Most artists these days are obsessed with sex of the romantic, psychological, and gynecological kind. But few are as playfully raunchy as Blowfly. The nom de plume for funk musician Clarence Reid, Blowfly charmingly reduces the act of making love to its nasty, all-too-human essence: pussies and dicks (or in…
Acht so! Nobody knows exactly what it sounds like. I think maybe it could be a kind of dance you do with your eyes, like shhh shhh, like moving your eyelashes, you know, in a charming way.” This is how Françoise Cactus, half of the plucky Franco-Deutscher duo Stereo Total,…
As is the case in all major American cities, you can hear almost any sound in Miami, from cheap crunk and tribal house to meat-market salsa and roots reggae. Even subcultural disciplines such as IDM and electro have supporters who blare the music at select out-of-the-way clubs. But I have…
Rajko “Isolée” Mueller’s 2000 debut, Rest, was a classic piece of electronic music that truly encapsulated tech-house, a term that has been kicked around ever since Armand Van Helden and Carl Cox began slamming out records with a fiercely seductive 4/4 beat. (Confusingly their music is now referred to as…
Whenever a musical artist has a child, there’s an immediate trepidation among fans that the artist’s next release will be all soft and sentimental. But what if the artist’s music is already plush and complacent? Well then you have J.A.C. , the fourth album by Vienna’s breathy, blunted duo Tosca…
On her sophomore album, The Golden Morning Breaks, Parisian Cécile Schott (a.k.a. Colleen) ditches the samples that dominated her 2003 debut, Everyone Alive Wants Answers, for some found sounds of her own making. Like a one-woman Animal Collective, Schott composes her music to sound spontaneous, as if each lovely melody…
After two years of hibernation, Four Tet returns with Everything Ecstatic, a manic and unhinged album of free-jazz blowouts and psychedelic, Terry Riley-inspired “all-night flights.” Long gone are the soporific sped-up acoustic guitar and gamelan samples of earlier albums. Songs such as “Sun Drums and Soil” and “Sleep, Eat Food,…
It’s appropriate that a musician who makes such a murky sound should adapt the name Smog as his nom de plume. Singer-songwriter Bill Callahan’s penchant for spinning stark, world-weary ballads gives this River a languid flow, instilling a sense of quiet yearning and desperation that shifts only slightly from haunting…
Oasis — remember them? “Wonderwall,” et cetera? Yeah, you probably heard them — almost a decade ago. That leads one to wonder if Don’t Believe the Truth, Oasis’s first release in three years, is the band publicly debating its own relevance. The music offers some indication; there is hardly any…
If Franz Ferdinand is the Oasis of the current dance-punk movement, churning out effortlessly populist singles; and Bloc Party is the Blur responsible for the genre’s artier, more sophisticated studio creations; then Maxïmo Park has emerged as the present-day equivalent of Pulp supplying a much-needed bridge between unbridled hedonism and…
Spread out over five days and numerous venues, this year’s JVC Jazz Festival boasts a truly impressive list of talent. The main concert, which takes place at the Jackie Gleason Theater Friday, June 3, is a smooth jazz blowout featuring Norman Brown, Chris Botti, Raul Midon, Peabo Bryson, Brenda Russell,…
This month Centro Cultural Español is cosponsoring five concerts, four of which are free. The series includes performances by singer-songwriter Miguel Luna, the popular Spanish fusion band Ojos de Brujo, balladeer Pedro Guerra (who will give an acoustic set), and a joint appearance by jazz singer Celia Mur and pianist…
In 2005, house music is still everywhere. Want proof? Meet Jask, a producer from Tampa, of all places, who is slowly building a reputation with his brand of “Thai house,” a rhythmically deep twist on the sound that will ring familiar to fans of Osunlade, Ron Trent, and François Kervorkian…
His controlled falsetto has more in common with veteran Jamaican singers Pat Kelly and Junior Murvin than with Sizzla or Luciano, the latter whose styles constitute the current reggae vocal paradigm; while his lyrics — eschewing the repetitive one-love rhymes and ganja glorification that has dulled the diversity of roots…
Every month or so for the past year and a half, Radamas Maldonado has thrown a Sunday-night networking party at his house in Miami Lakes. He purchases several hundred dollars’ worth of alcohol and food and invites all of his friends in the Miami hip-hop industry. DJ Radamas has a…
Chuck D. once said, “Move as a team, never move alone.” And it’s true, at least in hip-hop culture. Rap fans are obsessed with crews, and when a major star’s career is jumping off, his whole camp usually gets to go along for the ride. How else do you explain…
“They say the crocheted pants and the sweater was wack/Seen ‘The Corner,’ now they say that nigga’s back,” raps Common on “They Say,” a jingling track on his sixth album, Be. The consciously scaled-down Be, then, is yin to 2002’s Electric Circus, an album of avant- and acid-hop yang that…
In a post-Joss Stone world, can’tneverdidnothin’ is primed to bring Nikka Costa’s brand of blue-eyed funk to the masses. It’s carefully orchestrated and expertly jammed out, from multiple appearances by Lenny Kravitz, Questlove, and urban session man James Poyser to sundry raunchy licks, hard funk, and wise-girl vibes. Only the…
Because 2005 seems to be the year when scattered is the new focused, Gorillaz’s sophomore album, Demon Days, couldn’t sound savvier. Damon Albarn’s melodies burst with stop-on-a-dime aplomb, while coproducer Danger Mouse incorporates every genre in the pop-music rainbow in his sound palette and still manages to keep things lean…
The boring middle-ground crap that plagues electronica and instrumental hip-hop has no such effect on And Everything Else …, the third outing from LA beatmaker Elvin “Nobody” Estela. He bridges dusty psychedelic loops and Nineties hip-hop beats with intricacy and restraint so that this disc doesn’t lean in either direction:…
Three albums deep into his post-Pavement solo career, Stephen Malkmus has somewhat abandoned his obscurantist tendencies for Face the Truth. On the opener “Pencil Rot,” he pleads “save me from me” amid synth squiggles lifted from the Fiery Furnaces’ Blueberry Boat. He speaks of languish somewhere in the nonsensical language…
Listening to the Mountain Goats’ fantastically touching new album feels like digging through leader John Darnielle’s childhood cedar chest, but what you’ll find, set against emotionally heavy piano and vengeful violin, can be hard to digest. “Dance Music” pairs giddy acoustic riffs with chilling lyrics (“I dash upstairs for cover/Leaning…
