On the evening of Saturday, February 28, as the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, braced itself for a possible rebel attack, and President Jean-Bertrand Aristide defiantly clung to power for a few more hours, a small and peaceful demonstration took place in Miami’s own Little Haiti. Dozens of protesters marched on…
They’re changing the DJs at the annual Ultra Music Festival, held on Saturday, March 6. Sweat soaking through the seat of his khaki pants, Sander Kleinenberg gets ready to give up the decks at 4:45 p.m. to his pal Pete Tong, one of several big-name DJs scheduled to take the…
The word “remix” almost invariably implies radical surgery that drastically alters the cosmetics of a performance. But every once in a while the procedure turns out to be surprisingly noninvasive. Take Tangle Eye’s re-envisioning of eleven classic Alan Lomax folk recordings that were recently reissued as part of Rounder Records’…
The postpunk revival is the new grunge. Not since the early days of Nirvana and Soundgarden have a group of bands seemed so intent on cultivating a retro aesthetic. There’s nothing wrong with wearing your influences on your sleeve, but these revivalists — led by the Strokes, Interpol, the Rapture,…
The Cooper Temple Clause, a six-piece touted as yet another “next big thing” from the U.K., may actually live up to the hype. Their second full-length, Kick Up The Fire, And Let The Flames Break Loose, is the first to be released domestically, just in time for a reprieve from…
90 Day Men make great piano-centralized rock colored with vocals reminiscent of Mike Patton’s Tomahawk coming down on a grandmother’s couch in broad daylight. The Windy City quartet resembles few bands, except for TV on the Radio, and only because both combine stark and dodgy originality with slightly unsettling introspection…
Goodbye skronky art-noise, hello lush dream-pop! Such a makeover worked wonders for Mercury Rev, and now Blonde Redhead has fully embraced its collective inner softie on Misery is a Butterfly, the band’s sixth studio album. The transformation might not be quite as jarring to steady followers of the New York-based…
When TV on the Radio dropped its 2003 EP Young Liars, music magazine junkies witnessed a pause in the incessant splurge of cool tagging. Here was a band, from Brooklyn no less, that sidesteps this decade’s music/fashion death-race with a calm, thoughtful maturity that manifests itself equally well in ink…
When It Falls sounds like an extension of a theme first explored on Zero 7’s acclaimed debut, Simple Things. The electronic soul, produced by Sam Hardaker and Henry Binns, vibrates with warmth, and the vocalists, Sia Furler and Sophie Barker, burn slow elocution over it until the music becomes a…
I woke up in a strange bed last week on Wednesday, surrounded by empty baggies, wondering where the last five days of my life went. That’s a sign of a good Winter Music Conference. But as fun as it was, this year felt like a routine compared with others. For…
Humberto Guida is missing in action and presumed bedded. Our “BuzzIn” columnist was last spotted just after midnight outside the V.I.P. area at the Ultra Music Festival, the official opening party for the sixteenth annual Winter Music Conference. Guida’s pupils were the size of Frisbees, and he repeatedly brandished a…
If last weekend is any indication (and as of this writing, there are still three nights left to go), happy days are here again for the sprawling five-day festival popularly known as the Winter Music Conference. “It’s going better than ever,” reports WMC co-founder Bill Kelly from the poolside area…
As hard as we may wish and pray for it to happen, Alicia Keys will probably never serve any of her acolytes a steaming cup of hot chocolate (made with cream, not water). It’s something we dream about every time we hear her cell phone conversation in her current chart-topper,…
Unlike rock and hip-hop stars, dance music’s biggest names aren’t shy about mixing it up with the fans. Perhaps because of the ego-free nature of dance music, DJs are often unrecognized and able to mingle without being mobbed. This remains one of the dance scene’s most endearing qualities, along with…
Prior to the release of his artist album, International Affairs, and alongside his extensive production work for the likes of Erykah Badu and Common (not to mention his projects with King Britt and Roni Size), Philadelphia’s Vikter Duplaix had a significant impact on eclectically driven dance floors with his downtempo-geared…
The biggest disservice you could do Just Jack would be to approach his debut album, The Outer Marker, thinking of him as a follower of the Streets. Sure, they’re both white guys from the United Kingdom who speak observationally about their surroundings and life in general in a frisky accent,…
It is said that a watched pot boils more slowly. Well, the genre coined as microhouse certainly has many a gaze — journo at least — turned on it. And if The Present Lover, only the second album since 2000 by Luomo — a PowerBook-pop guise of Finnish producer Vladislav…
Sometimes the heckler is right. Many moons ago, a young Millie Jackson wrecked some poor tuneless hackette’s act at the famed Harlem nightclub Small’s Paradise. The would-be diva dared Jackson to come onstage. Oops! After dusting off the object of her ridicule with her gorgeous, soaring alto, Jackson embarked on…
The old, supposedly cursed spot at 1235 Washington Ave. is back in black. Gerry Kelly and Noah Lazes sold what was then Level to the Opium Group’s Milon Brothers last year. The new owners renamed the space Mansion and procured the services of top-shelf promoters Michael Capponi and Antonio Misuraca…
Record companies love to say that their song did well at the Winter Music Conference. “This was the hit of WMC!” looks great splashed across the sales sheets and press releases. (If I had a nickel for every hype sheet I get with this absurd claim on it, well, I…
Is the Winter Music Conference ready to grow up? Praga Bhandari thinks so. “You could say our event represents a maturing of the music audience,” says the drummer for Formula One, a band that specializes in “dirty rock and roll.” The New York City outfit will be one of several…
As possibly the only genre in modern dance music that Britain can truly call its own, drum and bass is a U.K. phenomenon that has been slow to catch on in the United States. In the last year, however, the style has gone through a period of malaise in its…
