Brooklyn quintet Ambulance Ltd’s eponymous album demonstrates the group’s resistance to being limited by the garage-rock sound that city has recently become associated with. A great deal more somber and introspective than its 2003 self-titled EP, Ambulance Ltd falls somewhere between the solid indie-rock sensibilities of Pavement, the classic yet…
On April 8 Playboy magazine held its 50th-anniversary bash at Mansion. It shouldn’t surprise anybody that I arrived with my tongue (and tail) wagging. I remained in this rabid state until my first look around inside, when I had to exhale. What a sight. The place was hopping with Playboy…
Producer Rey Rubio says of the imminent release of his electro-inflected group Alpha-606’s debut, Computer Controlled, “One thing is, we’ve never been pressured to force it out.” Rubio is not exaggerating. Over the course of a relaxed two-hour interview at his house in Little Havana, the seven-man team behind his…
Under most circumstances, the notion of six box sets — for a grand total of 36 discs, 245 tracks, and a shade under 23 hours of music — dedicated to one band would seem a tad excessive, no? But then again, we’re talking about Depeche Mode. Few groups have been…
In the narrow, gravelly parking lot of the Billabong Pub in Pembroke Park, a visibly intoxicated young man makes a joke about being from the wrong side of the tracks. The pub sits in a strip mall on the west side of the train tracks that cross Hallandale Beach Boulevard,…
If you visited a local record store on Tuesday, March 30, looking for Jacki-O’s long-awaited debut album, Poe Little Rich Girl, you didn’t find it. That is because the Liberty City rapper’s record label, Poe Boy Entertainment, recently lost its distribution deal with Warner Music Group. In a brief phone…
Cologne, Germany’s Aksel “Superpitcher” Schaufler is in love, as the title to his debut LP indicates. Erase all images of women inspired by Swiss Miss packages from your head, however. What Here Comes Love reveals is that his heart does not lie with any one person or place, but in…
Pigeon Funk is a minimal techno side project initiated by San Francisco producers Kit Clayton, Sutekh, and Safety Scissors in 2001. Though originally released as a series of EP-length “battles” among the three artists, the trio’s Pigeon Funk! compilation is still remarkably consistent, a weird collage of scattershot samples and…
There are two criticisms frequently leveled at the current jazz scene: The musicians are too slick and averse to risk, and the industry is concentrating on repackaging past glories rather than encouraging innovation. Both of these concerns apply in some measure to Adam Dorn. He’s definitely a jazz guy, a…
In the heart of the United Kingdom’s industrial city of Birmingham, there exists an authentic and thriving dub reggae scene. At the core of this movement is the longstanding Different Drummer label owned by Rockers Hi-Fi. Overproof Soundsystem — which features members of G-Corp, vocalists Ras MC T-Weed and Juggla,…
Malian musician Oumou Sangare’s amazing voice and songs that directly address the plight of women in a highly conservative society have made her a superstar in her native country, and the eight new tracks on Oumou will show you why. “Yala,” which asks the youth to avoid the pitfalls of…
Carmel Ophir doesn’t show up for his Back Door Bamby party at crobar till it’s already kicking at about 2:00 a.m. By the time he arrives, his Monday-night institution is slammed with loads of stunningly seductive women, along with some men who could very well pass for women. Anyway, Carmel…
Since first forming 22 years ago, Brazilian rock band Os Paralamas do Sucesso (the Fenders of Success) has had its share of success after emerging in the mid-Eighties as one of South America’s hottest exports. But on February 4, 2001, the trio nearly disintegrated, its heart broken. While flying his…
Britney Spears brought her megabudget Onyx Hotel spectacle to the American Airlines Arena on Sunday, March 28, to the high-decibel screams of what appeared to be thousands of teenage girls. The lovelies were prepared for their idol. Brace-face smiles sparkled with glitter makeup. High-heeled stringbean legs awkwardly slinked around in…
The four years that passed between Modest Mouse’s 2000 album The Moon and Antarctica and its new opus, Good News for People Who Love Bad News, were an eternity. Gone is the world-weary anxiety that girded The Moon … like a vicious, inescapable undertow; in its place is leader Isaac…
The anonymous four-artist team collectively known as Lansing-Dreiden has certainly made a name for itself since relocating from Miami to New York several years ago. Their multimedia creations incorporate video, photography, text, performance art, and jewelry into oblique presentations such as Death Notice and Greenscreens. Now the group’s 2003 debut…
Knock, knock. Who is it? Hey White America, it’s Kanye, open up. Yo, what’s good … oh Babu, Evidence, and Rakaa … uh, come on in. Dilated Peoples’ third LP, Neighborhood Watch, sees the portly Southern Californians still starved like college students, still vowing to sneak some good old skool…
While not attracting the same sort of attention as fellow Eighties downtown New York acts Liquid Liquid and ESG, Death Comet Crew was just as important. This groundbreaking trio — Stuart Argabright, Michael Diekmann, and Shinichi Shimokawa — used the postdisco, nascent hip-hop sound as a starting point for their…
Madlib’s Madvillain project is the second of his dream matchups, following his slightly disappointing pairing last year with Detroit iconoclast Jay Dee (Jaylib’s Champion Sound). While Jay Dee favors original compositions, track-busting Madlib finds more in common with MF Doom, since the latter’s early-Nineties work with KMD as Zevlove X…
Everything about Nicodemus Hammil and Anitra Warren, from their appearance to the eerie, Venetian-style masks hanging on the white walls of their West Avenue apartment in South Beach, is enchanting and mad freaky. Their union is draped in theater and consecrated by black magic. Nicodemus, a high priest-looking Aussie whose…
Germans seem to have a natural affinity for making cars, techno, and beer, but not hip-hop. One rare instance was Funkstörung’s glitchy remix of Wu-Tang Clan’s “Reunited.” Now after that 1999 breakthrough, followed by an uneven career of noisy electronic experiments, the German duo — Chris De Luca and Michael…
While New York, Chicago, and Detroit’s DJ/producers were reveling in the spotlight during the early Nineties, San Francisco quietly built a scene that eventually spread across the West Coast. At the heart of it was the Wicked crew: four DJs, one ridiculously superior sound system, and parties that took place…
