The music of Manchester, England’s Autechre — Sean Booth and Rob Brown — can, indeed, veer dangerously close to difficult listening. But on the group’s fantastic new CD, Draft 7.30, the project seems to have come in from the cold, offering a remarkably warm fusion of the human and the…
After Bob Marley’s death in 1981, Island Records was keen on signing another international black artist whose appeal would slice across ethnic and cultural boundaries. Rather than plucking a reggae act from Jamaica’s seemingly limitless talent pool, Island made an unlikely choice from Nigeria instead. King Sunny Ade appeared to…
The dance music scene, we’re often told, is much better in Europe. As the stereotype goes, it’s far different and of much higher quality than the secondhand tracks we’re forced to listen to here. And what of Layo and Bushwacka? The two Londonites are well-known producers on the international breaks…
Yerba Buena has emerged as a messiah among Latin fans searching for party music with an urban edge, preaching the second coming of salsa and resurrecting the experimental soul of the Fania All-Stars, whose mind-expanding sound of the Seventies was also the result of talented musicians with Latin and Caribbean…
“We’re not a Latin band, we’re not a jazz band, we’re not a funk band, we’re not a reggae band. We’re all of that,” Los Hombres Calientes percussionist Bill Summers says from New Orleans, his adopted hometown, about the Grammy-nominated music collective. “Very seldom do you see groups that have…
Since dancehall’s dawn, performers have often blurred the line between deejaying and singing. But the styles remained distinctive in the blueprints created by rhythmic singers like Barrington Levy and melodic deejays like Yellowman. Like children of separate tribes, they were permitted to date but never marry. Suddenly, however, “singjays” are…
Last week Dr. Simon V. Glynn, a professor of philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, delivered a lecture titled “Storm the Reality Studios and Retake the Universe” at the Miami Museum of Science. He proclaimed that we have entered the age of the “hyperreal,” a “simulacrum” or artificial environment more adored…
When Prefuse 73 released his full-length debut Vocal Studies and Uprock Narratives two years ago, there was initially little hype or buzz surrounding the album. But within months Vocal Studies was hailed by many as a groundbreaking album that effectively blurred the line between hip-hop and experimental electronic music through…
Late night and early morning can sometimes have a strange way of bleeding together so that you’re not really sure where one ends and one begins, a dynamic that causes further confusion to a brain that is supposed to be asleep. This sort of disorientation intermixed with fleeting moments of…
The Belgian-born Natacha Atlas has been impressing the rest of the world since the mid-Eighties. Her forlorn, aching vocals on solo LPs like Halim and Gedida have graced the recordings of artists as varied as Peter Gabriel, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, and ethnotechno collective Transglobal Underground. But Atlas’s appeal…
Charged from a ten-year-plus run in a business as forgiving as the Supreme Court, Prince Paul has seen it all — from his underrated days as Stetsasonic’s DJ to forming his own failed Def Jam subsidiary imprint (Doo Dew Man Records) and his long-running, now-defunct relationship with Tommy Boy Records…
Poor Ben Harper. No matter where he goes, no matter what new songs he brings, he always gets slapped with either the “poor man’s Lenny Kravitz” or the “thinking man’s Lenny Kravitz” tag (depending on the graciousness of the critic). Of course, that’s probably what the 33-year-old singer-songwriter deserves for…
Fado, that singular strain of balladry that is to Portugal what samba is to Brazil and tango is to Argentina, isn’t exactly mainstream music here in the United States. It is a centuries-old tradition marked by the delicate murmur of the twelve-stringed Portuguese guitar; mournful female singers, black shawls draped…
Omar Clemetson’s downtown Miami apartment is an exacting, austere place. Neatly arranged on one side of the room are a mixing board, an Akai 3200 XL sampler, and sundry other studio equipment, along with a bookshelf filled with records. There are a few boxes, products of his one-man job running…
Dirk Dresselhaus has just woken up from a strange, unsettling slumber, and he sits slumped over the breakfast table, rubbing at his rumpled head. Later, when he recounted the story, he didn’t tell us what he was eating. But since he is German, let’s imagine that he prods absently at…
In El Gran Silencio’s native Monterrey, the accordion is a deadly weapon. That’s why the band appeals to chúntaros, barrio bad boys like themselves, with a wild working-class fusion it calls “freestyle norteño popular.” El Gran Silencio is often referred to as a Mexican regional-hip-hop hybrid, but the band bites…
There are two reasons to buy Saddle Creek 50: First off, it’s good. With two tracks from each of the eleven bands on Nebraska’s independent Saddle Creek label, this double disc covers electroclash, emo-pop, and soft Southern folk with the understanding that things go unwell for everyone, but they go…
Count Jan Jelinek is another intriguingly “cutting-edge” German producer you’ve never heard of. Like compatriots Thomas Brinkmann and Laub, Jelinek specializes in crafting strange and wondrous experimental music that is surprisingly sleek and melodic, if not entirely free of pretension. Case in point: his most recent album, La Nouvelle Pauvreté,…
Two weeks ago Style Wars, a PBS documentary on the early-Eighties graffiti scene in New York, was rereleased on DVD. For those who don’t know, Style Wars is necessary viewing for anyone wishing to know about old-school hip-hop in general and graff writing in particular. But the 1983 film never…
Detroit’s Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus (a.k.a. Adult.) are both technically and aesthetically better electro producers than the sub-par imitators who have temporarily crawled out of their expensive East Coast art schools with designs on dominating the electronic music world. With five years of singles such as “Nausea” and…
In the mid-Nineties, nu-metal was a strong, fledgling genre that yielded multiplatinum acts like Korn and Limp Bizkit. By the end of the decade, however, it was frayed and worn out like a flannel shirt, thanks to all the many me-too bands manufacturing their own versions of nearly indistinguishable rapping,…
DJ Ani Phearce is a man on a spiritual journey, a shaman in the world of house music. The music that he creates and spins varies from Latin-influenced dance music to progressive and tribal rhythms. “I believe that we are all spiritual beings,” says the DJ and producer. “The music…
