Who the hell is this tramp, Miss Kittin? Just a few short months ago, nobody but snobby music journalists and in-the-know hipster DJs had ever heard of this sardonic Frenchie. But now she’s, like, everywhere — featured prominently on Felix Da Housecat’s 2001 album Kittenz and Thee Glitz, as well…
Purveyors of the myth that trance music germinated in Detroit in the late Seventies or on the beaches of Goa, India, sometime after that had better hope that not too many Day-Glo-sporting members of the trance nation get their hands on Egyptian drummer Mahmoud Fadl’s new The Drummers of the…
The legendary Cuban-born percussionist Francisco Aguabella certainly doesn’t have anything left to prove. After pioneering the mixture of Afro-Cuban rhythms and jazz with a handful of others from the 1950s on, his legacy would be assured even if he decided to hang up his batá drum and congas for the…
Pitchshifter is trying to earn a black belt in Digitsu, fusing breakbeats, schizo dynamics, and rapid-fire techno with industrial rock. Unfortunately its influences seem to only stretch back to early Nine Inch Nails with a pinch of Filter’s sense of melody. And lyrically, save for the cryptic refrain “Science never…
Bowery rock cooked up in Spokane, Washington. An interesting elixir. The Makers look and sound like a mission statement for Seventies rock glam: leather and scarves and skinny legs, lyrics charged with suicide, vintage Gibson SG’s for authentic buzz. And on their tenth LP, Strangest Parade, the Makers expand on…
The strongest, strangest folk-based music out of Western Europe sounds closer to medieval Bulgarian grain-threshing songs than anything from modern Scandinavia. But don’t tell that to the members of Finland’s “girl group” Värttinä, who have invented a delirium-inducing flavor of pop anchored to a seventeenth-century Finnish Karelian musical genre called…
An upbeat Pepe Alva stands unrecognized outside Billboardlive, passing out flyers to clusters of concertgoers scurrying down the escalator after the Fito Paez show. With his wavy hair tangling in the breeze, Alva sifts through the crowd unnoticed at first even though the flyers are plastered with his face. The…
Dang-dut! The sound of the tabla is unmistakable. Sharp, hollow, and surprisingly melodic for a drum, it can percolate in the background like water dripping in a subterranean pool or rattle at full throttle at machine-gun pace. Many people know the distinctive timbre of the tabla from its backbone role…
On first impression, pretty much everything about 28-year-old singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright has a regal air — his musical bloodline, his wise-old-soul artistry, his bored-but-focused conversational tone, even his model good looks. Ask him how he wants to be remembered and he’ll smoothly answer, “As a great beauty — in every…
Lyrics free of the gratuitous violence, misogyny, expletives, and overall “thugged-out/pimpin’/flossin’ my ice/packing a gat” mentality that litters the bulk of commercial hip-hop, Blackalicious — rapper Gift of Gab (Tim Parker) and his partner DJ/producer Chief Xcel (Xavier Mosley) — is, as Gab rhymes, “prone to leave your dome blown…
Dieselboy is, without a doubt, America’s most in-demand drum and bass DJ, and after releasing dozens of underground mix tapes and six highly successful commercial mix CDs, it’s understandable that he’s a little wary of putting out just another straight-ahead mix CD. So why not assemble a diverse group of…
If Elf Power had emerged in 1985 instead of 1994 from Athens, Georgia, it’d most likely be lumped in with the (mostly) ill-fated Paisley Underground bands (Rain Parade, the Three O’Clock, Dream Syndicate) or the more general niche of “neo-psychedelic” (the Church, Bevis Frond, Spacemen 3). Fortunately there’s been a…
Lovers of fado — the sublimely melancholy Portuguese ballad that is something like that country’s Delta blues — will find reason to rejoice in Mariza’s international debut, Fado Em Mim. The 26-year-old singer is already a rising star in her native country, with critics there likening her to the last…
Describing Gino Sitson, the Cameroonian-born singer who now resides in New York, as an African Bobby McFerrin might give listeners a clue as to the vocal acrobatics that define his sound, but it wouldn’t quite do justice to the broadness of his palette. On Sitson’s new Song ‘Zin, the singer…
Is Laurie Anderson the coolest chick on the planet? Not only has she thrived all these years with her artistic integrity intact, but she’s done it while scoring a number-two hit on the pop charts (in England, even cooler), making the critically acclaimed concert film Home of the Brave, and…
Cabaret Diosa — the nine-piece extravaganza of guitars, horns, mambo, swing, jazz, and, of course, dancing — is a band that exudes more drama than a late-night Springer marathon. The Boulder-based neo-Latin ensemble always folds a hearty dose of theater and cartoon-caperish quality into its episodic stage shows. Diosa vocalist/guitarist…
From this Miami Beach office window, you can almost see the Sony building. For independent dance label SFP (Sounds For the People), this is about as close as it gets to the record-biz big time. In fact the only thing SFP seems to have in common with the music giant…
La Crescenta, California, is hardly known as a hotbed for rock and roll, nor is it the place you’d expect to find the most prominent dance/rock group in the United States. But this far-northern suburb in Crescenta Valley, tucked up against the Verdugo Mountains, is what Ken Jordan and Scott…
Once you get the name, then you’ll understand the method behind the dance-hit factory known as Funky Green Dogs. Producers/DJs Oscar Gaetan and Ralph Falcon are easing into evening at an Ocean Drive coffee shop fresh off the heels of another Winter Music Conference and the news that their latest…
It’s a year of firsts for Headstrong. The former London, Ontario band is still psyched about its first U.S. tour. That follows a newly released major-label debut. Even the band’s name replaces a former moniker. Most important, Headstrong is for the first time a true contender in the realm of…
If there’s been one constant in the long and winding career of Turkish virtuoso Omar Faruk Tekbilek, it’s his music, emphasis on his. From the nightclubs of Adana and Istanbul; to the production line of a Rochester, New York, clothing factory; to a string of albums and recognition as one…
The “Do It Yourself” ethic often espoused by rock-ready kids is too rarely put into practice. When given the choice between putting out their own music or hoping an A&R guy will eventually come around with contracts and cigars, 99 percent choose to wait. After waiting two years to arrive…
