Even with a seven-year hiatus, a modern-rock-leaning new album, and the absence of John Stanier’s signature drum style working against them, Helmet deserves better than the otherwise generic heaviness of the Winterfresh Sno-Core Tour. Though much is said about founding member and principal songwriter Page Hamilton’s influence on nü-metal, his…
Alongside his Planet of the Drums accomplices Dieselboy and AK1200, New York-based DJ Dara is one of the preeminent figures in American drum ‘n’ bass… though he’s not American. Transplanted from Ireland in 1994, Dara, or Darragh Guilfoyle to mom, quickly delved into the various splintered forms of jungle music,…
I don’t know how well you know my songs,” Elvis Costello says over a cell phone that occasionally cuts out as he drives toward Buxton Opera House in Devonshire, England, where he is scheduled to play at the Four Four Time festival. Such knowledge is near-impossible to acquire. Since debuting…
Maximizing Miami’s place as a crossroads between the Americas and the Caribbean, the Heineken Transatlantic Festival is a globally aware music series voted Best Festival last year by Miami New Times. This year’s festival kicks off in sultry style as DJ Da Lua brings neo-bossa beats to the swank outdoor…
Back with thicker bounce and deeper funk than 2003’s brittle Bazooka Tooth, NYC MC Aesop Rock takes a step toward his musical origins while backpacking ever closer to the perfect flow. Rock’s loopy, wide-mouth baritone is easily one of the most recognizable voices in hip-hop, and its near-manic intensity is…
Six Organs of Admittance is Northern California singer/guitarist Ben Chasny’s long-running solo project that delves into the pagan realm of mystical folk; he also moonlights in psych-rock brutalists Comets on Fire, but this is where he gets his holy glow on. For his eighth album, Chasny recorded in a superior…
I’m not sure why, but when the term progressive is slapped in front of a musical genre, the resulting phrase is instantly rendered trite and meaningless. Some bands, though, push so hard against the envelope that they effectively embody forward motion, building momentum from nothing more than a unique creative…
If you’ve ever checked out any local hip-hop nights from Palm Beach to Miami-Dade, chances are you’ve run into the Secondhand Outfit. MCs Dirty Work and Keenan Smith and producer/DJ Palmeto are staples of the live scene; Dirty Work, a.k.a. Jasper Delaini, also promotes and hosts the regular Rock Bottom…
The Wu-Tang Clan shouldn’t still exist. In an industry in which today’s rap superstars become tomorrow’s MC Hammer, nine Staten Island MCs pulled off the impossible, outlasting the three great pitfalls of modern hip-hop: ego battles, gang violence, and, most important, irrelevance. So how did Wu-Tang leader and chief producer…
It doesn’t sound like anyone’s staring at his shoes in Timonium. Instead, the soundscapes offered by this Northern California quartet feel like watching clouds float across a summer sky. Getting lost in the band’s celestial extendo-epics is easy enough — songs build and build forever only to suddenly dissipate or…
When they’re played right, the blues become a bridge between the past and the present, built musically from celebration and suffering. Singer/guitarist Corey Harris plays the blues right, recognizing their ancient origins and cultural evolution and imbuing them with modern urgency. With extensive travels throughout the African continent and an…
For those bred on the mid-’90s Florida rave scene, the name DJ Three is synonymous with late-night/early-morning euphoria. A long-time cohort of Tampa icons Rabbit in the Moon and a staple on that group’s Hallucination Records, Florida-based Three (first name Christopher, last name withheld by request) paid his dues at…
Tigersmilk is a trio of two Chicago musicians, Rob Mazurek on cornet and laptop electronics and Jason Roebke on acoustic bass, and, from Vancouver, drummer Dylan Van Der Schyff. In the indie-rock zone, Mazurek is best-known orbiting around the Tortoise/Isotope 217 camps, but From the Bottle is far from the…
Rock was looking pretty dead for a second there, and the sound of Broward’s mourning was loud and clear. Within hours of ZETA 94.9 dropping its beloved new rock alternative format and going Hurban — “hispanic urban,” for the Spanglish-impaired — on Friday, February 11, a petition was drawn up…
DJing has proven to be the afterlife of choice for the alumni of early ’90s alt-rock. From Jarvis Cocker (Pulp) to Tim Burgess (Charlatans) and now James Iha, Billy Corgan’s trusty foil/secret weapon in Smashing Pumpkins, musicians by day have found a nighttime muse in the sweaty throng of the…
The 20-year-old Southern rock wrecking ball called Antiseen is one of America’s longest-standing punk rock bands. Its crowd-bashing, whisky-guzzling lead singer, Jeff Clayton, is a man you’d run from in a dark alley (or even a well-lit bar). Arguably even more intimidating is the fact that Clayton filled in as…
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Hailing from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Matisyahu Miller is the original, self-proclaimed “Hassidic Reggae Superstar.” If that sounds kinda fakachta to you, you’re not alone: Time magazine and Carson Daly both found the former Phishhead curious enough to give him some exposure. On his JDub Records debut, Shake Off the Dust…..
Guitar hero Dave Alvin is nothing if not dedicated to rock ‘n’ roll. For more than 20 years, the undersung Alvin has wielded a sharp ax, cutting deep into the heart of hard-driving American music. Along with his brother Phil, he founded the early-’80s roots rockers the Blasters and later…
Bleubird is not normal. As evidenced by his 2003 release, Sloppy Doctor, the Pembroke Pines rapper is many things — angry, witty, hopeful, hopeless, overstimulated, skeptical — but conventional he ain’t. Check a sampling of the four-minute, post-apocalyptic verbal symphony “When Happening:” “Humans think that they can master telepathy by…
If you’ve never been shaken to the core at a Mogwai show, the perfect consolation is Government Commissions, an hour-plus survey culled from the band’s six best albums, recorded live for the BBC. While a foreign concept here, governmental support of art and culture is common elsewhere, with institutions rather…
If you take the LSD and drone out of the “New Weird America,” you’re left with the prosaic songs of Iron and Wine, the nom de rock of Miami-based family man Sam Beam. Since his musical debut a little more than two years ago, Beam has been more interested in…
