Music

In space, no one can hear you scream, so you might as well chill the fuck out. That’s been the modus operandi of London’s Laika, named after the Russian dog that rode Sputnik II into orbit in 1957. Since the early Nineties the band has offered a uniquely seductive and…

So the word’s finally out on Jaylib’s Champion Sound and Soul Position’s 8,000,000 Stories. Both are decidedly a little woomp woomp given the stratospheric expectations for these dream team collabos: Too much Detroit braggadocio raps from Jay Dee on the former and too much rhyme distraction from Blueprint on the…

Although his name is not as heralded as Eddie Palmieri, Tito Puente, or Fort Apache Band founders Jerry and Andy Gonzalez, New York-based trombonist Papo Vazquez is as central to the development of Latin jazz as any of those legendary figures. The virtuosic trombonist has been an important part of…

Fourteen albums deep, Cassandra Wilson continues to record seamless and entrancing music on her latest offering, Glamoured. It contains her most eclectic blend of covers and originals to date. Wilson’s cool and understated vocal delivery might lead one to think that her songs would be boring; instead she entraps the…

It’s not easy getting into Jay-Z’s recording home at Bassline Studios, tucked away on West 26th Street in Manhattan. I have to sneak in behind a woman walking into the building, take an elevator to the eighth floor, then knock on a pair of glass doors before a security guard…

Deciding what Halloween party to go to can be trickier than finding a good costume. But like costumes, which can range from boring witch and vampire getups to sexy/skimpy Greco-Roman ensembles, nurse uniforms, dominatrix outfits, and my personal favorite, gluing leaves on your arms and calling yourself a tree, the…

On a recent torrid afternoon in South Beach, a few of the folks who provide the music and activities for the visitors to this strange planet gathered to talk about events and issues in clubland. Most of these people have been here since the revitalization of SoBe began in the…

At first glance Roselyn Sánchez appears to be another Puerto Rican multiple-threat mami — actress, dancer, and now singer/producer — slowly but surely climbing up the ladder of success, right behind the ubiquitous J.Lo. This petite star with the impossibly long hair, lithe figure, and no apparent penchant for bling-bling,…

Reggae was never meant to live this long. When it arrived in the late Sixties (Toots and the Maytals’ “Do the Reggay” in 1968 was the first song to use the term), it was one more domino propped up in front of the tumbling bones of mento, ska, and rocksteady…

Dear Frank Black (or is it Black Francis again?), Kim Deal, Joey Santiago, and David Lovering: I love you. Or rather, I did love you. Or, I mean … Aw shucks guys, this is difficult and confusing! Okay, I still love you, in that “fond remembrance” kinda way. That’s what…

The problem with most overt protest songs is that as soon as the political climate changes, they become like old newspapers: You have to throw them away. But Casa de los Babys, the soundtrack for the recently released film by director John Sayles, is a reminder that they don’t all…

Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci (pronounced “monkey”) has been around for ten years. The foursome’s unusual name is a perfect reflection of its ultraquirky sound. In contrast to its bleak, albeit verdant Welsh surroundings, its eighth album, Sleep/Holiday, is sunny and bright. The tranquil air is encouraged by singer Euros Childs’s whispered,…

Despite its celebrated ubiquity, contemporary French dance music has unfortunately suffered from the success of its biggest proponents, namely Daft Punk and Stardust. While artists such as Laurent Garnier and Miss Kittin are underground heroes, the general public seems to have largely ignored all but the filtered disco-house faves. Nicolas…

Some of My Best Friends Are DJs, the second album by Canadian DJ Kid Koala, is cut from the same cloth as his earlier records, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and the Scratchcratchratchatch mixtape (later released as the Scratchappyland EP). But there’s no overarching concept this time around, just a series of…

Since their start in the late Eighties as two-thirds of the influential electronic outfit Black Dog, Plaid’s Andy Turner and Ed Handley have been pegged as thinking man’s artists. Unfortunately they’ve also fallen victim to some lazy terminology like IDM, meant to describe an amorphous genre called “intelligent dance music,”…

I am a Spamaniac. I love the Spam Allstars, the best band to come out of Miami since … uh, I’ll come back to that. They’re unique, captivating, and play five gigs a night, eight nights a week, year round. So you can’t miss them even if you tried. But…

It was 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday at M-80, the tragically hip Design District boutique, when Phoenecia’s Josh Kay and Romulo del Castillo finally stepped behind a makeshift stage — actually, the store counter — to perform their set. Hours earlier M-80 was bustling with life, powered by fashionistas, music…

On a clear night you could hear a pair of bright, shining voices in South Florida’s vast radio wasteland that reached from Jupiter in the north all the way south to Key West, across the Everglades to Naples and as far east as the Bahamas. And then, suddenly, you couldn’t…

Anyone who has listened to Cape Verdean singer Cesaria Evora has heard the word sodade. In Creolu, the mixture of Portuguese and West African languages spoken on the tiny chain of islands 300 miles off the coast of Senegal, sodade means nostalgia, yearning, longing for love lost. Portuguese sailors felt…

With his crooner’s voice and sociopolitical lyrics, Everton Blender is one of the leaders of a growing trend in Jamaican music: a renaissance of the rasta roots vibration within the island’s dominant dancehall scene. Known as “conscious dancehall,” it’s a sign that the spirit of reggae is alive and well…