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…
Part of the appeal of producing music with machines and expensive toys is that instruments and complex beats can be synthesized with the turn of a knob. Yet when a DJ’s live set is more akin to checking e-mail than performing, technology can be a drawback. D:Fuse is bringing the…
House music veteran Frankie Knuckles and rising stars Simon Marlin and Max Reich, a.k.a. the Shapeshifters or Shape UK, are joining forces during WMC to promote their respective new albums. If Knuckles’s 2004 A New Reality is any indicator of what to expect for his new release, fans of house…
Actor Jared Leto (Requiem for a Dream, Fight Club) has been fasting for four days. Except for water, fresh lemon, and cayenne pepper, he plans to consume little else for a few more days. Leto is burning off the staggering 62 pounds he packed on to play John Lennon’s assassin,…
Jack DeJohnette, from his frenzied funk-brilliance electric period, to his masterful work driving Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio and performances such as his recent exploratory show with Chick Corea and Eddie Gomez at the IAJE (International Association for Jazz Education) conference in New York, has never shied away from an almost…
Big Shiny Cars is an intelligent, glossy update of classic country-rock. As on the 2002 major-label debut, Pinmonkey, the band splits the difference between country and something a bit more akin to the Americana of Los Lobos. Michael Reynolds’s tenor vocals glide over songs like Dolly Parton’s “Down,” which sounds…
Prior to Stereolab taking off, hipster siren/chanteuse Laetitia Sadier made her living as an au pair. With its advancing and receding brass sweeps, rose-color kaleidoscopic organ carousels, burrowing keyboard weevils, and Sadier’s own twisting vocal glide, “Plastic Mile” evokes a slow, sweet cable-car ride across a theme park of unspeakably…
It feels like any other morning at Calle Ocho’s world-famous Domino Park. Groups of elderly guayabera-clad Cuban men play dominoes amid the usual exile chatter and cigar smoke. But only a few feet away, a small crowd of city officials and camera crews breaks the monotony as the men witness…
Studio A’s creators see Miami as an important, untapped entertainment resource. “Miami has had a big void in live music for years. When I was growing up here, the tours would all stop in Atlanta … but there’s such a young, energetic, creative art scene breaking out of Miami, and…
For Copperopolis, Charlie Hunter, accustomed to switching personnel from album to album, sticks with the same jam-oriented jazz trio heard on 2004’s Friends Seen and Unseen, a subsidiary of the quintet from the previous year’s Right Now Move, his last of six discs for Blue Note. Hunter plays guitar and…
The ten-year anniversary of the DJ-Kicks series is celebrated in DJ-Kicks: The Exclusives, a scouring of Berlin’s !K7 respectable back catalogue. The results deal in a getting-the-guests-in-the-living-room-stoned type of downbeat as well as in coke-fueled club-floor dry-humpers. Standouts hold down The Exclusives in the first few cuts — in the…
Hank Williams’s grandson has a problem with Nashville. His two-disc Straight to Hell swipes at “pop country,” guys who “write those hit songs down at PolyGram,” and women who need “more dick down on Music Row.” And that’s not even counting Hank III’s dismissal of Kid Rock: “He’s a Yank,…
John Ringhofer, a.k.a. Half-Handed Cloud, gives the impression of being a bit of an eccentric. He turns his songs into a series of sacred psalms and then spears the sentiments with an irrepressible blend of wit and whimsy. At less than 30 minutes long, Halos & Lassos unfolds in a…
Back in the early days of Mogwai’s career, an album titled Mr. Beast would have matched the band’s category-five noise hurricanes perfectly. But as the Scotsmen refined their sound over the next decade, moments of levity and clarity — airy synths, strings, eerie silences — made the band’s emotional maelstroms…
The funky, closely stitched guitar flow underlining “Black Biscuit” isn’t the only thing this truncated wonder has going for it — Kauffman spoons in gyrating tambourines, chock-chock cowbells, and exultant, soulful heys — but the über-groovy, precision rhythmic riffing is what sticks to the mental ribs, invites stabs at the…
Map of the Universe whets local appetites with this two-song single of spaghetti-Western-inspired Dark Wave postpunk. Danceable? Yes. Head-bopping? For sure. Melancholic undertones fuel catchy hooks and riffs on these rhythm-solid tracks. Your job? Keep your eyes open for the April full-length on New Art School Records…
Michelle Riu isn’t exactly what one might expect of a local singer/songwriter. There are no syncopated salsa rhythms or thumping reggaeton bass lines here. Instead her Cuban ancestry fuses with Southern sensibilities, making her songs a welcome addition to the often-nebulous pop-country genre. Her thick, smoky warble is evocative of…
Juan Gabriel is arguably among the more important figures in modern Mexican music, having written some of its most famous songs, including “Querida,” “Hasta Que Te Conocí,” and “Amor Eterno.” Gabriel has also worked extensively as a producer (for Rocio Dúrcal, Lucha Villa, Lola Beltrán, and even Paul Anka) and…
Kirk Franklin was abandoned as an infant by his biological mother and, never knowing his father, was raised by his Aunt Gertrude, a deeply religious woman who paid for his piano lessons by collecting aluminum cans. He became fascinated with gospel music and by age eleven was directing adult choirs…
Brazilian Girls make rhythmic, danceable melodies infused with creative, truthful, and sometimes very personal lyrics, but more important, the trio knows how to put on a beautiful, almost hypnotic live performance. Sabina Sciubba boasts the vocal mastery and stage presence of songstress legends like Debbie Harry and the cool calm…
Arab Strap, Scotland’s answer to Leonard Cohen, has spun a web of unhappy relationships and bitter regrets for nearly a decade. But the band’s music has evolved dramatically from the slow, churning sparks of its initial releases to The Last Romance, which presents full-bore rock numbers alongside that early sound…
