Princess Superstar is the DJ and the rapper. In the live arena, the New York-based smart-ass splits her time between spinning alongside Alexander Technique (as the duo DJs Are Not Rockstars) and rocking the mike in front of a full band. Her latest album, My Machine, is a dense conceptual…
We empathize with tourists: If you don’t live in Miami, it is lovely to sit poolside outside a hotel and drink complimentary cocktails from one liquor sponsor or another; to look up at the palms; to wade in the vanishing-edge pool to a throbbing soundtrack of house music. But if…
If you have ever dreamed of crab-scratching a twelve-inch, Remix magazine’s Remix Hotel Miami 2006 may be the ultimate WMC venue for you. For three days, beginning March 22, some of world’s leading music and technology pioneers will turn South Beach’s National Hotel into the largest music technology showcase of…
The thing that might be so attractive about Hot Chip is its perfect mix of diverse styles of music, compounding dance and experimental electronic with soft, tender vocals and well-written lyrics, all providing a wonderful contrast to the recurring hip-hop themes. But Hot Chip possesses not only a unique sound…
It’s practically becoming an annual tradition. A British rapper with dope skills is ushered across the pond. His albums are well reviewed by critics at Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and Spin. His songs gain popularity with college radio DJs and podcasters. His is touted to be the new face of hip-hop…
The name says it all: Masters at Work. Since 1991, Little Louie Vega has dropped gem after gem like a careless jewelry thief at Magic Sessions, the Miami Music Conference’s longest-running event. “Sixteen years later we’re still here. What does that tell you?” quips Vega. “It’s a party that has…
For young ravers, Richie Hawtin is a great DJ for supplying rhythms to roll to. With arms spread and glowsticks twirling, the world is lost in his smooth and tripnotic techno beats. But true fans of Hawtin — and his alter ego Plastikman — know his brilliant compositions of ambient…
Twenty years ago, DJ Pierre (real name: Nathaniel Pierre Jones) made the squelch heard ’round the round. Pierre, along with Spanky and Herb J (as Phuture), created the sound called acid by tinkering with a Roland TB-303 bass line machine and placing the high-pitched result atop humid Chicago house. But…
James Holden’s spanking-new album, At the Controls (Resist), is an amalgamation of various genres from the electronic music spectrum. Tracks by the likes of Plastikman and Fennesz flow with complete disregard to their differences in style. Holden’s original productions and remixes have been tinged with almost every type of sound,…
The chronicles of Murk are as eclectic as the duo’s home city. After fifteen years together, several different aliases, countless remixes, international residencies, and hit records, Ralph Falcon and Oscar G hold a Sunday-night residency at Mansion — Made in Miami — a salute to the origin of their success…
Who do that voodoo? Kudu so well. Founded in the Drrrty Drrrty (Atlanta, a.k.a. the A Game) but refined in the Borough of Kings (Brooklyn), Kudu shed all baby fat and jazz-fusion while producing the sinewy full-length, Death of the Party. Kudu — the collaboration of Deantoni Parks and Sylvia…
If you like your downtempo with hand drums, maracas, kalimbas, clanging cowbells, and vocalese, classic soul DJ Tommy Bones’s African, East Indian, and Brazilian-flavor mixes will have you dancing like the possessed. This Connecticut Yankee gone global with releases on King Street, Wave, and most recently Defected cut his teeth…
Miguel Migs’s music is not easy to classify. He hails from Northern California, and hints of the Golden State can be found shining through his productions with chill, soulful beats infused with jazzy horns and an assortment of other influences. Classy deep house tracks have made dance music’s pretty boy…
Following in the almost absurd tradition of Teflon-coated, press-shy android-funk duo Daft Punk, Frenchman Pascal Arbez-Nicolas has maintained an ambiguity in the press as he produces under the name Vitalic. Lurking in the shadows, however, has not diminished the profile of Vitalic’s unrelenting electro-house singles (releases dating from 2001 to…
I knew it was the beginning of a great night when a dopey-eyed, thuggish teenager grabbed my distressed denim skirt-clad ass on the sidewalk about a block from my destination. After threatening his life, I had finally achieved the adrenaline rush I’d been seeking all evening and was ready to…
Dan Martin wears many hats: beach bum, topless gazer, gabber, musician, performance artist, provocateur, et cetera, but since relocating to our sunny shores from Milwaukee in 2002, he certainly hasn’t dilly-dallied in pushing the boundaries of his Doormouse persona. Not to be confused with his more serene cousin, the church…
Horror music buffs know their Cramps, their Misfits, their eerie Jack Starr homemade tapes of the early Sixties, and basically every twang set to B-grade celluloid. But one of the truest horrors beset upon mankind was the recharged wave of ska-related bands of the early Nineties. Either on purpose or…
“Iko-Iko” is the name of a Fifties pop song written by James Crawford in New Orleans that quickly became a folk/blues standard and has been covered by countless legends. It is also the fitting name of the renowned Miami-based blues quartet founded by the mythical Graham Wood Drout, a vocalist/guitarist/percussionist…
Sweet New Jersey has had a bad rap for so long now it’s beginning to tarnish great summertime vacation memories of visiting my relatives in Newark. Quick facts about the Garden State: Pre-psychic friends Dionne Warwick, Frank Sinatra, and Connie Francis hail from there; the first solid-body guitar (Les Paul,…
In the aftermath of the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina on their hometown of New Orleans, Cowboy Mouth’s new album finds the bandmates bloodied but unbowed. Voodoo Shoppe is the boldest, brashest album of their collective career. A set of songs that pays tribute to both their influences and environs,…
The type of woozy, warbled guitar sounds that pervade some of Boards of Canada’s Campfire Headphase are the same brand that induced Boards member Marcus Eoin to help Bibio secure a record deal. Stephen Wilkinson, operating here as experimentalist Bibio, twists the classically arranged guitar-based songwriting on Hand Cranked into…
As Sergio Mendes’s Timeless demonstrates, the songwriting of Brazilian masters like Antonio Carlos Jobim, Baden Powell, and Jorge Ben is like architecture that retains its beauty under the weight of any addition. So while Black Eyed Peas producer will.i.am might not add any real elegance to compositions like “Surfboard” and…
