Miami’s own DJ Khaled has assembled an all-star team, drafting players Weezy fucking baby and Paul Wall as guards, Fat Joe as center, and forwards Pitbull and Rick Ross. There’s a bleacher full of screaming bitches; still, the boys are all lookin’ to score the same broad: your baby’s mama…
While microscopic tonal twinkles charge tinnily at a zillion bpm, phantoms stir and coo along to new-age fanfare. As the volume eases north; creaking, eerie violins come out to play; and thin snips mushroom into assaultive clacks, “Velocity of the Yoke” sheds its skin to reveal a screaming ghost bullet…
Nouvelle Vague is an imaginative and genre-bending group that has emerged from the French electronica scene, which is populated by many worthwhile acts that never see these shores. Those who think cover bands are worthless hacks with nothing to offer haven’t heard this Parisian duo (Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux)…
Atlanta’s Family Force Five creates a dubious first impression at best. Much like the mustached, pudgy crooner Har Mar Superstar, the act could be a colossal ironic joke the rest of us might not be getting. After all, the slogan of this group of five pasty-white hipsters with emo-style haircuts…
It is the curse of the blues musician, the tragic twist of fate that seems to haunt every player since Robert Johnson was said to have sold his soul to the Devil at the crossroads in exchange for musical immortality. The Crossroads Curse is rumored to have struck Lynyrd Skynyrd,…
Trumpeter Hugh Masekela is the one South African musician almost everybody has heard of. His American profile received a big boost when he was a member of Paul Simon’s traveling Graceland extravaganza, but he’s had a strong international presence since he fled apartheid in 1960. His blend of jazz, township…
When the Chemical Brothers ridiculed the term superstar DJ on their 1999 single “Hey Boy Hey Girl,” the duo was undoubtedly referencing (along with Paul Oakenfold and Moby) Dutch turntablist Tiësto. Like Linda Evangelista, most well-known nightclub-and-rave performers of the late Nineties wouldn’t even get out of bed (at 5:00…
People, don’t you understand? Jaheim doesn’t need your helping hand — being in the ghetto is fine with him. Over the course of three albums recorded and produced at Miami’s own Hit Factory studio, ‘Heim has dedicated his brand of R&B to reclaiming the word ghetto from those who use…
Murs’s new album, Murray’s Revenge, is a followup to his last collaboration with underground producer 9th Wonder, 2004’s critically acclaimed Murs 3:16: The 9th Edition. Although that album was moodily introspective — its cover image featured Murs under a streetlamp, tipping his hat toward the night sky — Murray’s Revenge…
You wouldn’t guess from listening to Vision Valley that the Vines have been suffering through turbulent times since their 2004 flop, Winning Days. Despite bassist Patrick Matthews’s departure, and frontman Craig Nicholls’s diagnosis with Asperger’s syndrome (which ranks with Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease as one of the Non-Shocking Announcements of…
The Subways, a postpubescent power-punk trio from the UK, have launched their career with the type of hype usually reserved for whoever happens to be dubbed this year’s next big deal. Critical darlings at home, they hit pay dirt when they were signed by Sire and bequeathed producer Ian Broudie…
What a difference a couple of decades make. Richard Butler’s long-awaited, self-titled debut is a perfect example of what happens when a onetime rebel rocker sheathes his barbs and opts instead for easy-listening accessibility. It’s not that Butler has sold out; these aren’t the sort of songs that populate radio…
Mike Milosh’s 2004 debut was rife with smitten, electronically generated balladry. The Toronto native crafted You Make Me Feel around bubbling, understated beats and sunkissed R&B vocal melodies, singing the praises of a burgeoning love in his life. When the courtship disintegrated, he wrote Meme, a considerably bleaker diary entry…
Bandleader and producer Johnny Otis gave DeSanto the nickname “Little Miss Sugar Pie” because she was so small, weighing only 85 pounds. But when she opened her mouth to sing, the intensity and volume of her blues-drenched vocals always stopped the show. In a career that now spans 50 years,…
Kaito’s eighth Kompakt release celebrates his relationship with deep house and trance in a lovely sequence of epic-length ambient segments steeped in welcoming synth washes, speaker-switching swirls, and unobtrusive beat touches. Hundred Million Light Years swims into more than an hour of play, with grand, sweeping finishes that push Kaito’s…
A brief perusal of the Essex Green’s photo on the Merge Website reveals the band has no business writing a should-be pop hit as 1985-centered as this one — no Vidal Sassoon damage, no heavy makeup masks, no keytars anywhere. Nonetheless out come the choppy skinny-tie guitars, entry-level synth figures,…
The Tampa-based lo-fi gophers of Home are all about volume and nookie this go-round. Pavement has always had a place on Home’s influences list, but “Push” moves beyond loose homage into adept imitation — a huffing, puffing, uphill-shove, Wowee Zowee-style pocket of fried, squealing guitars served at a relatively sexy…
One of the better things happening in town right now is the emergence of Wynwood’s Stop Miami bar. Stop offers a solid array of delicious and not-so-easy-to-find wines/beers at relatively affordable prices, as well as Asian, Spanish, and Middle Eastern gourmet finger foods. This coincides with the resurfacing of one…
Like Christopher Lee’s Dracula in the classic Hammer horror films from the early Sixties, speed metal cannot be killed off. Every time we think it’s finally dead and done, a new band comes along and resurrects the art of the endless guitar riff. Power trio High on Fire is the…
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist who, when young, earned a living playing in taverns frequented by prostitutes. He was later introduced to the great manic-depressive composer/pianist/writer Robert Schumann, who hailed Brahms a genius in an article titled “Neue Bahnen” (“New Paths”) in a German music publication. Brahms…
Do you like loud things? Then you’ll love the Oakland-based hard-rock quintet Watch Them Die. With enough tattoos to ensure they’ll never return to office work, the bandmates are stopping in Miami as part of the tour to promote their very aggressive new album, Bastard Son. Influenced by groups like…
This past March, National Public Radio presented a four-part series defining what reporter Felix Contreras called the “Latin alternative” genre. “It represents a sonic shift away from regionalism and points to a new global Latin identity,” he said, adding that record executives began coining the term “as a way to…
