Calla’s 2001 album Scavengers was rife with highly atmospheric music and speculative lyrics. The band itself and guitarist Aurelio Valle’s songwriting were clearly maturing: After a few years of delivering obscure tracks, Calla had compiled some crafty and intelligent pop tunes for that disc. The band formed in Texas in…
Electroclash was simply too retro for its own good. Why listen to Fischerspooner’s carbon copy of “Blue Monday” when the original was still around? Then Princess Superstar along with DJ Alex Technique formed the DJs Are Not Rock Stars collective. The duo learned the elusive art of beatmatching and quickly…
Part beatnik, part Ben Folds, Brendan O’Hara is quickly becoming one of South Florida’s most interesting musical commodities. Backed by the Humble Ones trio — drummer, bassist, and keyboardist — O’Hara fuses hip-hop, jazz, folk, and saloon-style swing into something soothingly familiar and cleverly offbeat. A self-described “good ole Irish…
Quick, name your favorite Irish DJ. Come on, we’re waiting. Okay, maybe you see our point. Even though it supports a flourishing underground scene, the Emerald Isle isn’t known stateside as a dance music hot spot. Which is why we’re just as surprised as you that this year’s New Times/Village…
According to frontman Liam Hewlett, people have the Prodigy all wrong. Hewlett laments about how the media struggle to categorize the trio, sometimes calling it a punk band, sometimes calling it heavy metal, constantly trying to squeeze it into genres in which it doesn’t quite fit. Since the group’s break…
Schematic Records. Upon seeing such a name, any rational consumer would deduce a record label with a distinct plan, a blueprint. And why not, considering the increasingly high degree of regimentation electronic music has exhibited over the past three decades. Except Miami-based Schematic Records — celebrating its tenth anniversary during…
The flak that religiously oriented music gets from secular camps generally lies within the parameters of acceptance and “mass appeal.” So it is strikingly refreshing when a rambunctious teenager discovers the meaning of his parents’ G-d in the wilderness and sets out to mix that with his past rebellions. Matisyahu’s…
Since striking its own multithread trajectory off of the early Nineties breakbeat hardcore sound, drum ‘n’ bass has swung back and forth in popular opinion. There have been times when its hyperkinetic breakbeats and penchant for speaker- and tweaker-punishing malevolence have been labeled too insular, and other times when its…
Though it’s true that jazz thrives on forward-looking innovation, the best progress comes from artists who are as aware of their predecessors as their peers. In the eleven years since its inception, the Berlin-based collective Jazzanova has pushed the envelope as often as it has licked it and sent love…
Something like an Amazonian leprechaun, Curumin is a mythical jungle troublemaker in the guise of a feral child. His favorite tactic is misdirection; with his feet facing backward, poachers never know exactly which way he is heading. The same can be said for Luciano Nakata Albuquerque, the multitalented Brazilian wunderkind…
When the Rub — a Brooklyn DJ crew comprising DJ Eleven, DJ Cosmo Baker, and DJ Ayres — performs at the new Wynwood venue Bullfrog Eatz on Friday, the dance-ready patron in attendance can expect a few of the usual suspects (Miami bass, Baltimore club, rock, rip-hop, New Wave, electro,…
Juan Luis Guerra’s band, 4.40, takes its name from the universal tuning pattern of the A note, 4.40 hertz. The name was chosen, by Guerra’s brother José Gilberto, as a reference to their obsession with staying in perfect tune. This musical fixation led Guerra and 4.40’s bandmates, all natives of…
Call crate-digging wunderkind Andy Votel a modern-day Phileas Fogg, spanning the globe in 80 minutes while spinning wax pressed up before he was born. Having already documented Welsh beat and French soundtracks, Votel returns to the LSD flashback era of early prog, as documented on last year’s head-trip mixes Songs…
Ricardo Villalobos is the avatar of that avant-garde permutation of house music often called ketamine-house (for its drugged, psychedelic effects that swirl around the beat, though one can also hear that giddy rush of whippet hits too). And every album and single he releases anticipates where the amoebic form might…
Tres Chicas’ second album is the auditory equivalent of a chick flick. It’s not so much because of the group’s name or the bandmates’ feminine bond or that the CD and cover booklet are swathed in pink. Rather it has to do with their wistful, starry-eyed themes and the music’s…
“It’s goin’ down, y’all, like the wall of Berlin,” says Prince during 3121’s opening title track, a slice of funk more wobbly and bizarre than anything he has released this side of that wall tumbling. It’s comforting to know that, like Kate Bush, he still lets the weirdness in. And…
Whispered vocal clusters, busy laptop beats, and an occasional brass arrangement drive the electronic pop pieces on Music A.M.’s third album. Unwound from the Woods was mixed in the Welsh mountains, and bears lofty, expansive psychedelia in its eleven sleepy tracks — notably in the swirling chime coda of “Ten…
The four genetically blessed siblings collectively known as the Corrs hail from Irish environs, so it’s no surprise their sound boasts a certain measure of folk finesse. Despite the cute and cuddly approach that has marked their previous efforts, they have always stayed in touch with tradition through the use…
Multimedia artist Takagi Masakatsu works in an ambient medium on Journal for People, his third CD and second DVD release for Washington, D.C.’s Carpark label. The audio half of Journal stays within miniature-sounding orchestrations concocted mostly of piano melodies, varied instrumentation, and field recordings that get chopped and looped in…
Legendary Jamaican trombonist Rico Rodriguez created a signature sound on many reggae and ska albums. The septuagenarian leads the way through standards such as Jerry Johnson’s “Jumbo Rock” and Sado Watanabe’s “Eastern Island”; classic ska pieces including Don Drummond’s “Eastern Standard Time”; and the theme from the television show Dr…
Who’d have thought an improv klatch between Four Tet’s resident knob-twiddler and a storied jazz drummer could yield something so aurally stunning, so open-ended and trippy? And yet here the players’ styles collide and mesh nicely, a crowded but comfortable sprawl of steel-drum patter and undulating, wailing electronics goaded into…
When this ex-Television member tries to test the limits of his limited singing voice, the results suggest an unfortunately overambitious Lou Reed. On “Documentary” the manic-depressive, seesawing melody — low-slung, swampy blues shot through intermittently with engaging bursts of sunshine buoyancy — compensates for Verlaine’s inelegant warble and penchant for…
