If you thought Phoenix dubstep duo UltraBlack’s minimal moniker was some kind of warning scream against the sleek and opulent evils of future technology, you were wrong. Truth is, Bryan Marek and Nick Suddarth make dark party tracks that, perversely, seem to revel in the debauched potentialities of a not-so-distant dystopia…
It’s inevitable … Sometime this Saturday-night-slash-Sunday-morning your half-drunk ass will find itself wandering, like a partied-out zombie, through the near-abandoned labyrinth of weird, winding roads that buffer Transit and those temporary Miami Music Festival tents from the banker-bustle of Brickell. But wait, before you pass out and puke on that…
Unlike most massive weekend-long smorgasbords of tuneage, the three-day Miami Music Festival is almost entirely focused on the local scene. With the exception of a few bands, such as Greenpoint and New York’s Big Suga, the festival will present 600 performances by South Florida artists repping every permutation of music…
In a digitally distorted blaze of electro-house glitch, local party starter Panic Bomber, a.k.a. Richard Haig, has spent the last year going supernova. First came his six-track EP effort, Calling in Threats, a December 2008 release loaded with crunchy club killers like “Miami Stunnaz” and “Disillusionment.” (Cop it at PanicBomber.com…
After disappearing briefly and temporarily to record its debut album, local indie-glam party band People From Venus is back. And totally energized by the new slab of future pop in its ass pocket, the Miami Beach-based crew seems set to re-stir the supercharged ions of hype still lingering from being…
As a rule, beware of bands euphemistically named for boners. In the case of the Hard Richards, though, we’ll grant a pass, because these old-school Boynton Beach boys bash out straight-ahead ska punk without any wink-wink wanksterism. That doesn’t mean, however, that the Richards aren’t lewd, crude, and loud. It’s…
After a three-decade career providing percussion and other background sounds for iconic artists like Ike and Tina Turner, Bill Withers, and John Prine, Big Poppa E felt a change coming. Thus, in 2000, he switched tracks, returning to his roots in the blues with the release of his second album,…
With a cryptic, vaguely menacing moniker like Belt Buckle Death Sentence, it’s almost inevitable that this Loxahatchee-bred hardcore crew’s origin story would involve illegal liquor and near-fratricide. Here’s the way ax man Todd Batchelder tells it: “One night, our drummer, Bryan Marshall, and his brother Matt were both drunk on…
Photo by Grant David KeyesLike the amplified and remixed white noise of a midnight tide shift as seen on TV, there are squalls and snarls of late-summer indie-pop bleeding from a bedroom studio in Macon, Georgia. All software synths, samples, drum machines, and dreamy vocal layers — this is the…
Every year, the Organic Hip-Hop Conference rallies conscious troops from all over the continent and beyond for a weekend of fighting for better communities through activism, vegetarianism, and music. Sponsored by Difference Makers Non-Profit Organization and Urban America Newspaper, the 2009 edition will kick off Friday with a keynote address…
If cult movie messiah Alejandro Jodorowsky and PFFR co-produced a mass psychosis session in the secret subterranean tunnels that link Vizcaya Gardens to the Domino’s at NE 2nd Ave. and 34th, then Miami-bred psychedelicists Ice Cream would be named official jam band. As the authors of artfully shitty recordings like…
Straight out of Bristol, Joker is a 20-year-old wunderkind whose hybrid club experiments may be the next big step in the ongoing evolution of dubstep. Just don’t tell him that — like many stridently independent studio jockeys, he hates genre tags. (Joker prefers to describe his tunes, cryptically, as “purple.”)…
Why does aging Cali club kid Steve Aoki always seem to be everywhere all the time? He’s like some kind of superhuman funhouse mirror, multiplying his slick indie-slouch image a million and one times throughout the mediated universe. It’s kinda creepy … Wherever I look (music mags, dark alleys, The…
Hey, lost soul. Word is, you’ve been searching for some kind of trippy party shaman to lead you on a spirit quest to the center of your very own inner outer space. True? OK, then, it’s totally time you took a tab of that Space Voodoo Crystal stuff. Hence, today’s…
According to the Yacht Manifesto #1: “Yacht is a Band, Belief System, and Business conducted by Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans of Marfa, Texas and Portland, Oregon, USA.” Also, Yacht “seeks to explore frontiers and to expand awareness of extraterrestrial Intelligence” and “believes in an Afterlife,” but “does not…
Like some buff God-looking dude, Jon Gaiser (a.k.a. Gaiser, a.k.a. Fraktion) emerged from his bedroom studio in a blaze of blue light. The genius was naked, except for a sweaty sheet wrapped about his waist, and he stroked his beard while muttering this rote quote: “My bedroom has always been…
By the time you reach a non-trick-or-treating age (i.e., whenever the candy-giving adults start asking for your cell number) it’s easy to get all jaded about Satan’s birthday. And why not? As a grown-up, your Halloween future sucks. No more free candy, no more shitty-awesome psycho slasher costumes, and no…
Maybe it’s bad taste to get on some kind of eulogy bender before the corpse is even cold, but the diagnosis is terminal and it’s only a matter of time … Your favorite hipster bar, PS14, is dying. So say goodbye, Miami, and make amends for all the wrongs you’ve…
Photo by Aigin LarkiEver wondered what screamo-lectro dudes do to unwind after a particularly strenuous hipster bikini dance party? Well, apparently, if the dudes in question are Daniel Werb and Paul Banwatt of Toronto synth-and-drum duo Woodhands, then it’s all about a nice, relaxing, man-on-man bubble bath. Why the bubbles?…
Album art by Reeve SchumacherFor five years, local duo Michael John Hancock and Brian Robertson of Awesome New Republic have made hipsterized pop that sounds like some dead future from the ’80s. They self-describe as “punk, soul, R&B,” but that hardly probes the bloggy depths of the ANR enigma. It’s…
Created via word merging, the term pimpossible is a mashup defined, according to Chi-Town comedian DeRay Davis, as “anything above and beyond regular pimpin’.” It’s the core concept behind a kind of street-based supercapitalism designed to breed Benjamins by whatever means available, from hawking hubcaps to selling hos. And DeRay…
You know, media mogul and notorious big baller Ted Turner was totally right when he said: “Sports is like a war without the killing.” And that’s why our Miami Dolphins should immediately suspend their punk-bitch-porpoise-in-a helmet logo in favor of Last Rights’ Mac-10 redesign. For one, this murder weapon with…
