The gliding ease of Specialist in All Styles doesn’t even hint at the long and tortuous road that led to its arrival. Orchestra Baobab no longer existed when World Circuit label founder Nick Gold decided that Senegal’s seminal band deserved an album of new material following the success of 2001’s…
Is there something in your eye? Oh, it’s just Carlos Vives, singing “Let me in through your gaze” — you know, the windows to your soul and all that — a lyric from the song and album Déjame Entrar (Let Me In) that earned the Colombian soap-star-turned-vallenato-singer two Latin Grammys…
Hello Miami’s Playboy Mansion, that tribute to all things decadent and carnal. Be it the seductive music and food, the fashionista parade, or French Riviera ambiance, Nikki Beach wants to perpetually swim in a drunken state of glamour. Even on a gray, overcast September Saturday afternoon there’s still a sinful…
Physically finding Manu Chao has never been easy. He’s everywhere, and not. He’s so proud of his ephemeral nature that he even sings about it. In “Desaparecido,” one of the more popular songs he recorded in transit for his 1998 breakthrough album Clandestino, he lets us know, “I’m never there…
In a small room in his Miami Beach home, with an open mike and eight tracks, Sam Beam laid down lush acoustic plucks and whispered vocals, songs capable of rocking you into sweet dreams on the front porch. With lemonade. And if his demo had never ended up penetrating the…
Singer Mayra Caridad Valdés is familiar to international jazz and Cuban music followers from her appearances with Irakere, her famous piano-playing brother Chucho Valdés’s band. With La Diosa del Mar, Mayra Valdés should now cease to be known as “sister of Chucho” and be recognized as a prominent artist in…
Not as raw as Hell’s Kitchen, not as bouncy as Human Condition, the latest offering from Junkyard DJs Ming & FS, Subway Series, is a funky, flexing display of free-flowing hip-hop and quirky subconscious breaks that waxes poetic through a mechanized playing field. The New York natives maintain mainframe traces…
Buried within the diseased vocals and bloodstained cover art of Everything I Touch Falls to Pieces, the debut album from Chicago hardcore quintet Dead to Fall, are pleas for the right and vengeance for the wrong. While many things fall to pieces on this LP — love, Earth, the band…
Most intelligent men have resigned themselves to the reality that they won’t find their next wife in clubland. The probability is slim to none. Going to Spin, Rain, Jump, Skip, Hop or any other monosyllabic nightclub won’t yield anything at the end of the evening except an expensive bar tab…
An emerging guitarist from Texas, Hadden Sayers bares his knuckles and jabs with powerful blues hooks on his latest Ultrasonic release, unveiling licks that aren’t so much fast as they are tasty and rich, and a voice that beams a maturity extending beyond his years, both lyrically and sonically. Formed…
Many musical theorists squeeze every last synonym and simile into the debate over whether good rock can be irreverent, or irreverent rock good. To this conundrum, one should check one’s hips and lips, and if both are moving, who the fuck cares. Chicago’s OK GO has tortured purists by performing…
“This party is bananas,” promises Jesse Swinger of MiamiParties.com. Jesse is serving as Clubbed’s in-ticket for the secret world of wild-side walkers. “You’re with me. I’ll show you around.” It’s a little after midnight, but nothing pokes the eye as out of the ordinary yet. The monthly installment of Michael…
South Beach, prepare for your closeup. No, this isn’t a still-shot photo-op or a glossy fluff-filler interview. Finally, the internationally known nightlife stage that is Miami Beach will get consistent cable face time as Alternative TV-3 broadcasts to the camera-ready residents of South Beach. Billed as a “dance-music video and…
Who would possibly care that Leif Garrett, fallen teen idol from the avocado shag carpet days, is staging a comeback? Only those who derive pathological pleasure in picking apart his hapless, hopeless attempt. Here’s the deal: Garrett, who has spent the last half of his 40 years outside the music…
Described by its producers as “a music-based time capsule of planet Earth now,” 1 Giant Leap crosses cultures and genres with powerful music that bridges authenticity and innovation. The twelve tracks comprise a seamless mix of indigenous rhythms, electronica, pop, jazz, socially committed rap, spoken-word, and traditional chanting and vocal…
From choppy piano ditties to porch-stompers to space transmissions, Spoon’s LP Kill the Moonlight dips into more musical hues than 2001’s Girls Tell All, but lyrically focuses on slouching suburbia, love crashed out on the floor, and villains who defeat us before we make it to the phone booth to…
Mudhoney, who like Seattle scene cohorts Tad, the Melvins, and Screaming Trees looked out from the Baccanal stage in 1992 to a million eyeballs checking out its brand of boot, returns with the aptly titled Since We’ve Become Translucent, the seminal Sub Pop band’s first new LP since 1998’s Tomorrow…
If you want to check the evidence supporting the supreme production status of the Neptunes look no further than Lord Willin’, the debut release from the coke-dealing mid-South-representing Clipse. Sometime emcees Pusha T and Malice spit slow and hard about Virginia’s drug-dealing scene, an average tale at best, but when…
Back in 1978, long-time U.K. Subs guitarist Nicky Garratt remarked to a writer that frontman Charlie Harper was old enough to be part of Beethoven’s backing band. Fast-forward almost 25 years, and at 58, Harper could easily be the cool grandpa who’s still more punk than his children’s children –…
In mid-August, Miami label Ciocan Music’s press rep triumphantly announced that the stellar Cuban a cappella group Vocal Sampling would perform on the upcoming Latin Grammy Awards broadcast in Los Angeles. The vocal sextet’s album Cambio de Tiempo is up for three awards, the highest number of nods yet for…
Pop stars are only discovered on TV shows, not in real life, right? Don’t tell that to Puerto Rican band Circo. “This is totally pop-star imagery,” laughs charismatic singer Jose Luis Abreu, better known as Fofe. Sitting with his bandmates — drummer David Perez, keyboardist Edgardo “Egui” Santiago, bassist Nicolas…
In hetero circles, the mention of a gay South Beach nightclub still conjures images of Robin Williams and Nathan Lane flittering about the Birdcage. Visions of the Village People or even Keanu Reeves (c’mon, lighten up) dance in hetero heads. Aaah, the attitude, the glitter, the duct tape, the RuPaul…
