To most of us, “weird sounds from Boca Raton” means diamonds caught in a disposal or wheezing geriatrics struggling with groceries. And that stereotype is unlikely to change soon. Finding something edgy and hip in this subculturally deprived suburb is about as likely as finding bean sprouts on a Big…
Three nights in Miami in the heat of June. Three DJs descend on clubland. Paul Van Dyk, David Waxman, and Timo Maas represent the history of trance, spinning out the vibe’s chronology on their turntables. Police cordon off sections of NE Eleventh Street, and traffic snarls to a stoplight standstill…
When I set up a phone interview with Mark Eitzel, the last thing I expected to hear were Britney Spears jokes. The singer-songwriter’s work with American Music Club and on subsequent solo albums suggests a despondent, dreary soul. Although underground-music mavens have anointed him one of the nation’s greatest living…
In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain imagined an abrasive New Englander transforming Medieval England into a precursor of the nineteenth-century United States, complete with the plagues of a stock market, baseball leagues, and telephones. Radio Tarifa gave me an equally audacious thought: What if, instead of…
The Invisible Band, the highly anticipated album from British pop stars Travis, comes out a week after the even-more-anticipated Radiohead album. Travis continues to sound like old Radiohead: accessible and friendly. Meanwhile Radiohead continues to sound like new Radiohead: lush, layered, and dark. So this is a win-win situation. Those…
In the photograph the merengueros are decked out in Afros and bell-bottoms, Seventies-style. In the middle of the salsa boom taking place in New York, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela, Milly y los Vecinos (Milly and the Neighbors) was the first group to bring merengue to the growing Dominican community in…
On a rainy night in late January, three mostly female bands held a “Women in Salsa” summit at a packed La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley, California. Headlined by Texas transplant Marina Garza and her Orquesta D’Soul, the event was an attempt to raise much-needed recording funds for the group’s…
Whirlaway takes the stage in a wash of loud guitar atmospherics and a flash of psychedelic lighting effects. Singer Adam Rosenberg takes center stage, bathed in the glow of a red light that spills out to cover the rest of the group. A projection of multicolored bubbles appears to melt…
So, who’s the DJ?” asks the tourist, her hands juggling two lit cigarettes, a green drink, and a disposable camera. She hands one cigarette to her friend and puts her thumb on the camera’s trigger, poised to capture the next big thing, or the current thing — or anything. Below…
The Thursday before Memorial Day weekend, when New Yorkers took everybody by surprise and turned South Beach into a Cristal-poppin’ thong-droppin’ playground, four rappers from Washington Heights found themselves stranded on the sidewalk in front of Level alongside hundreds of other frustrated revelers. Funny thing is, hip-hop outfit Fulanito was…
Imagine singing in front of a packed house, lights shining brightly from above, jazz legend Stan Getz behind you, blowing breathy tones on his tenor sax, and your mother harmonizing by your side. Now imagine the stage is Carnegie Hall, and you, the singer, are all of nine years old…
Everything is overlabeled now,” Against All Authority guitarist Joe Koontz asserts during some rare downtime at a chiropractor’s office where he works as a masseur. “In the Eighties bands like the Circle Jerks and Bad Brains would play together — bands with totally different sounds — and no one would…
It’s a surprise right up there with hearing rap at a nursing home. Buena Vista Social Club bassist Orlando Cachaito Lopez busts out of the senior activity center for señors with a genre-bursting release worthy of a youngster. But few urchins could wield the know-how to carry off Cachaito by…
Why do Euro-electronica acts tease us with sexy albums we can get down to, only to follow them up with moody, dark albums we can’t? Massive Attack did it with Mezzanine, the followup to Protection. Portishead did it with its self-titled followup to Dummy. Tricky, well, who knows where his…
Three records spin simultaneously. Promoters, friends, and unfamiliar faces clamor for attention. Below the DJ booth, a hungry crowd of hundreds impatiently awaits the next track. If you don’t have Attention Deficit Disorder, you’ll get it quickly. Luckily DJ Tracy Young has learned to use ADD to her advantage. “You…
Cabarets are where you can hear people’s hearts beat,” offers Raquel Bitton, talking on the phone from her San Francisco home. She, of all people, should know. Her current touring tribute to Edith Piaf and her 30 years’ experience on small-club stages make Bitton one of the foremost experts on…
When the lineup of the first-ever JVC Jazz Festival-Miami Beach was announced, excitement and a certain wariness gripped South Florida jazz fans: anticipation for the possibility of luring topnotch talent promised by the prestigious JVC name; caution about the chances of enduring yet another mediocre musical mixed bag. Just a…
Back in 1978 the Paul Winter Consort made a kind of musical history on the disc Common Ground by incorporating the calls of wolves, birds, and humpback whales into the group’s material. Ancient Future upped the ante in 1981 with the interspecies recording Natural Rhythms, which found Matthew Montfort interacting…
Club Nation America, the latest compilation from Ultra Records, combines the talents of superstar DJs Johnny Vicious of NYC and the United Kingdom’s own Tall Paul to form a transatlantic sound so global it effortlessly stirs together tribal, house, and trance. With an unmistakable European vibe, the double-CD set blends…
Panama-born Danilo Perez never intended to be a diplomat. Maybe an electrical engineer. Definitely a jazz pianist. But a job in government? No way. Nevertheless Perez can now add the title cultural ambassador to his résumé. Last year Panamanian president Mireya Moscoso appointed Perez an official keeper of his country’s…
Autechre, the British posteverything electronic duo of Sean Booth and Rob Brown, can count on a warm reception in Miami. Much has been said of the unlikely nexus of Jeep and laptop culture in South Florida that stirred an affinity for Autechre’s cerebral aesthetic at the local Schematic Music Company…
Have amplifier, will travel. Cuban singer-songwriter Poveda never misses an opportunity to perform, whether at scheduled shows in the funky dives of Little Havana or on a street corner near you. Not averse to playing with a band (as the rambling roster of his sometime ensemble Los Bloomers de Havana…
