These days everything punk comes in Sam’s Club sizes — numbers of bands at shows, for instance — and at count-em-27 songs, drummer Marky Ramone’s Start of the Century two-CD set includes Ramones covers and pretty much everything the Intruders ever put on tape in the Nineties. Rancid’s Lars Frederiksen…
The members of Big Bang Radio sweat hard during their energetic performances and just as profusely behind the scenes, making their dream a reality. In only its second year, BBR makes its second appearance at the infamous Bang Music Festival. Big Bang Radio’s musical influences include timeless rock legends such…
Like the Teddybears, Whitey carries a beer-bar-danceable message from Europe, but where Teddybears want (and do, in fact, own) the TV-commercial airwaves, these guys have scummier things up their collective raincoat sleeve, namely alt-disco sleaze tricked out with Euro-dance beats, an odd way of reinterpreting Donovan Leitch’s deal and a…
Don’t think there is a power failure when you suddenly find yourself sitting in pitch darkness inside the theater. This just happens to be the beginning of Universo Particular, the heavily produced show that Brazilian-born Marisa Monte — in her first U.S. tour in five years — organized to promote…
As autumn has slowly descended on Greater Miami, so have a number of world-renowned senior musicians. The season has already brought piano maestro Bebo Valdés, master percussionist Candido Camero, and Candido’s Conga Kings cohort Carlos “Patato” Valdés — all of them in their eighties. Now Lou Donaldson, the great alto…
There’s something to be said for straight-ahead, unpretentious, wholly exhilarating rock and roll without the woes or hand-wringing that seems to underscore the petulance afflicting so much of today’s music. The Format provides the antithesis to that approach, as evidenced by its latest outing, the ironically dubbed Dog Problems. An…
Although most saxophonists could be called one-dimensional — their playing being that single dimension — saxophonist Ed Calle is a polyphonic layer of talent. Not only does Calle have masterful control over the saxophone, but also he’s an accomplished composer, arranger, flutist, clarinetist, and MIDI wind player. Over the past…
Irony of ironies, Al is a well-established entertainment brand himself, fat and tough-looking nowadays, so when he gives “Dontcha,” “Float On,” and Weezer’s “Beverly Hills” a simultaneous Sledge-O-Matic-ing from his accordion in one oh-the-humanity medley (“Polkarama!”), you sort of have to picture Kip from Napoleon Dynamite doing an Al imitation…
In space no one can hear you be hip, thus it’s probably a blessing that the Low Frequency cultured its sound in Haugesund, Norway, likely as close to space as it gets. Despite the muffled, Unwound-like vocal production, the group can’t hide its bubble-radio training wheels. There’s fighting Norse blood…
Anders Trentemøller’s The Last Resort vacillates between sleepy, downtempo suites and soft, minimalist shuffle beats. “Take Me into Your Skin” builds up to a rush of sensations, like a longed-for physical touch, while the hauntingly quiet “Evil Dub” earns its name via distorted bass and guitar tremors. Despite those highlights,…
In May 2006, distinctive West Coast producer Daedelus served another brilliant dish of organic and electronic intricacies called Denies the Days Demise. On the brief Throw a Fit EP, Daedelus offers more vocals than he did on Denies, and although the emphasis on bossa nova percussion isn’t as evident here,…
No new hamster-wheel-metal earth scorched here, but the mixture is high-octane if anyone is still living and dying by this genre. Unleashed is a black-metal band in a death-metal body, singing like pirate-oafs and pretending to admire Mastodon’s riffing here and there but forever falling back to Bathory-style three- and…
With the a-for-anarchy branding still legible on their pocked backsides after 30 years, the grandmammies of chick-punk return to recite the dub lessons that reggae producer Dennis Bovell beat into them during their brief fling with Island, which ended after their angry round-filing of the label’s highly round-filable memo about…
Some treasures are better left unearthed, lest the cold light of day reveal them to be something less than life-changing and invaluable. Originally released in a 300-count, LP-only batch in 2002, Hollinndagain scrapbooks selected live performances in Jersey City, Austin, Nashville, and NYC that same year by a pre-Pazz-and-Jop-charting Animal…
Of all the cameos on the Teddybears’ Soft Machine full-length, Neneh Cherry’s “Yours to Keep” read-through is the Abba-est. By the coda, she’s so enchanted with the thing’s happy-ass-ness that she breathes a satisfied, geeky “yeah!” as the final sound. These guys have quickly become more important to TV advertising…
Splitting the difference between postrock and ambient metal, Red Sparowes’ tired, portenteous seltzer-soaks barely register, and Made Out of Babies routinely knit delightful, hard-rock garrotes using the classic quiet-to-loud form. Battle of Mice is a teamup of the former’s axeman/keyboardist and the latter’s valkyrie howler, among others. “The Lamb and…
You’d think Dan Bejar had enough work on his damn plate already. Yet downtime from the New Pornographers (where he is a bit player) and Destroyer (where he is the whole enchilada) led him to form a supergroup with Frog Eyes and Wolf Parade principals. Here Swan Lake whips up…
You’ve seen Joan Rivers and Oprah Winfrey wearing it on their daytime talk shows, you’ve caught most rappers and hype-men flossin’ with it on album and mixtape covers, and you might have even purchased some for your S.O. or round-the-way boy or girl. But where does bling come from, and…
This Miami band’s brand-new EP, Synchromy, plays sort of like the soundtrack to a TV game show featured in a retro-spaghetti sci-fi flick circa 1944. Or is that 2014? “I’ve always been fascinated by music that confuses me,” says Feathers bandleader Eddie Alonso. “When I listen to something and I…
“It looks on the first face of it that maybe this isn’t so hip,” admits Andrea Marcovicci, referring to her cabaret show titled Andrea Sings Astaire. “But what’s been happening is that young people come to a performance and then go out and rent every Fred Astaire movie.” Netflix, take…
It’s official: Laundry Bar is single-handedly fomenting a local drum ‘n’ bass revival. Recent weeks have seen DJ sets by kings of the genre like Florida’s own AK1200, jazz-borrowing Londoners Aquasky, and one of the cofounders of the legendary Metalheadz imprint, Doc Scott. This Friday another Brit brings the choons:…
In late August, the New York Times identified a South Korean man as the star of a YouTube.com video. In it Lim Jeong-hyun (calling himself “Funtwo”) played Pachelbel’s Canon on his electric guitar. The axe wizard has mad skills, but what really sparked the media investigation is that the video…
