ages, and their modern counterpart is expert party-rockin’ DJs such as Z-Trip. Raised in Phoenix and…
They say everything’s bigger in Texas, so Austin’s Dustin “D:Fuse” Fusilier, who Urb magazine rated as its second-favorite DJ at last year’s conference, is reckoned to be a contender this year with his expansive musical approach. D:Fuse plays drums (using the Roland V-Pad) during his sets, and he also sings…
David Morales spins true, classic New York house, the pumping, four-to-the-floor, body-moving tracks that everyone, whether elitist, anti-dance, or rockist still gives props to. His most recent album, 2 Worlds Collide, was one of the best released last year, thanks to the blazing first single and collaboration with Tamra Keenan,…
Midnight at the Marlin Hotel, and Pharrell Williams of the Neptunes is in the house. It isn’t hip-hop night, however, in the aluminum-hued South Beach bar/lounge. The young and hip milling about have apparently come straight from an Urban Outfitters sale, the DJ spinning from the balcony above the dance…
Hip-hop culture is awash in marketing campaigns, from the somewhat high-minded self-improvement (meditation, yoga, a sometime-vegan diet) strategy employed by Russell Simmons for his Phat Farm clothing line and other products, to the tactics used by street teams such as Crazy Hood Productions to publicize films, new CDs, and radio…
Beneath a lacquered veneer of black suits, hip coifs, and oblique lyrics, Interpol poses a conundrum to fans and foes alike. Interpol — singer/guitarist Paul Banks, guitarist Daniel Kessler, bassist Carlos Dengler (a.k.a. Carlos D), and drummer (and Fort Lauderdale ex-pat) Sam Fogarino — have been deemed both innovative rockers…
Everything’s OK
While he never attained the stature of, say, Sam Cooke, Sixties soul singer Solomon Burke exerted his own substantial influence. Artists such as the Rolling Stones (who covered his “Cry to Me” and “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”), Tom Jones, and Otis Redding borrowed liberally from Burke’s bellicose singing style…
Fronted by the creative guitar-slinging duo of Gustaf Norén and Björn Dixgård, Sweden’s Mando Diao offers a balanced and cohesive fourteen-track album as its second effort. Hurricane Bar, titled after the bar in the musicians’ hometown of Borlänge, where they saturated themselves with Britpop and eventually made their bones, is…
Although the duo of VV and Hotel of the Kills denied their romance ad nauseam in the aftermath of their debut, Keep on Your Mean Side, the bluesy garage crackling on the disc revealed an undeniably electric sexual spark between them. This intangible undercurrent is missing from their follow-up album,…
Human After All draws Daft Punk away from its famed disco-house sound and closer to the mechanical Kraftwerk roots that girded brittle, looping singles such as “Around the World.” It starts off strong: “Human After All,” with the chorus “We are human/Rock and roll,” serves as a cheeky commentary on…
If one were to characterize the fourth full-length from Dadaist beat collagist Daedelus, swooning would be the best summation. Musically Exquisite Corpse drips with aching nostalgia and dustily dips with wistful heartstrings, honeyed woodwinds, and vintage vibraphone, like a Thirties radio play. Guest MCs such as MF Doom, Cyne, and…
A collective of producers and musicians from Uruguay and Argentina, Bajofondo Tango Club was conceived to introduce unknown South American performers to the electronic big leagues of the U.S. and Europe. Luciano Supervielle, born in France and raised in Mexico, is one of its producers, and he’s helped by every…
No one better understands the infinite wealth of creativity that jazz allows than Pat Metheny. His new album, The Way Up, is composed of a single 68-minute composition divided into four parts. It’s pretty much the record he’s been preparing to make his entire career. The guitarist has been at…
Well this is interesting. From out of nowhere arrives In Motion, the second album from Lakeland, Florida’s Copeland. Somehow, unlike so many Central Florida acts, this upstart four-piece actually cobbles together influences that range beyond last year’s MTV pap. Over the course of In Motion’s ten tracks, the band moves…
