Psychedelic space rock and panoramic expressions. Gospel choirs and 18-month mixing sessions. Hundred-piece orchestras with their sweeping strings. These are a few of Jason Pierce’s favorite things. Or they were. A major departure from 2001’s ambitious, massively orchestral Let It Come Down, Spiritualized’s fifth studio album (which arrives barely two…
A year ago, Eisley was still MossEisley, and the band was still on the verge of something instead of in the thick of it. But you could hear it coming, see it on the way. You wouldn’t necessarily have predicted the deal with Warner Bros. or the tours with Coldplay,…
There’s an immediate urge to say something snarky such as, “Oh, look, it’s the second coming” when first introduced to Liquid Chris H., the Scottish electrocoustic composer known singularly as Christ. But clichés can’t describe Metamorphic Reproduction Miracle, Christ’s debut full-length (following the 2002 Pylonesque EP), which is a murky,…
Was 2003 a good year for South Florida music? Sort of hard to tell, innit, when we’re always worked into a self-flagellating lather over how tough we have it down here? Well, buck up, lil campers! Sure, the radio sucks wet, musky, pachyderm balls, our big concert venue is named…
When all the ex-principals of Fort Lauderdale’s long-gone Collapsing Lungs agreed to get back together again, the holiday season just seemed like perfect timing. All seven members of the industrial-rap band have family in the area, the last time they played together as a complete unit was the summer of…
The term space porn may evoke images of alien life forms fornicating in zero gravity. But for the members of L.A.-based Particle, it’s a fan’s apt description of their music. “I think a lot of our music is very ethereal and electronically based,” drummer Darren Pujalet explains. “It gives it…
Blue Note has always been one of America’s — and the world’s — premier jazz labels, bestowing upon us classic platters by such luminaries as Thelonious Monk and Wayne Shorter. But the past few years have found the label expanding its focus, releasing albums by hip-hop artist Madlib and jazz-influenced…
Revolver — the hip little cadre of indie kids shuttling from one über-cool club to another looking for its next fix of underground music — turns 3 years old this week. So, if you count yourself among that contingent, you’ll want to make the trip to Miami’s Design District to…
Here’s hoping you finished your gift shopping early, especially for that friendly, red-eyed pothead on your list. ‘Cause if you didn’t already buy little Derwood a hand-blown, color-changing, double-thick glass bubbler for a special stocking stuffer, you’ll have to improvise with a cardboard tube and some tinfoil. This is because…
Self-contained female performers have always been a rarity in R&B, so when one comes along, overreaction is perhaps inevitable. In 2001, plenty of those who heard Alicia Keys were so knocked out by the preternaturally poised 19-year-old pianist that they failed to notice that much of the music from Songs…
Australia’s the Sleepy Jackson is the project of one Luke Steele and his revolving door of musicians, who reportedly keep leaving due to the songwriter’s rigidity. But it’s a good thing Steele is so stubborn, because the band’s debut, Lovers, is, thanks to its creator’s eccentric pastiche of styles, a…
With all the Brazilians living in South Florida, you’d think the local music scene would be teeming with the sounds of samba, tropicalia, bossa nova, and rock em portugues. But while heavyweights like Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso occasionally pass through our territory, the only local Brazilian act of note…
Although his name is not as heralded as Eddie Palmieri, Tito Puente, or Fort Apache Band founders Jerry and Andy Gonzalez, New York-based trombonist Papo Vazquez is as central to the development of Latin jazz as any of those legendary figures. The virtuosic trombonist has been an important part of…
Somewhere between the twist and the sit-in was a musical experience unlike any other. Between the first British invasion and the first rock opera was the most energetic, honest, exciting music ever created.” Those sentences, penned by South Florida record collector/historian Jeff Lemlich, are perhaps the best ever written to…
In an indie rock pasture where the remotest hint of idealism gets a band instantly thrown into the emo corral to graze alongside the cloned sheep, bands can find it difficult to stand out from the pack. It’s no different for Miami’s Sunday Driver, especially as a newcomer just on…
For those familiar with Brian Eno’s ambient music, his newest addition to the canon won’t come as a shock. Instead, it’s more of the soothing, almost-there quietude that made his classics Music for Airports or Thursday Afternoon such attractive shades of sonic wallpaper. Nowadays the 55-year-old composer and theorist finds…
Offering plangent, precious folk and candid outbursts of fragility, Chan Marshall, a.k.a. “Cat Power,” is a musician of infinite nakedness. Ten months ago, she unveiled her most recent release, You Are Free. The stripped-down album includes vocals by Eddie Vedder, drumming by Dave Grohl, and is considered by many to…
For City Link’s venerable staff writer Bob Weinberg, it’s bad enough that his biweekly column about all things bluesy and jazzy got yanked. But now he’s got a noisy detractor — oddly enough, with the same name — bitching that his hasty exit wasn’t graceful enough. At the conclusion of…
If I were Britney Spears’ mom, I’d be… very rich! But I’d also be confused: The routine deluge of self-promotion that’s accompanied the release of Spears’ fourth album, In the Zone, has included a fair amount of anguished ‘why-won’t-the-media-leave-me-alone?’ dropped purposefully into network-news interviews, VH1 specials, and high-profile magazine articles…
Improvisation doesn’t always equal innovation. Sometimes, the lack of connection among a group of musicians can result in nothing short of a muddled affair. Thankfully, Vienna-based trio Trapist has the talent and cohesion to turn an organic sound into an at-times-brilliant portrait of electronic orchestration. A concept album of sorts,…
The world of Lady A — British-born chanteuse Anjali Bhatia — is a deliciously decadent dimension where Russ Meyer directs James Bond flicks on the streets of Calcutta, and orbiting spacecraft are equipped with fur-lined cocktail nooks, hot tubs, and Martin Denny LPs to facilitate swanky zero-gravity copulation. Sprawling strings,…
From the somber opening touches of the first note, played by the veteran alto sax improviser Marion Brown, it’s obvious that Light of Day is quite unlike most jazz albums these days. There are no desperate attempts to make it palatable to a crossover audience, who expect their “jazz” to…
