Quick, name an artist that began their career in the Sixties and is still pushing the parameters of popular music in the new millennium. Once you check off Dylan, Bowie, Richard Thompson, Neil Young, and Lou Reed, the choices wind down rapidly. John Cale, Reed’s onetime partner in the Velvet…
Akron, Ohio drummer Patrick Carney and guitarist Dan Auerbach, who together make up the Black Keys, are reinvigorating blues/rock by sticking to the basics: the sound of a screaming, feedback-drenched guitar clashing with a kick drum that smacks you like the loud splat of a drunk’s head bouncing off the…
What do you get when you cross the sounds of a young guy from the Old World with the sounds of an old guy from the New World? The dramatic cry of 25-year-old flamenco singer Diego “El Cigala,” who takes his inspiration from the late traditional gypsy music great Camarón…
Churchill’s is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a monthlong series of concerts, and most nights this September feature all kinds of alcohol-fueled debauchery. One of the choice evenings stars Montreal’s ska devils, The Delegates. Hell, most American bands don’t make it this far south, so somebody buy these guys a…
South Florida is full of all sorts of weird and wonderful things. One little-known variety is Nophi Records, a small leftfield electronic label in Davie owned by producer Randy “r_garcia” Garcia. Though most local kids haven’t heard of this five-year-old imprint, Nophi has already issued nineteen releases of leftfield IDM,…
The ladies of Le Tigre have made a career out of taking catchy dance music and inserting lyrics about gay pride, feminism, and equality into the mix. People will dance to any message if there’s a good beat to back it up. For example, their new single, “New Kicks,” sets…
— Hans Morgenstern Some electronic recordings ring so cold, precise, and gimmicky that they can wear thin after a few listens. With its self-titled debut, Waterford Landing brings a human pulse to an often overprocessed style of music. On the CD, the group wittily straddles the divide between rock and…
5, 4, 3 … Applause! Keep it going!” a production assistant commands the 200 or so teenyboppers assembled in the newly created park behind American Airlines Arena for a special Video Music Awards episode of TRL. The show hasn’t even begun taping yet, but the kids, mostly girls in bikini…
It was around 2:00 a.m. on Monday, August 30 when I ventured into the alleyway behind Mansion for OutKast’s MTV Video Music Awards after party. I had just spoken to the publicist overlooking the velvet rope in front of the club, telling her I was on the press list. She…
The ADD world of Kid 606 resembles an oversexed, Mad-magazine-reading kid who’s just been introduced to acid and gabber. It is all about spontaneity, rushing headlong into whatever he hears and processing it into a gloriously inspired mess. Miguel Depedro, the man behind this boyish yet mature persona, claims industrial…
Forest of the Echo Downs is an ambient electro album from the New York (formerly Miami) trio Secret Frequency Crew, the follow-up to their excellent 2001 debut EP, The Underwater Adventure Hop Secret Treasure. It has been designed as an aural swamp, and overlaid with crickets chirping, bugs buzzing, and…
The Libertines The Libertines are lost, violently swirling within a British punk rock dream. Even the sneaker-tapping and smiles brought on by listening to the tough, yearning pop on this, the quartet’s theoretically great self-titled follow-up to their 2002 debut Up The Bracket, poorly hide the fact that they are…
On her stubbornly conceptual fifth solo LP, Björk mostly cares about blowing — almost all of Medulla’s sounds were generated from human mouths. Nothing sucks the fun out of a record like a pretentious concept, but she’s capable of pulling off this stuffy idea because at her core (her medulla,…
After four years, Jill Scott returns with her second studio album. Fans of her debut, 2000’s Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol. 1, will be pleased that the hiatus is over. Beautifully Human: Words and Sounds Vol. 2 finds Scott mining many of the same themes as before:…
Ladies and gentlemen, introducing Snow Patrol, an alternative for those of you put off by Chris Martin’s floppy Muppet histrionics and questionable baby naming skills. This Scotland-via-Ireland quartet is led by Gary Lightbody, who is also known in indie circles for leading the low-key supergroup Reindeer Section, which comprises members…
In the most popular DJ contest, few house music advocates can compare to trance spinners such as Paul van Dyk and Tiesto … except for Danny Tenaglia. Defying all odds, Tenaglia has ruled New York’s dance scene for over a decade, fueling his sets with tribal (hell, he was one…
This summer has been a most unusual one for the Magic City. Far from being just another sleepy sweater post-season, this summer has featured an inundation of great concerts (Mum, the Cure), car shows galore and, to cap it all off, a wild and overcrowded MTV VMA weekend of parties…
Miami quartet Sunday Driver has been touring all year behind their great 2003 rawk debut, A Letter to Bryson City, with little talk of a follow-up. Joining them on their current jaunt are two equally promising bands: Batavia, New York’s Down to Earth Approach, who just released its debut, Another…
Sting and Annie Lennox have a lot in common. Both came to prominence in the early Eighties, leading groundbreaking rock outfits (the Police and the Eurythmics, respectively) that served as springboards to superstardom. Likewise, each has enjoyed a successful solo career by shedding the edgier aspects of their bands for…
When he reviewed a Throbbing Gristle gig in 1979, Melody Maker’s Chris Bohn described the “in joke” that was the group’s nihilistic stage presence. “They can smile smugly if you stay, snigger derisively if you leave. Either way it’s a hollow, depressing victory,” he wrote. Otto Von Schirach, whose music…
By the time Usher Raymond appeared before a horde of journalists, photographers, videographers, and city officials during a press conference announcing the MTV Video Music Awards nominees outside the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, the morning sun had risen completely into the sky, threatening to scorch the gathering beneath it. But the…
On Sunday, August 29, the MTV Video Music Awards will be presented in a location other than New York or Los Angeles for the first time in its history. It is the latest coup for a locale that already boasts a World Series champion in the Florida Marlins; features an…
