The last year has been good for the mash-up, that DIY form of culture-mulching in which anyone with an Internet connection can download two songs plus the software to splat them together and come up with a trendy dance-floor hit in a matter of minutes. In addition to the scores…
Depending on how you verbalize the ham-fisted title to Polly Harvey’s seventh release, the three grunts can be an endorsement (“Uh huh, hell yeah, it’s her!”) or a dismissal (“Uh huh, whatever, it’s her.”). But Harvey’s catalog has always been about harsh dichotomies. The paradoxical tension between slut lust and…
Wilco Produced by Sonic Youth guitarist Jim O’Rourke, A Ghost Is Born might just draw its name from the mythical status Wilco attained after 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It also finds the band feeding off the negative vibes of the past few years (namely, rehab and the departure of Jay…
Ponytails. They’re the only way to know if men over 40 are “with it.” It’s common knowledge: Ponytails are the nonverbal signal for cool. It’s a fashion-smart way of saying, “I’m lookin’ clean and tidy, but check me on the flipside and I’ll show you what I’m really about.” I’ll…
After incubating in South Bronx parks, the hip-hop virus became airborne sometime in the late ’70s, initially infecting NYC’s uptown clubs with thick grooves of funky breaks and big bass before jumping the confines of the Rotten Apple and metastasizing first in New Jersey, then in Connecticut. The beautifully zealous…
There are tons of great DJ Shadow concert bootlegs floating around out there on disc and vinyl, but the stunning clarity and seamlessly mixed content of the official Live! In Tune and On Time puts all the rest to shame. This 20-track, 78-minute CD (packaged together with a 24-track DVD)…
As a hip-hop producer, Kanye West’s near-ubiquity — producing hits for Twista, Jay-Z, Ludacris, Talib Kweli, and Alicia Keys — isn’t surprising; like a hip-hop high-wire act, his productions effortlessly balance walloping, riddim-fueled momentum and supersized choruses with more nuanced samples and deceptively intricate drum patterns. But as an MC,…
Joey Ochoa, singer and guitarist for Fort Lauderdale’s Beep, answers the question: Who would you get to play you in a movie of your life? “Probably the guy who played Chewbacca, for his eloquence.” What would the movie be titled? “It would be called Eighteen Wheels of Death: A Trucker’s…
Moscow From Russia, with Loud Stop me if you¹ve heard this one… A Russian acrobat, a go-go girl, and a professionally trained fire eater walk into a bar — except in this bar, there are no pitchers of beer, and there is no basketball game playing on the wide screen…
The following exchange took place between two young men lingering by the bar at the Factory (2674 E. Oakland Park Blvd., Fort Lauderdale) during the Suicide Girls Burlesque show. Man number one: What the fuck is this? I came here for rock! [emits a drunken shout and thrusts his beer…
In the span of a weekend, the old bled into the new. Last Friday’s gig at the Poor House was touted in various e-mails and on websites as the “last Holy Terrors show in a while.” The band’s website (www.theholyterrors.com) declared “check them out for what, quite possibly, could be…
For a band that deserves to have at least a little bit of a chip on its shoulder, these guys certainly don’t. Some of Spitalfield’s members come from hardcore backgrounds, which initially earned them flak for their unabashed affinity for pop. That’d be enough to make some people justifiably defensive,…
My, look who’s turning 1! It’s everyone’s favorite Saturday-night indie dance party, Popscene! And to celebrate, it’s inviting Humbert, Bling Bling, Summer Blanket, the Freakin’ Hott, Helen Horal, and you to come over for soda, pie, a water balloon fight, a magic show, a petting zoo, cotton candy enemas, goody…
Two DJs methodically hack and mix behind the decks. Whenever the audience and the music reach a boiling point, they mix in a dark, brooding record and let the crowd catch its collective breath. Then, before anyone gets too relaxed, the BPMs build up to another frenzied crescendo. The process…
It’s a bit difficult to get through the shield Nuyorican pop superstar Robi Dräco Rosa uses to protect himself from questions about his public persona. But he lays it all on the line for us. “Who knows? Who cares?” Rosa spits. “Between perception and my reality, there are seven seas…
Of the 7 trillion (and counting) members of the Wu Tang Clan, Method Man has always shown the most promise. From the get-go, the sandpaper-throated roughneck dazzled, with an exuberant flow and one head-spinning turn of phrase after another. His debut solo outing was a stunner, but Meth has never…
Several years ago, U2 singer Bono told Rolling Stone magazine about a visit he and bassist Adam Clayton once made to the home of devout Christians Johnny and June Carter Cash. As they sat down to eat dinner, Bono recalled, “John spoke this beautiful, poetic grace, and we were all…
This oddest entry in the !K7 label’s acclaimed DJ-Kicks series is marred by mediocre mixing and awkward segues; its auteur — Norwegian Erlend Oye — never touches a cross fader or adjusts the pitch control. Instead, the Kings of Convenience singer selects tracks and sings over several of them in…
The sentence “Gary Young is one of the most important musicians working in California today” is unlikely to appear anywhere outside of the former Pavement drummer’s dreams. The Grey Album is demonstrative of why; Young’s El Dorko-dad voice isn’t even karaoke-ready, and the simplistic, tossed-off songs he and guitarist Terry…
Simply Jeff The breakbeat is a strange animal that must be approached with caution. With roots in old-school breakdance music and hip-hop, breakbeats have always enjoyed a certain counterculture notoriety. But things have changed recently. Today, the breakbeat sound has mutated into a veritable animal kingdom of two-step, nu-skool, electro,…
The CD arrived in a plain brown wrapper, slipped stealthily onto my desk by an unknown associate. Perhaps, I thought, it would be the answer to the upcoming months of barren sonic landscape in South Florida. And I can reveal, my socks were knocked. What I heard when I dropped…
A few years ago, many people were shocked when Judas Priest lead singer Rob Halford came out of the closet. They shouldn’t have been — after all, Halford had long been roaring onto the stage on a motorcycle looking like the biker in the Village People. But then, you couldn’t…
