Music

BEST LOCAL BAND NAME Buddha Gonzalez and the Headless Chiwawas If you don’t get it, you need to spark up some buddha and listen to Buddha and his funky gang as you let the THC soak in…

BEST LOCAL BAND NAME OF ALL TIME Adam Walsh and the McArthur Kids Amber Alert. It has been some time since anyone heard of these unscrupulous punk rockers with the audacity to capitalize on missing and murdered children. The Kendall thrashers had a short run ripping up local venues before…

BEST LATIN MUSIC PROGRAM Fusión Latina Weeknights from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. WDNA-FM (88.9) Distracted by beautifully moving bodies at dance clubs, many people easily forget that a great deal of today’s popular Latin music has roots firmly planted in the jazz tradition. Thanks to a clever mix of old…

BEST BRAZILIAN RADIO PROGRAM Café Brasil with Gene de Souza Sundays from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. WDNA-FM (88.9) www.wdna.org If the extent of your exposure to Brazilian music is “The Girl from Ipanema,” then you have really been missing out. Brazil has the most diverse music culture: Under the…

BEST JAZZ RADIO PROGRAM Evenin’ Jazz with Len Pace 9:15 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. Monday through Friday WLRN-FM (91.3) 305-995-2220 Len Pace is South Florida’s wise old man of jazz. For more than three decades he’s been a convivial presence on our radio airwaves, his musical interests wide-ranging and sophisticated,…

PERSONAL BEST The Waterford Landing “The suburban landscape is fertile with seeds of discontent, mischief, and dreams of flight,” muses The Waterford Landing on its Website. It is just this sort of slightly wistful, aridly humorous, possibly serious thought process that distinguishes the Southwest Miami-Dade trio and moves it in…

BEST LOCAL LATIN ROCK BAND Suenalo Sound System www.suenalomusic.com Every year the Florida frontier becomes more polyglot. About the only South Americans who haven’t made a move on these parts are the Bolivians, the Guyanans, and the Surinamese. They’re also about the only ones not representin’ for Suenalo, the source…

BEST LOCAL ALBUM OF THE PAST TWELVE MONTHS Our Endless Numbered Days Iron & Wine www.ironandwine.com There’s considerable paradox in the fact that a folk poet such as Sam Beam could emerge from the land of Art Deco, Miami Vice, and Modelpalooza. Beam, known as Iron & Wine, sings of…

BEST CONCERT OF THE PAST TWELVE MONTHS Kraftwerk at the Jackie Gleason Theater It’s no secret that South Florida usually gets short shrift from major touring acts, but November was a grand exception. In an amazing turn of good luck, the granddaddy of electronic/synth acts, Kraftwerk, chose the Jackie Gleason…

SECOND BEST CONCERT OF THE PAST TWELVE MONTHS Wilco at the Pompano Beach Amphitheater It was difficult to tell who was more perplexed by the size and passion of Wilco’s crowd: the band’s singer Jeff Tweedy or the Pompano Beach Amphitheater’s security guards, who spent the early part of the…

BEST LOCAL RECORD LABEL Schematic www.schematic.net Romulo del Castillo and Josh Kay operate Schematic out of a warehouse space in Little Haiti, issuing a variety of experimental electronic-music albums that veer from vaguely danceable beats to astringent, arrhythmic noise. Since its inception in 1996 Schematic has matured into a fine…

BEST LOCAL JAZZ ARTIST José Negroni After teaching for seventeen years at the prestigious Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico, pianist José Negroni moved to Miami. In 2003 his trio released its first CD, Naturaleza/Nature, followed last year with Piano-Drums-Bass (both on Universal Latino). As part of a new wave…

BEST LOCAL ACOUSTIC PERFORMER Jim Camacho Although he’s years removed from major-label status (via his now-defunct band the Goods), Jim Camacho is still an ambitious performer. This past fall he released an independent album, Stalker Songs, that was beautifully packaged with a series of postcards designed by Charlie Calderin and…

BEST RECORDING STUDIO The Hit Factory Criteria 1755 NE 149th Street North Miami-Dade 305-947-5611 The digital revolution has enabled aspiring and professional musicians alike to churn out monster hits from their bedrooms. The technology is to a point where even novices can manipulate music to sound just as they think…

For the past two decades Erasure has sung of unrequited yearning, producing a sparkling catalogue quickly cited by any advocate of the lush trills, frills, and thrills of synth-pop. The group consists of flamboyant “choirboy” Andy Bell and Vince Clarke, one of electronic music’s true innovators, whose past adventures prior…

The presence of several hundred musicians, composers, record executives, publishing company figureheads, members of the media, and surgically enhanced groupies in Miami for the 2005 Billboard Latin Music Conference & Awards wasn’t needed to prove that the popularity gap between Daddy Yankee and Akwid is enormous, that teenagers who illegally…

Terror alert levels were high at the Miami Arena for the Billboard Latin Music Awards. Helicopters zoomed overhead and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolled diligently, searching for potential evildoers. The closest thing to a bomb, however, was when cute rocker chick JD Natasha appeared on a stage behind the arena for an…

Nine Inch Nails major-domo Trent Reznor has always seemed personally empowered by dispirited alienation. Though in hindsight his last album, 1999’s sprawling The Fragile, sounds like the embodiment of depression as a mental prison: unfocused and littered with frustrated and aimless expressions of confusion, anger, and uncertainty. It’s both a…

Not often does a Danish boy-girl duo pay musical homage to rock and roll Americana. Copenhagen’s Sune Rose Wagner and Sherin Foo, however, have been there and done that. And with Pretty in Black, they’ve done it again. Despite the introduction of guest musicians such as Suicide keyboardist Martin Rev,…

Caribou is the new moniker of Canadian-born, London-based producer Dan Snaith, formerly known as Manitoba. No cause for alarm: The change was made for legal, not artistic, reasons. The Milk of Human Kindness is a continuation of Snaith’s melodic pulse-anchored, groove-oriented, pressure-cooked beat excursions, except now his inspirations span from…

Cold Roses is the latest in a string of polarizing albums by alt-country golden boy Ryan Adams. Credited to the artist and his backing band the Cardinals, it’s his most straightforward affair since 2001’s Gold, which seemed hell-bent on encapsulating the sincerity of his work with former band Whiskeytown. “Let…

On The Forgotten Arm, Aimee Mann serves up an assertive mix of confidence, conviction, and authority, using a stirring vocal presence — which recalls in equal measures Chrissie Hynde, Lucinda Williams, and Christine McVie — while backed by a band playing a series of rich, riveting melodies that resonate from…