Dear Chris Carrabba: Hi, this is Annie. Um, I feel kind of weird writing this letter to you. I interviewed you a few weeks ago, and I don’t normally do this kind of thing — violating the whole journalist/ subject, objective/distance thing, you know. However, I couldn’t help but scribble…
Brian Vander Ark If one looked at it from the record industry’s point of view, it could certainly be argued that the Nineties were a more successful period for Brian Vander Ark than the new millennium has been so far. Once upon a time, the Verve Pipe frontman and his…
Four years after her last album, PJ Harvey has abandoned the elegant, Mercury Prize-winning slickness that made Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea such an anomaly in her edgy and provocative oeuvre and frightened long-time fans who remembered the raw, poisonous wit of her striking 1992 debut, Dry…
Midlake comprises five guys from Denton, Texas who sound like they’ve been shipwrecked on a deserted island for a couple of years with only a steamer trunk full of Victorian English novels, Flaming Lips and Sparklehorse CDs, and some really dodgy acid tabs to keep them entertained. That is, until…
Sonic Youth, rock’s most consistent band over the past two decades, returns with its nineteenth album, Sonic Nurse. Judging from the album’s title and the languid pace of many of its songs, the quartet appears to be in a healing mode. As Thurston Moore sings on the folksy “Stones,” “We’re…
Having a name like !!! has raised all sorts of issues for the (mostly) Brooklyn-based seven-piece dance-punk troupe, with myriad pronunciation problems ensuing over the years. In an adaptation of subtitled lines from the seminal Eighties comedy, The Gods Must Be Crazy, the band’s name is properly pronounced using any…
What’s next for Bebel Gilberto? That was the question posed by many impressed by her acclaimed debut album Tanto Tempo (2000), a delicate bossa nova update dominated by the cut-and-paste mentality of producers such as Amon Tobin and Suba, and the reported 1.2 million copies it sold in the world…
Marriage material is something you just don’t find much of in clubland. Most party people lack the mindset to settle down, even as they keep their eyes peeled for that one and only Mr. or Ms. Right. In fact Prive, Mynt, crobar, and other joints that deal in decadence and…
Sheldon Prince Fridays, Opium Garden By day, London-born Sheldon Prince works as promotion director and product manager for the Fort Lauderdale company Soulfuric, South Florida’s fastest-growing distribution outlet for quality dance music. At night, he builds his reputation as a DJ who keeps the house flame burning in a town…
The Kendall-area home of Harry Varela is framed by the backdrop of the balcony’s sliding glass door as he points at a cramped corner of the dining room. Attired in a thuggish-looking wife beater and jeans, he chuckles when he calls it “Chocolate Thunder Studios.” The name seems like the…
Sheyenne Rivers oozes pure rock goddess appeal. It’s her singular presence — blond, beautiful, and undeniably erotic — that commands the crowd’s attention during a recent gig at Tuscany Trattoria in Coconut Grove with her band, I Digress. As the other musicians dutifully run through the repertoire onstage, she glides…
The official story of the Legendary Pink Dots’ name mentions a keyboard player who needed nail polish to mark which notes to play. Yet leader Edward Ka-Spel has picked up the kaleidoscope dropped by Syd Barrett and brought it blazing into the 21st Century with a distinctly Floydian hue. Not…
An eerie silence crept down Washington Avenue this past Saturday on Memorial Day weekend, even though the street was lined with young blacks (and, to a lesser extent, Latinos and whites) streaming in and out of clubs such as crobar, Mansion, and Krave; sitting against storefronts and in front of…
The Dutch aren’t known for much besides cheese, but Tiësto and his fellow countrymen Armin Van Buuren and Ferry Corsten are making a case for Holland as the home of the DJ as rock god. Tiësto’s latest release, Just Be, is an ambitious ten-track exploration of trance mixed with traditional…
As if Timbaland hasn’t accomplished enough, Junior Boys’ debut signals another achievement for contemporary pop’s MVP: influencing (and therefore elevating) blue-eyed soul. Affected as he is, lead singer Jeremy Greenspan doesn’t need melisma or homeboy posturing when he has herky-jer-er-er-ky beats to mimic Tim’s stutter’n’B. But Exit isn’t just about…
You’re walking alone down an alien cityscape surrounded by familiar, yet vaguely threatening sounds — the far-off wail of an ambulance siren, the hollow echo of a passing subway train rising up from an iron grate, the hiss of dirty steam coming from a rusted pipe, and the sudden tap-tap-tap…
Detroit musician Amp Fiddler’s Waltz of a Ghetto Fly sounds like a homage to Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On without the drowsy cocaine-induced lows, or D’Angelo’s Voodoo without the love affair as blood-soaked ritual motif. In other words, it’s all about impassioned extemporizing, R&B as…
In 1993 Jamel Arief, better known as Masta Killa (né Noodles), was chosen as the ninth core member of the then-formidable Wu-Tang Clan. It took the professional rookie the next decade, dog years in the rap game, to ready his solo debut. No Said Date arrives as the rap cognoscenti…
Dirty Dozen Brass Band In New Orleans, people hire brass bands for all occasions, including weddings, parties, and funerals. We’re talking the rat-a-tat drum, slurping trombone, rollicking trumpet, huffing tuba, march-down-the-street combination that’s long been a unique staple of the city. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band took that formula and…
Look out, because Tommy Lee is now part of the South Beach partyscape. He has officially kicked off his new club ROK Bar after months of waiting for construction to wrap up, and a previous unofficial opening that the rock star skipped out on because he supposedly couldn’t find a…
Evolution can’t happen without the past and house music can’t move forward without its history intact. This is the philosophy Grammy-winning DJ/producer Peter Rauhofer subscribes to, and it deserves the attention of every newcomer looking to ride the wave paved by pioneers like him. On a muggy evening in New…
It’s not easy keeping up with Lil’ Jon. On a warm spring evening inside Jonathan Smith’s mansion on the exclusive South Beach community Sunset Island Number One, a temporary residence his label TVT Records has rented for him while he cranks out a new album and sundry remixes for everyone…
