Of all the tributes offered to the inimitable Celia Cruz over the past week, perhaps the most moving was that of Descemer Bueno, frontman of the band Siete Rayos (Seven Lightning Bolts). Readers might recognize Bueno’s name as a composer, arranger, and vocalist on Yerba Buena’s celebrated debut CD President…
Going to the Vans Warped tour is like taking a trip to Taco Bell: It’s cheap, there’s dozens of configurations of essentially the same ingredients, and you know ahead of time how it’s gonna taste. But damn if it doesn’t hit the spot every now and again! It’s a pretty…
“I just want to be able to do this full-time,” says the soft-spoken singer/songwriter Isaac Lekach, a skinny guy of Russian/Cuban heritage better known as Poulain. The 22-year-old from North Miami Beach hopes he’s found the ticket to independent living in a new recording contract with Fiddler, a music label…
Anti-comic Neil Hamburger is traveling from Detroit to Pittsburgh and his cell phone service is failing miserably. After the third disconnection, he issues this apology: “We passed some skunks back there. The smell was too strong for the satellite. I stuck some Ding-Dong wrappers on the antennae. I hope they…
Left Coast producer Madlib has always had a knack for turning his studio in-jokes into tangible musical projects. In 1999 he received major critical acclaim when he sped his voice up to become The Unseen MC Quasimoto. In 2002 he and his friend Declaime released “Flowers,” a novelty R&B record…
While superheroes are abandoning their metropolises this summer for Tinseltown’s big paydays and exclusive spa memberships, Metal Face Doom, the “world’s most celebrated super villain,” is having none of it. He’s staying underground in a damp lair watching old Godzilla films with his wily crew of Monsta Island Czars and…
There is an austerity to the Lifesavas that some will find off-putting or atypical of underground hip-hop acts. One skit on their debut album, Spirit in Stone, “Thuggity Skit,” clumsily parodies monosyllabic Southern rappers. On “Livin’ Time/Life Movement I,” Vursatyl proclaims, “We pro-life and we’re pro-longevity/Procreation/Produce/Provocative/And pro-prosperity,” while “State of…
Chingy’s debut album, Jackpot, rides into record stores on the strength of “Right Thurr,” an insanely catchy single full of chest-swelling keyboard melodies. It sounds like the inside of a strip club, spewing out snare effects and lewd drum patterns inspired by the Neptunes that twirl and clap like dancers…
Last week my editor suggested I write about South Beach clubs that have a similar vibe or crowd to Miami hot spots like I/O and Slak Lounge. She argued that I would be “doing my readers a service.” So let’s see … are there any cool clubs in SoBe unprotected…
Tie-dye nation, hear thy call: The Dead are coming to town. And while they’re no longer “Grateful,” they are still alive and performing after all those long, strange trips. Sharing the bill (and for a set, the stage, too) with the group for the first time since 1987 is old…
Norteño is music for urban cowboys in shiny silk shirts, a slick country sound made with accordions and tubas, rattling gourds, and other pieces of rustic percussion along with bass and bajo sexto (twelve-string guitar). It’s most popular in northern Mexico and in the southwestern United States. Along with its…
In last year’s rockumentary 24 Hour Party People, the north English industrial town of Manchester was depicted as the hub of the mod musical universe from the late Seventies through the early Nineties. Although one tune from the Buzzcocks — the irresistible “Ever Fallen in Love” — made it onto…
Tired of listening to the same old stuff, you plod into the world-music section of your friendly neighborhood CD store. The cover of a Tuvan throat-singing or Algerian rai disc inexplicably catches your eye, and you take it home without the slightest idea of how it’s supposed to sound. But…
Compay Segundo could have easily lived out his life in the relative obscurity that had characterized most of his more than seven decades as a professional musician. Fate, however, decreed otherwise. By the time of his death in Havana this past Sunday at the age of 95, the elder statesman…
For nearly a decade the inventive Welsh quintet Super Furry Animals has been chomping on the tenets of prog and psychedelia while gleefully undermining them with elements of electronica, ragged folk-pop, and indie-rock dissonance. This is a band that has written a track around studio guest Sir Paul McCartney munching…
When it comes to his own recordings Stefan Betke, a veteran sound engineer for respected techno musicians like Basic Channel and Maurizio, has an obsession with the tinniest of sounds, including those accidentally created from faulty equipment. His delicate, sparse take on production has often been recognized as an extension…
With the performances that compose Big Band Time, Cuban alto saxophonist and clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera offers his listeners a chance to hear arrangements of previously recorded material for that most powerful of jazz ensembles, the big band — in this case the WDR Big Band Cologne. This revisiting of material…
In 1983 ambient composer Brian Eno released Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundscapes with his brother Roger and protégé Daniel Lanois. It’s an album about the moon that they composed for Al Reinert’s documentary, For All Mankind. Reinert’s film uses NASA footage from various Apollo missions, and the accompanying soundtrack is three…
While a local sighting of Victor Calderone behind the turntables is none too rare, it’s good that there is actually a celebrity DJ out there doing the unexpected: that is, practicing the subtle art of working a nightclub with his mixes. Unlike a lot of jocks, Calderone knows he’s not…
Hélène Gherman, one of the founders of the Vive La World! tour, had her doubts. Would American audiences embrace a festival whose raison d’être is to showcase the new music emanating from France in the United States and Canada, and which is sponsored and promoted with the help of the…
The 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia, is a hallowed place in indie-rock lore. More than twenty years ago, R.E.M., Pylon, and the B-52’s got their start at the self-described “premier music club in the Southeast,” helping to create the notion that American regional music scenes had indigenous sounds. But…
Dancehall reggae and hip-hop have always been kissing cousins, but lately they’ve been getting it on in the open. Hybrid releases are more popular than ever, yielding a stunning range of both commercial and underground sounds. The latest generation of ocean-straddling beats and rhymes paints an interesting picture of how…
