Interview with Meshuggah

“Warning: trying to follow Meshuggah’s music can make your eyes cross.” Apparently, the appeal of Swedish death metal band Meshuggah extends beyond your typical metal fan base. So much so that awareness of the band has even reached classical conservatory culture. In Volume 29, Issue 2 of Music Theory Spectrum,…

Film Screening: Another Night at the Agora

Last Night: Another Night at the Agora at Sunrise Cinemas Mizner Park The Palm Beach International Film Festival wrapped up last night with the second showing of A Rock and a Hard Place: Another Night at the Agora, a concert film/documentary that sheds light on the once-vibrant but now forgotten…

The Rock Three-Year Anniversary Blowout Tomorrow!

Tomorrow night marks the three-year anniversary party forThe Rock, the weekly locals-only showcase at Tobacco Road run by the loveable Oski Gonzalez, guy about town and frontman of his own band, the Oski Foundation. Yes, The Rock usually happens on Thursdays, but it’s been bumped forwards this week to Friday…

Bruce Springsteen Supports Obama for President

You might think it’s commonplace at this point in the election for Obama to continuously rack up support from musicians. It is. But the latest endorsement holds some significant weight. The boss of all music bosses, Bruce Springsteen, is throwing his political muscle behind Obama. That might not mean a…

Jazz Singer Carmen Lundy in South Florida Tomorrow Night

Carmen Lundy Quartet Unlike most vocalists in the jazz realm, this Miami-born diva doesn’t always rely on material from The Great American Songbook during her sets. Instead, Carmen Lundy always includes as many of her own compositions as she can both when recording and playing live – something she has…

The Stones and Scorsese

Shine a Light makes even the biggest comic-book superhero collaborations look lame. The upcoming concert documentary, previously released on IMAX, recently arrived at regular movie theaters. And it teams up one of the greatest rock bands in history, the Rolling Stones, with one of the greatest American movie directors ever,…

Play It Back

Beach Food Market clerk Pratap Chowdhury spends a lot of time focusing on South Beach diplomacy efforts. He practices basic Spanish, learns customers’ names, and reaches out with a handshake or fist bop deemed appropriate for each patron’s apparent nationality or culture. As such, New Times decided to offer our…

Road Warriors

Although Motion City Soundtrack originally started about 10 years ago in Minneapolis, things have recently picked up for the quintet. One reason: an official seal of approval from Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus, who fell for the band’s high-powered, punk-inflected, Superchunk-esque rock. Hoppus even produced the band’s second album, Commit This to…

Earth, Wind & Fire

From the tight-songwriting-and-flashy-pants black hole of old Seventies space-junk, Earth, Wind & Fire rises, touring every year with such predictability you could set your calendar by it. Last famously recognized during the apex of a medley in the kid-flick Happy Feet (“Boogie Wonderland”), EWF has bestowed upon the planet classics…

The FIU Laptop Ensemble and Sam Pluta

In recent years, conceptual electronic music has come a long way, with young artists using their tweaked computers to rearrange traditional sounds. But it’s often a lonely business, with laptop jocks building this nascent genre mostly alone, in home studios. But the FIU Laptop Ensemble reveals the music to be…

Michael Dixon Band

Michael Dixon and his crew don’t get off “the rock” — that’s Key West — very often. “This is our first trip to play Miami,” says Robin Menard, the band’s sax player and resident hot chick (a SPILF, beg your pardon). “We had a gig in Fort Lauderdale last month…

Planet Rock

These days, there seems to be nothing trendier in rock than a green tour. Even if you’re not being environmentally friendly on the road, you’re at least joining the fight to build awareness of global warming. To celebrate Earth Day this April 22, we thought we’d take a look back…

The Chronicles

The public has heard Dr. Dre’s records and seen him on television, but few really know how he got there. That is, except for one man: Bruce Williams, Dre’s personal assistant/go-to guy for almost 15 years. As Williams says of himself in his new unauthorized look into the world of…

Boy Prostitute

One of the trends in punk rock that I happen to enjoy very much is how influences shape a 30-plus-year-old genre. C’mon, there’s only so much one can do with three chords, right? Well, Miami’s Boy Prostitute has definitely taken cues from the Ramones’ playbook and injected the chords with…

Cat Shell

When you first pop in Cat Shell’s debut disc, Cat’s Outta the Bag, you can’t help but notice the retro sound of the lead-off track, “I’m Torn.” It’s full of simple and subtle guitar work, winsome sax, and the alluring vocal style that Shell is turning into her trademark. Although…

The Pinker Tones

Barcelona, Spain-based duo the Pinker Tones uses its nonconformist Catalan background as something of an excuse for its unconventional approach toward music. On their third full-length, Wild Animals, Professor Manso and Mr. Furia channel their eccentricities through electronics with a decided pop bent. Straight-up pop anthems such as “Happy Everywhere”…

These New Puritans

On early single “Elvis,” These New Puritans promised to tell their secrets. Yet Beat Pyramid, their debut record, is as inscrutable and cryptic as hieroglyphics. The album’s 16 tracks take the listener on a labyrinthine journey full of false starts, dead ends, and unexpected detours. There are scattered, overt references…

Fifth Annual Miami Music Festival

All right, all right, so this is billed, officially, as a celebration of local music culture of all genres and scenes. But it takes place at famously freewheeling Churchill’s and is curated by the infamous Notorious Nastie. And it goes down, um, April 20. That’s 4/20, and past experience shows…

Today is your LAST DAY to get (free!) tickets for Bacardi B-Live

Last year, local liquor giant Bacardi threw its hat into the music-event ring with the first edition of B-Live, an all-day, rum-fueled shebang at Bayfront Park’s ampitheater. It featured a host of unexpected artist pairings, including headliner Paul Oakenfold playing live, accompanied by a full orchestra. Although the event was…