Music

The long arm of the law has never much cared for raves, so it’s no surprise that Electric Skychurch founder James Lumb was turned down recently for jury duty. “I didn’t have to go much further than say, ‘I’m a rave musician,’ before they said ‘You’re out of here,'” tells…

For a few years now, a handful of musicians have been trying to translate DNA codes as directly as possible into electronic music. Letting biology itself sing is an interesting enough concept, but the results so far have been a little placid. On his third album, Chopped Zombie Fungus, Otto…

Wild creatures are often fueled by force of habit, and the same applies to the Paper Lions, a recent merger from two other punk bands (Some Soviet Station and At the Price of the Union). So it’s no surprise that this Atlanta quartet sticks to the form on its debut,…

Mix a precocious talent with a rebel’s mentality and you get Clean, Cosmo Vitelli’s (a.k.a. Benjamin Boguet) deep trip into electronic shadings that produce a strangely alluring mix of hip beats, insightful lyrics, and fine oddities. Beginning with a piano tinkle and the artificial sound of a cat’s meow, Vitelli…

I remember those old “Are You Bourgie?” posters making the rounds at college campuses back in the Eighties (one criteria: “Do you have curls inside of curls inside of naps?”). “Bourgie,” which was shorthand for bourgeois — referring to those who straddle the top end of the blue-collar social scale…

“If anyone can come up with a name…,” struggles Turbonegro bassist/mastermind Happy Tom, attempting — via cell phone from an Oslo taxicab, no less — to hang a handle on the Norwegian death-punk band’s upcoming excursion to the U.S. Bible belt. Perhaps he’s trying to top last summer’s “Res-Erection” festival…

Over the past several years Los Angeles’s Chris Manak, better known as Peanut Butter Wolf, has established himself as one of the most intriguing personalities in hip-hop, one known for his impeccable taste in classic funk, rock, and rap breaks. Though he began his career in the mid-Nineties as a…

For British house music duo Freaks (Luke Solomon and Justin Harris), there’s something wrong if you’re on the dance floor and do not have a smile on your face. Not one of those ironic smiles that says, “Aren’t we trendy and retro?” They’re looking for one of those unconscious wide…

House music’s throbbing beats, feel-good vibe, and bare midriffs are never going to be mistaken for Rachmaninoff. But the genre’s bad rep can actually be attributed to DJs and producers who pander to the lowest common denominator with a steady stream of 4/4 beats and whooshy atmospherics instead of pushing…

Muggs gets off on dirty, grimy, sexy beats. He loves its unmistakable whiffs of grit and cool. While he was producing the early trailblazing work of Cypress Hill, Tricky and trip-hop were exploding across the pond, creating an even more swampy mix of dark tones and moods. On his third…

In dancehall reggae, the term “background instrumental” is an oxymoron: It’s the vocals that are secondary. Instrumentals or “riddims” get their own names, compilations (on which a variety of vocalists use the same riddim), and presumably their own backstage dressing rooms. This, combined with the fact that the worldwide massive…

“I don’t like to rush it when I’m cooking,” says the 49-year-old Jaime Roos, a hugely influential Uruguayan musician who hasn’t released an album of originals since 1996. His most recent album, Contraseña (Password), is a collection of covers of Uruguayan classics by Alfredo Zitarrosa, Eduardo Mateo (Roos’s aesthetic role…

In 2002 the face of reggae was irrevocably changed. America was introduced to undiluted dancehall reggae via Sean Paul’s hit song “Gimme the Light.” The song helped shed light on a slice of Jamaican dance culture called the “riddims,” a beat created and then used as a backing track for…

On a breezy Wednesday evening at the South Beach nightspot Tantra, DanceStar USA, the upstart Miami-based production company whose second annual American Dance Music Awards should be a highlight of this year’s eighteenth annual Winter Music Conference, was giving away so many free mojitos that you could literally walk around…

The Honest Jon’s label — launched by the U.K. record shop of the same name and co-owned by none other than Blur’s Damon Albarn — has built an eclectic roster over the course of its initial three releases. First came Albarn’s Mali Music project, a set of rootsy collaborations with…

What do you get when you put together a band whose guitar and bass players either don’t play their instruments or are just learning them? While a lot of noise may seem like the obvious answer, it afforded the members of Rainer Maria an opportunity to follow their own instincts…

As everyone could use a little break from terror alerts and talk of looming nuclear and biological fallout, the timing couldn’t be better for a fresh dose of dub narcotic. Enter Nutone’s latest, Sunset Nights: A Collection of Deep Jazzy Beats. The compilation of acid jazz (or nu jazz, jazzy…

In 1960 a broke Willie Nelson left a steady gig at Houston’s Esquire Club for Nashville. Despite finding instant success as a hit songwriter for premier Nashville talents like Faron Young, Patsy Cline, Ray Price, and Billy Walker, a frustrated Nelson returned to Texas in 1973 having recorded fourteen albums…

Most locals living in Miami know that the party is always on at Mac’s Club Deuce — even when slow nights in Miami Beach leave its streets eerily barren. At the pink, nearly 40-year-old landmark between Washington and Collins, there is no VIP and the liquor is so cheap, Clubbed…

Finding yourself operating in an over-it-all mode you are once again struck with the need to embark on an effort to create something of a memorable night out. You are no longer satisfied with dipping into the same watering holes filled with scenes inspired by rap videos or Doug Liman’s…