Ever since Buena Vista Social Club, Afro-Cuban music has been on the radar of mainstream trendspotters both old and young. Yet the majority of new releases and rereleases since BVSC have concentrated on the Caribbean side of the equation (with the possible exception of Senegal’s Orchestre Baobab), to the detriment…
Since its inception back in the late ’80s, this series has embodied the state of dancehall reggae and launched emerging artists. Casual listeners learn about the year in dancehall while dedicated enthusiasts appreciate the CD-length collections of all the hot seven-inches in recent months. Core audiences in Kingston and Brooklyn…
There’s something about making plans that’s been proving difficult for me lately. First, Low-Fidelity’s UM radio show got bumped the day I planned to visit the studio (see last week’s column). Then I found out that the December 30 Sleeparounds show at South Shores Tavern in Lake Worth — part…
Cowboy Mouth, a we’re-from-New Orleans-and-we-won’t-let-you-forget-it rock band with heavy pop-punk leanings, espouses what can only be called a relentlessly upbeat attitude. In fact, drummer, vocalist, and bandleader Fred LeBlanc talks about it so much, both in the press and at every show, that the band’s positivity seems less like a…
Early last year, when Boca Raton’s Fallen From the Sky came up with the artwork for its self-titled EP (on JMB Records), it had no idea that the Mountain Dew can drawn on the back cover was a premonition of sorts. By mid ’06, FFTS was in the running for…
After 15 years and eight albums without a single shift in personnel, Sloan obviously feels empowered to exercise its ambitions. That’s evident on Never Hear the End of It — 30 tracks crammed onto a single disc, hence a title that seems something of an understatement. Owing to its distinctly…
At this point, the unrefined anger of youthful musical movements from decades past should have given way long ago to a more reflective kind of angst. The last thing heavy music needs is more blame-fixated material that allows listeners to wallow in finger-pointing while avoiding introspection. Thankfully, Converge frontman Jacob…
Every syllable Tupac Shakur uttered near a microphone constitutes a potential sample, and a decade after he hit the grave, his estate’s caretakers are still finding ways to turn old recordings into “new” songs. But while the latest posthumous Shakur disc should enhance his brand, it diminishes his legacy by…
Brendan Grubb is mostly known around these parts as the one-man noise act Wicked Dream Foundation, AKA DJ iregrettoinformyouyouhavetwomonthstolive. And now, with his startup label Junque Music, Grubb has a new role to play in promoting South Florida’s no-wave, art-wave, noise, glitch, drone, IDM, and other assorted outsider-genre projects. This…
The guys in White Demons may occasionally wear eyeliner and tight jeans, but there is not a single song about a chick on this CD and not one stinky whiff of shitty emo. What we’ve got here instead is explosive, trashy, borderline-glam punk ‘n’ roll with shouted choruses and crisp,…
It’s been a few years since I’ve been to a college radio station. The last time was a guest spot on DJ Ellegitimate’s (now-defunct) show, The Bonus Cup, on FAU’s Owl Radio. It was weird talking to an audience I couldn’t see. Of course, because I couldn’t see them, I…
Hourcast lead singer Patrick McBride has been a busy, busy man. Since spring 2006, his band has toured with Sevendust and then Godsmack and released its debut album, State of Disgrace — an industrial-lined fusion of grunge and alt-metal. And just two days after McBride returned home to Kansas City,…
Latin/Anglo Crossover is what Latin American artists have always dreamt of and what American artists are starting to realize they need to pull big sales numbers out of a shrinking market. Crossover success means jackpots in both concert tickets and CD sales, so expanding a fan base across genres, countries,…
Hey, dude. So here’s my mixtape that’s been 12 months in the making. Sorry it’s taken a while, but reality often moves at the same molten pace as a couple of the bands culled here. While the new folksters get accolades for their freaky psychedelic tendencies, there’re plenty of heavy…
Recordings of DJ mixes have been multiplying like e-mail spam over the past decade. The sheer volume of said releases is overwhelming, and it makes one wonder: Who the hell is buying them? There must be a demand if labels keep issuing the things as if the music industry has…
This story, as originally conceived, was supposed to be a compilation of the year’s best boxed sets and other reissues. But then it hit us — in today’s shuffle-driven iPod world, with the pace of pop culture moving at breakneck speed, it’s pointless to make such temporal distinctions. The past…
Clearly nobody needs a primer on indie rock. We all have our own idea of what it is, right? Still, why is it that so few of us can agree on who deserves such a designation? Fact is, trying to define indie rock universally is as futile a task as…
In 2006, the pop singles market continued to dominate, in no small part because the pick-to-click-driven mentality of online music stores and ringtone sites gave consumers unparalleled freedom to choose their own musical adventure. What suffered in the meantime, though, was the quality of pop/rock albums. These platters frequently spawned…
The Nashville way of making music is unlike any other, comparable only to the studio system of Hollywood’s golden age — a closed system of songwriters, producers, record labels, and artists that creates most of the sounds you don’t want to admit you listen to on the radio when no…
For nearly a decade, the giants of electronic dance music, a cold-blooded cadre mostly from northern Europe, lumbered across the Earth. Tiësto, Paul Van Dyk, Paul Oakenfold, Seb Fontaine, Judge Jules, and Fatboy Slim dominated small suburban dance floors and Ibizan caverns alike with crafty disco assembled from chest-rattling basslines…
When XTC’s Andy Partridge is reached via phone at his home in England, he’s doing exactly what one expects the prolific studio musician to be doing. “You caught me having a secret strum on the guitar,” the 53-year-old says cheerfully. “I just blundered into quite a nice chord change that…
Musician-turned-novelist Frank Portman of the Mr. T Experience has long joked about conceiving his novel King Dork as part of a strategy to “get out of debtor’s prison.” After 20 years in the punk-rock biz without a hit, it appears his strategy has finally paid off. On November 14, Gary…
