With Infame (Infamous), Babasonicos — the proud holder of six 2004 Gardel Awards, the Argentine equivalent of the Grammy — establishes itself as one of the top performers in that country and takes the crown as Argentina’s most innovative export. It is funny, though, that the altrock sextet, obsessed with…
Electroclash was just a fifteen-minute cocaine high on the pop timeline, so Miss Kittin is deservedly cranky on her solo debut-cum-comedown, I Com. She kicks off a liturgy of her sub-A-list duties (adding people to the guest lists, kissing cheeks) on the opening track, “Professional Distortion,” before reminding us that…
You used to find bastions of bohemia on South Beach; cozy, East Village-style hangouts where original art adorned earth-toned walls and a wobbly stage held a platter of local musicians. At the time, studios and the starving artists who lived in them were located up and down Lincoln Road. That…
On the tenth floor of an anonymous building that stands among high-ranked law firms and accounting offices in the financial mecca known as the Brickell district, there lies a small room that looks like a college dorm unit, decorated with random pictures of graffiti on the wall and a boom…
No birthday could be bitterer than the bicentennial of Haiti’s independence last January 1. Soon after then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide flew the nation’s flag to mark the occasion, thousands of demonstrators marched in front of the National Palace demanding his removal. Security forces responded with gunfire. It wasn’t the place for…
The past few months have delivered a dramatic sequence of events in the life of Beenie Man, whose 24-year career has experienced vertiginous peaks and abysmal valleys. Following the tepid response from dancehall fans to his 2002 “crossover” collaboration with Janet Jackson and the Neptunes, “Feel It Boy” (which nevertheless…
Oly In the past year, electronic waif Oly has been quietly passing out her demo CD-Rs to a handful of lucky clubgoers. On them she plays charming music, accompanying her vocals with keyboards, adopting the sort of whimsical singer-songwriter persona familiar to fans of Solex and Money Mark. This is…
While Eightball and MJG are Living Legends to Southern rap fans, they’ve yet to receive their due recognition from mainstream listeners. With their seventh full-length release, they’ve teamed up with the shiny suit man himself, P. Diddy, as the first artist on Bad Boy South, presumably in an attempt to…
Lil’ Flip is a new champion of Southern hip-hop. The Houston native’s style is as laconic as Too $hort and as unapologetically hook-heavy as MC Hammer. This isn’t an innovation — Memphis’s Three 6 Mafia has been perfecting this blueprint for years. Like that notorious group, Flip, first introduced to…
Pete Rock’s followup to his 1998 solo debut is a decidedly uneven affair. Like its somewhat overpraised predecessor, Soul Survivor II’s fifteen songs are driven by the Chocolate Boy Wonder’s legendary production skills, yielding tracks peppered with samples from the Natural Four (“It’s A Love Thing”), among other excellent choices…
Britain’s Neil Hannon, a.k.a. Divine Comedy, who is known for his wry sense of humor and singular worldview on the most mundane of subjects, hit his stride with the witty 1996 album, Casanova, and further cemented his reputation with 2001’s Regeneration. Three years later on his ninth full-length, Absent Friends,…
Bittertown, Lori McKenna’s exceptional fourth album, finds the skilled singer/songwriter looking at life through the eyes of one whose hopes and dreams have been tempered by fate and circumstance. Bruised but determined, she has created a harsh yet telling snapshot of rural existence, using riveting melodies to etch an indelible…
Last week’s Miami Beach City Commission meeting was a South Beach-style theater of the absurd. The elderly residents were crabby as usual, party people got political over a misconception, and the city’s elected leaders confirmed that municipal government couldn’t get organized or efficient even if it tried. The hot topic…
Nearly two months have passed since the 2004 Winter Music Conference and it still haunts the Miami dance community like a treasured memory. You can see it at Privilege, which was so empty on a recent Friday night that the raucous breakbeat sounds of Habersham and Dave Preston, together known…
As the cliché goes, nothing is new anymore. But in the music industry, there’s always a new artisan eager to add his work to the pantheon. In other words, don’t try to ask the newly minted label owners behind Somia Music if its output is similar to the legion of…
Charles Feelgood In the wonderfully outrageous world of dance music, three styles predominate over all others — progressive house, tribal, and tech-house. You’ll usually hear a combination of them at a dance club, but Baltimore-based DJ Charles Feelgood specializes in the latter, banging out tracks with a ferocity that rivals…
i, the long-awaited followup to the Magnetic Fields’ acclaimed tour de force, 69 Love Songs, finds genius founder Stephin Merritt doing everything to fend off the threat of stardom that 1999 triple-disc set augured. Eschewing the giddy layers of guitar and dense, synthesizer-laden arrangements that yielded such genre-bending jump-ups as…
Rock fans search for a new band to kick-start their lives by casting fishing lines into the pop-culture abyss. Rarely does one bite that’s worth taking seriously, and only once every five to ten years does one hit, pulling fans into the depths of reality for a rush that seems…
The Beta Band excels at willful awkwardness. A few years back, its weirdo edge made the Scottish quartet hip, thanks to its reckless and High Fidelity-approved album, The Three EPs. Unlike some byproducts of pre-Dubya days, however, the Beta Band still has a pulse. That’s not to say the jams…
After the commercial and creative peaks of its “La Bamba” cover and 1992’s Kiko, respectively, Los Lobos owed themselves — and us — another great record. The Ride, a mix of rearranged band classics and sublime originals, is such an album, not just as strong as the last few outings,…
After four major-label albums and a growing reputation among Nashville’s inner cartel, Allison Moorer was ready to arrive. She possessed the aptitude and the attitude that usually means stardom is merely a hit record away. She apparently wasn’t happy, however, with the star-making machinery, especially after witnessing their impact on…
At the entrance to Miami Velvet, a list of disclaimers is headlined by a forthright suggestion: “If you’re offended by sex, please do not enter the premises.” Miami Velvet is a “lifestyles club,” which is a politically correct term for “swingers club.” Truth is, the Velvet resembles a SoBe hot…
