Like so many ragtag, fresh-faced (or willfully bearded) insurgents tarred with the freak-folk or New Weird America (the latter a genre tag so broad it’s almost useless) brushes, Philadelphia’s Espers draw melodic sustenance from a mind-boggling number of obscure and traditional organs and stringed things. A decided sense of purpose…
On this single, the cousins from Decatur show as much love for Gene Wilder’s portrayal of Willie Wonka as they did for Jennifer Holliday’s Dreamgirls hook earlier this year. Sho Nuff cites e.e. cummings as an influence in his rhyming, while Big Marc attends to a stripped-down rhythm track. The…
With all the reissues and edits of classic Afro-Latin and funk gems, one of the only bands to keep hitting you consistently with new flava is this one here, Brooklyn’s brilliant Antibalas. From the slept-on soundtrack to the basketball documentary 25 Strong, “K-Leg” — complete with dizzying horn arrangements and…
On the first single from his upcoming mixtape-album, Run the Streets, Vol. 1, Street murders the Donny Hathaway sample with a bevy of percussion rolls and chops, while Smitty spits that M.I.Yayo slang and Jae Millz counters with his Lenox Avenue swagger…
As any one of the several hundred insanely lucky converts who were on hand to hear Osunlade spin in Miami Beach this past February will attest, his sets are exhaustive, transforming, uplifting experiences that transcend the auditory, engaging all the senses and, Osunlade hopes, the soul. “I like to call…
Envelope pushers. Experimentalists. Nutters. Call ’em what you will, but when these three musicians sleep, they sleep soundly. Their “experiment” has been ongoing for thirteen years, and accolades and fans have grown exponentially. Meticulous, rambunctious, well-meaning anarchy — rather than free-form experimental jazz malarkey — characterizes their style. Despite operating…
During much of the year, the melancholy tango of Miami’s 60,000-strong Argentine community is often overpowered by the bubbling salsa of the much larger Cuban population. Still, when Argentines want to be heard, they know just how to shake it up — by rocking the city to its core at…
What do candy ravers, goths, and swing kids have in common? They were all products of trends that flourished and then receded into the depths of subcultural obscurity. Several years later the Rainbow Brite-wannabes may have adopted a more demure style, but that doesn’t stop them from coming out of…
Chances are that if you live in Miami-Dade County, you have at one time or another heard the swirling, merengue-tinged rhythms emanating from homes in Caribbean neighborhoods or rising from strip malls that seemingly contain only a beauty parlor and a Haitian video store. Most likely what you are hearing…
Japan’s chromatic quartet MONO balances bursts of catharsis and pleas for clemency. The groups exalts tone-rending reverence with the deft delivery of many Chicago postrock groups and equally hefty, heavenly bands including Boston’s Isis and Texans Explosions in the Sky. Six years in existence, MONO has established itself adroit at…
Less than 60 seconds into Don of All Dons, his comeback album and alleged swan song released this week, Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell is already knee-deep in raunch. “How many ladies’ pussies smell good?” he coos to his unseen (and likely nonexistent) female audience. “Give yourself a round of applause…
An avant-garde effort by two disparate bands attempting to bridge the expanse between experimental jazz and neoclassical composition, The Nitrate Hymnal is odd yet ambitious. Punk veterans the Gena Rowlands Band and fusion cooperative Anti-Social Music have pooled their ambitions to create a sparse, idealized narrative about an old woman…
Finding himself committed once again to a slower, gloomier aesthetic with this Frisco indie-metal all-star project, High on Fire/Sleep frontman Matt Pike chose not only to swim rather than sink but also to spin it into the Devil’s water ballet. Fierce shades of Sabbath carry over from Pike’s HoF scene-busting,…
Hillstomp
Much of Calexico’s Garden Ruin is bland and muted. Many of its songs are slow and sonorous, but not in a good way. It isn’t because of Joey Burns’s small, unassuming voice, which is evocative in a heartfelt way, nor is it the band’s musical abilities, which are sharp. It’s…
Avant-garde New Waver, auteur, and mastermind producer behind (heh heh) Coil’s epically experimental Scatology, Marc Almond has likely been yearning lo these 25 years to become disassociated from the instantly recognizable snyth sample in 1981’s fluke Soft Cell hit “Tainted Love.” Rihanna, Jay-Z’s teen prodigy from Barbados, grants Almond’s wish…
As Court & Spark guitarist/singer M.C. Taylor unhurriedly lays down meaty, old-school Joe Walsh-style riffs, it’s impossible not to picture him affecting a self-satisfied pout — an image that seems at odds with the poignant, clearing-at-the-end-of-the-path lyricism he imbues with such weary resignation: “I’m an old man in the gloaming/Sky,…
Assuming the position, following “that cute DJ” Desyn Masiello’s turn, as mixmaster for the Balance CD series (it’s up to number nine) is Paolo Mojo, a British turntablist who has been around since the early Nineties and has flirted often with ignition but failed to quite catch — until now,…
Two punk/hardcore/oi! powerhouses collide within the confines of Churchill’s for what will surely be a drunken testosterone orgy. Legendary British street punk the Business has two-plus decades of fist-waving anthems to its credit, while New Yorker verité Roger Miret of the Disasters made his unquestionable bones fronting Agnostic Front. Though…
The talented Argentine interpretive pianist Marcela Martinez will have her hands full as she presents the American musical debut of the work of Cuban composer Ramiro Valdés Puentes, who was born in Havana in 1963. Martinez will introduce audiences to Valdés Puentes’s “Sonata Americana” and will also perform other pieces,…
The showcase of hip-hop overachievers seems at first offing to be an effort toward creating one of the most dour concerts of the year, given “conscious” rap’s reputation for PBS-correct depictions of urban dwelling. The Roots, however, have become more interesting and more verbally aggro, following the failure of 1999’s…
