Recognized along with Massive Attack and Portishead as one of trip-hop’s architects, Adrian Thaws, a.k.a. Tricky, has always been the most downbeat of the bunch, with each of his records filled with murky textures and beats caught between laid-back hip-hop and near-somnambulation. The music’s sensual creep was best described by…
Perhaps I’m dating myself, but the first record I ever owned was a K-TEL compilation that included hits by Rick James, the Police and, my personal favorite, “Rapture” by Blondie. In fact I listened to “Rapture” so many times that to this day, it’s still committed to memory word for…
Some music genres measure success with hit records, others with critical kudos. But in the world of bass, the sound of breaking glass can be the ultimate compliment. “A guy came up to me at a car show when he found out who I was,” recalls Neil Case, better known…
Ruben Blades’s Tiempos may surprise fans who identify the singer with the socially conscious salsa that was his trademark in the Eighties, a time when his albums served to introduce more than a few Anglos to Latin music. His introspective new release consists of fourteen interrelated tracks that, at times,…
Grady Champion is nothing if not an opportunist, in the best sense of the word. When the limelight is nearby, he’s not too shy to step right in and reap the rewards. For evidence check out the April issue of National Geographic magazine. The venerable publication’s feature on the blues…
The search to find what wasn’t there has brought him back to you. — Skip Spence, “Cripple Creek,” 1968 There are few albums in popular music as elusive as Skip Spence’s Oar. Spence made a name for himself in the ’60s as a drummer and guitarist, respectively, for the Jefferson…
Harry Connick, Jr.’s new album Come by Me features a picture of him, his hair tousled, his tie askew, his face plastered with a little Mona Lisa, and he’s doing this swinger thing with his hips. Okay, I guess you have to admit that the man is sexy (I’ve always…
For his second effort with side project Those Bastard Souls, head Grifter David Shouse assembled four of his friends and formed a proper band. The result was Debt & Departure, an album that delivers its strengths in the quieter moments befitting the melancholic title. Those Bastard Souls first formed under…
In 1995 Juan-Carlos Formell came to Miami for six weeks from New York City to perform Cuban classics with his band at Calle Ocho’s Café Nostalgia. Although the gig was successful enough, another Miami experience had a more profound influence on Formell and his music. One afternoon he accompanied conga…
While driving to work, you suddenly realize you left your CDs at home. As you flip indifferently through the local stations, ignoring Ricky Martin, Mega 103.5’s disco, and Orgy’s cover of “Blue Monday,” you’re reminded of why radio sucks. So you decide to give Florida International University’s new FM station,…
The promise of digital music reproduction, compact discs if you recall, was not only “perfect sound” but indestructible sound. In the future, said the salesmen, no longer will we have to return a CD to the jewel box after listening to it. Just toss it somewhere over there; it’s got…
Holy Modal Rounders Too Much Fun (Rounder) Some words of warning: If your idea of great ’60s folk music is Peter, Paul, & Mary; if you have issues with the vision of gray-haired hippies partying like it’s 1969; or if you have any aversion to whooping and hollering; you should…
“We really wanted to revolt against conventional music, against things that had a real flow. We wanted to take the template of dance music and see what new directions we could go with it,” explains Josh Kay, who along with Romulo Del Castillo make up the Miami electronic outfit Phoenecia…
My first exposure to Captain Beefheart came, aptly enough, during an intensely enjoyable acid trip to which Trout Mask Replica provided the soundtrack. It was 1983, and I was seventeen years old. Though already a seasoned music dork with obsessions that encompassed punk and zydeco, Delta blues and modern jazz,…
Salif Keita Mama (Metro Blue) If you wanted to oversimplify the short history of Afro-pop into neat categories, it would be easy. King Sunny Ade has the beats, Youssou N’Dour has the hits, and Salif Keita has the voice. But even that summation would need some updating with the release…
Salif Keita Mama (Metro Blue) If you wanted to oversimplify the short history of Afro-pop into neat categories, it would be easy. King Sunny Ade has the beats, Youssou N’Dour has the hits, and Salif Keita has the voice. But even that summation would need some updating with the release…
8 1/2 Souvenirs Twisted Desire (RCA) Get out your poodle skirts and let’s schwing, baby. The Austin, Texas-based quintet 8 1/2 Souvenirs is breaking out their groovy new CD, Twisted Desire. The band’s sound has been called sophisticated, bohemian, cool, decidedly quirky, France-meets-Austin, cosmopolitan pop, swing-influenced rockabilly Texarkana, and that…
Throughout the Nineties, the wide-ranging music collectively known as rock en español, Latin rock, or more recently, alterlatino, has been the next big thing that wasn’t. Bands playing rock, hip-hop, and the world beat dance fusions that fall helter-skelter into this category have remained the odd men out in the…
Los Zafiros Bossa Cubana (World Circuit/Nonesuch) The London-based World Circuit label has had phenomenal success with Buena Vista Social Club, Afro-Cuban All Stars, and septuagenarian singer Ibrahim Ferrer’s recent solo album. With more than two million records sold, the label is clearly on to something good: the preservation of twentieth-century…
in a straight world
In the rich, varied, and bizarre history of African pop music, the absurd tragedy of the Ethiopian pop recording industry stands alone. Less than a decade separates cradle from grave. When 24-year-old Amha Eshete took the gutsy move of founding Amha Records in Ethiopia’s capital city of Addis Ababa in…
