If last weekend is any indication (and as of this writing, there are still three nights left to go), happy days are here again for the sprawling five-day festival popularly known as the Winter Music Conference. “It’s going better than ever,” reports WMC co-founder Bill Kelly from the poolside area…
As hard as we may wish and pray for it to happen, Alicia Keys will probably never serve any of her acolytes a steaming cup of hot chocolate (made with cream, not water). It’s something we dream about every time we hear her cell phone conversation in her current chart-topper,…
Unlike rock and hip-hop stars, dance music’s biggest names aren’t shy about mixing it up with the fans. Perhaps because of the ego-free nature of dance music, DJs are often unrecognized and able to mingle without being mobbed. This remains one of the dance scene’s most endearing qualities, along with…
Prior to the release of his artist album, International Affairs, and alongside his extensive production work for the likes of Erykah Badu and Common (not to mention his projects with King Britt and Roni Size), Philadelphia’s Vikter Duplaix had a significant impact on eclectically driven dance floors with his downtempo-geared…
The biggest disservice you could do Just Jack would be to approach his debut album, The Outer Marker, thinking of him as a follower of the Streets. Sure, they’re both white guys from the United Kingdom who speak observationally about their surroundings and life in general in a frisky accent,…
It is said that a watched pot boils more slowly. Well, the genre coined as microhouse certainly has many a gaze — journo at least — turned on it. And if The Present Lover, only the second album since 2000 by Luomo — a PowerBook-pop guise of Finnish producer Vladislav…
Sometimes the heckler is right. Many moons ago, a young Millie Jackson wrecked some poor tuneless hackette’s act at the famed Harlem nightclub Small’s Paradise. The would-be diva dared Jackson to come onstage. Oops! After dusting off the object of her ridicule with her gorgeous, soaring alto, Jackson embarked on…
The old, supposedly cursed spot at 1235 Washington Ave. is back in black. Gerry Kelly and Noah Lazes sold what was then Level to the Opium Group’s Milon Brothers last year. The new owners renamed the space Mansion and procured the services of top-shelf promoters Michael Capponi and Antonio Misuraca…
Record companies love to say that their song did well at the Winter Music Conference. “This was the hit of WMC!” looks great splashed across the sales sheets and press releases. (If I had a nickel for every hype sheet I get with this absurd claim on it, well, I…
Is the Winter Music Conference ready to grow up? Praga Bhandari thinks so. “You could say our event represents a maturing of the music audience,” says the drummer for Formula One, a band that specializes in “dirty rock and roll.” The New York City outfit will be one of several…
As possibly the only genre in modern dance music that Britain can truly call its own, drum and bass is a U.K. phenomenon that has been slow to catch on in the United States. In the last year, however, the style has gone through a period of malaise in its…
Producing and reproducing crisply delineative yet densely rhythmic textural techno, Detroit-bred DJ/producer Jeff Mills weaves a nuanced mesh of pointillist percussion, ominous ambience, and undulating synths with pinpoint accuracy. His mixes are considered “minimalist” because they don’t rely on the push and pull of peak-and-valley pump. Like snow flurries, his…
Every few years since the mid-Eighties, the true revival of “electro” has been heralded. The depth charge 808 drum machine and scratchy freestyle funk of Miami bass can be felt in everything from dirty South crunk to Detroit ghetto-tech to Orlando-based DJ Icey’s Florida breaks to the output of European…
The word “party” can mean so many things. Saying that you “like to party” could mean that you enjoy attending get-togethers with your friends. It might also be a sign that you’re down to swap sexual partners or purchase narcotics, depending on the conversation. No doubt Drew Daniel, one-half of…
The cult of superstar DJ, after turning a handful of artists into the closest thing to a rock star the dance world has, seemingly has disappeared from the lexicon of the trend-obsessed music press. As progressive house titan Sasha laughs, “We’re not flavor of the month. The honeymoon period is…
The telephone connection crosses the Atlantic and Ivan Smagghe picks up in the studio amid zaps of off-putting metallic modulation crafted by his chum Arnaud Rebotini. Together they are the French outfit Black Strobe, who recently swooped into clubland stateside via a remix of the Rapture’s “Sister Savior” and the…
From the urban heart of San Francisco emanates the penumbral, funky sonance of Om, “the source sound and vibration from which all sounds are derived,” according to Chris Smith, a.k.a. DJ Fluid of Afro-Mystik. After founding Om Records in 1995, Smith began propagating what he calls “future music”: the hypnotic…
It was hard to ride the No Wave, especially when the New Wave was so poppy and colorful. Thus, late-Seventies and early-Eighties bands who performed noisy punk versions of funk and disco got caught in the riptide. No matter: While the electroclash rehash becomes a faded memory, it looks like…
This year’s WMC and M3 events can make it or break it for countless record labels attempting to forge new ground … yeah, you’ve heard it all before. But consider London-based Barely Breaking Even Music (BBE). From pioneering hip-hop albums (see Jay Dee’s memorable Welcome 2 Detroit) to acclaimed compilations…
Hollertronix is what the ADD kids are chattering about, period. Never Scared, a low-pro mix album they released late last year on indie start-up Money Studies, is a pirated rush of hip-ified Jock Jamz adrenaline, where dirty South b-ounce fire adroitly meets No Wave undercurrents that freeze sweat like Napoleon…
Soon after the advent of electronic composition — commencing with the breech birth of electric instrumentation, which came kicking and squalling into the academic world in the mid-1920s through the form of the theremin — Germany established an integral, indelible role in forwarding narrative minimalism. It was in the Fifties…
It takes a lot of work for DBJ to get his records out to the club. First he loads eight metal cases, carrying about 7000 records in all, from the back of his car onto a trolley. Then, with the help of two club employees, he rolls them into State,…
