The laws of music journalism state that when a precociously good new band comes along, one must harp on the members’ ages. So, okay, blah blah blah, the four members of be your own PET, from Nashville, are all teenagers, the oldest just barely legal. Great — now that’s out…
Three master congueros, each with a distinctive style, lend the Conga Kings’ accelerated pulse, but the name is meant to highlight the heart of the group, not describe the entire body. As do all the top percussionists in Latin jazz, this conga drum triumvirate displays a deep sense of context…
Detroit is known for producing its share of renowned musicians. Rock-star bad-asses Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop and Motown legends the Temptations and Diana Ross all paved the way for what would become known as “good music” today. It’s no wonder that the Detroit Cobras — hailing from such fertile…
Way back before the King Khan and BBQ Show ever began, Mark Sultan (a.k.a. BBQ) and King Khan (then referred to as the Blacksnake) were in a Canadian garage band known simply as the Spaceshits. Ten years and several continents later — after Khan had fostered a faux-celebrity explosion in…
Like some unseen beast that emerges only in shadows to claim its prey, indie rock stalks Miami with as much Omaha, Nebraska soil between its toes as sand. Four-piece Whatever Happened to the Dinosaurs and their compatriots in Blue Moon, both from Miami, do their absolute best to channel Bright…
Awe-inspiring traditional African beats fuse with contemporary reggae-rock sounds when Ba Cissoko and his group decide to jam. Born into a musical family in West Africa’s Guinea-Bissau, Ba Cissoko is a master of the regional 21-string harp-lute called the kora. Kourou Kouyaté, Sékou Kouyaté, and Ibrahim Bah round out the…
Women are positioning themselves to stick it to men once and for all. Not content with bum-rushing the academic world by earning degrees, females are targeting anything considered male-sacrosanct, including prog-metal. Under the constant threat of being completely written off as the dumber sex, men must start to enhance their…
It’s not often you’re handed the opportunity to receive some express dentistry while giving to charity. Spikefest is a gig to benefit Dirty Rotten Imbeciles guitarist Spike Cassidy, whose recent colon cancer diagnosis (and possible metastasis) eighty-sixed a 2006 tour. While on forced hiatus from D.R.I., drummer Rob Rampy has…
Until Northerners rode the railroads into South Florida in the 1920s and 1930s, and Hispanics followed them to the area in the 1950s, Miami was a small fishing town with a distinctly Southern sound. Since 1992, amid the salsa, soca, and swing of urban Miami, Michael Roy of Immanuel Presbyterian…
After six years dedicated to solo outings and relentless touring (which didn’t stop rumors of an imminent breakup), the Colombian rock duo formed by Andrea Echeverri and Hector Buitrago finally emerged with an album of new material, Oye, which has the band returning to the more acoustic roots of earlier…
It would be tempting to tag the Monday Photo’s song “Fall” as a cynical appropriation of the Mancunian era, if not for singer Leo Marcelo’s breathless enthusiasm for his source material. “We love New Order,” he says. “I just love the feeling in their music — the sense of sadness…
Taught to Be Taut Ska. Go ahead, laugh if you will. Much like a current genre label of the same length (hint: It begins with e and ends with o), it quickly became a musical four-letter word as soon as it appeared on mainstream radar. But something like Darwinism applies…
Best known for incredibly catchy punk songs about murder and monsters, Misfits/Samhain mastermind Glenn Danzig is the only alumnus from hardcore’s original old-school scene to land an album at No. 1 on Billboard’s classical album chart, with 1993’s Black Aria. More sophisticated and eclectic, Black Aria II is instrumental, but…
Mayday!’s self-titled debut is one of this year’s pleasant surprises. Plex’s early production work for Miami groups like Algorithm and Spirit Agent were simple blue beats that sounded like bedroom soliloquies. In contrast, Mayday! is vivid and colorful, with sounds that range from the hard organ crush of “Watchin’ Me”…
Even more bliss-driven than last year’s Mysterioso?, Totimoshi’s new record is reflective of the band’s recent road haul, which probably would have made for good reality TV — with the bandmates’ Halloween-mask-fetishism, semibabe bass player, and creative raps they must have devised to explain to hicks that no one in…
BBE’s Kings Of compilation series invites high-profile producers (Wu Tang Clan’s the RZA, Dimitri from Paris) to dig in the crates and mix together some favorite tracks. Normally a fun but lightweight exercise, the concept can inspire surprisingly meaningful work, as Laurent Garnier and Carl Craig’s The Kings of Techno…
Though cuts like “Conga Madness” on UK producers Zero dB’s Bongos, Bleeps & Basslines boast plenty of the obvious — an explosive conglomeration of organic-sounding world percussion — there are still moments that draw on Ninja Tune’s rich history of oddities. The avant-jazz workouts on “Know What I’m Sayin’?” serve…
In an era when political correctness is pursued to unyielding extremes, singer-songwriter Randy Newman is an astute observer, immune to any notion that social commentary should refrain from satire and stereotypes. Eight years after Three Dog Night earned him his first chart success by covering his song “Mama Told Me…
Hailing from the Netherlands, 32-year-old Ferry Corsten has been an international circuit DJ since he was fifteen. Touring in support of his recently released second studio album, L.E.F. (which stands for Loud, Electronic, Ferocious), Corsten imprints many of his mixes with his mantra “Create your own path, be yourself, and…
Indulgence in all things retro has almost always been a modern staple of cool, and Raw B Jae and the Liquid Funk are no exception. For more than a decade the ever-changing eight-member group has embraced Seventies soul sensibilities while eschewing disco cheese. Psychedelic guitar man and local band-hopper Buffalo…
Thanks to the ever-present Aquabooty crew, Osunlade is a familiar face in these parts, traveling down from New York every so often to spin records. The man behind dance classics like Eric “Erro” Roberson’s “Don’t Change” and his own Paradigm album is a prime force in Afro-house, from his fierce…
Since giving his first solo recital at age eight and making his orchestral debut at twelve, Ben Kim has gone on to become one of the most acclaimed young pianists in the world. Kim is a master of demanding works by Brahms and Schumann and is especially noted for his…
