The promise of digital music reproduction, compact discs if you recall, was not only “perfect sound” but indestructible sound. In the future, said the salesmen, no longer will we have to return a CD to the jewel box after listening to it. Just toss it somewhere over there; it’s got…
Holy Modal Rounders Too Much Fun (Rounder) Some words of warning: If your idea of great ’60s folk music is Peter, Paul, & Mary; if you have issues with the vision of gray-haired hippies partying like it’s 1969; or if you have any aversion to whooping and hollering; you should…
“We really wanted to revolt against conventional music, against things that had a real flow. We wanted to take the template of dance music and see what new directions we could go with it,” explains Josh Kay, who along with Romulo Del Castillo make up the Miami electronic outfit Phoenecia…
My first exposure to Captain Beefheart came, aptly enough, during an intensely enjoyable acid trip to which Trout Mask Replica provided the soundtrack. It was 1983, and I was seventeen years old. Though already a seasoned music dork with obsessions that encompassed punk and zydeco, Delta blues and modern jazz,…
Salif Keita Mama (Metro Blue) If you wanted to oversimplify the short history of Afro-pop into neat categories, it would be easy. King Sunny Ade has the beats, Youssou N’Dour has the hits, and Salif Keita has the voice. But even that summation would need some updating with the release…
Salif Keita Mama (Metro Blue) If you wanted to oversimplify the short history of Afro-pop into neat categories, it would be easy. King Sunny Ade has the beats, Youssou N’Dour has the hits, and Salif Keita has the voice. But even that summation would need some updating with the release…
8 1/2 Souvenirs Twisted Desire (RCA) Get out your poodle skirts and let’s schwing, baby. The Austin, Texas-based quintet 8 1/2 Souvenirs is breaking out their groovy new CD, Twisted Desire. The band’s sound has been called sophisticated, bohemian, cool, decidedly quirky, France-meets-Austin, cosmopolitan pop, swing-influenced rockabilly Texarkana, and that…
Throughout the Nineties, the wide-ranging music collectively known as rock en español, Latin rock, or more recently, alterlatino, has been the next big thing that wasn’t. Bands playing rock, hip-hop, and the world beat dance fusions that fall helter-skelter into this category have remained the odd men out in the…
Los Zafiros Bossa Cubana (World Circuit/Nonesuch) The London-based World Circuit label has had phenomenal success with Buena Vista Social Club, Afro-Cuban All Stars, and septuagenarian singer Ibrahim Ferrer’s recent solo album. With more than two million records sold, the label is clearly on to something good: the preservation of twentieth-century…
in a straight world
In the rich, varied, and bizarre history of African pop music, the absurd tragedy of the Ethiopian pop recording industry stands alone. Less than a decade separates cradle from grave. When 24-year-old Amha Eshete took the gutsy move of founding Amha Records in Ethiopia’s capital city of Addis Ababa in…
Drum and bass is a genre notable for its rhythmic innovation and an ever-changing cutting edge that seems to mutate with the week’s latest twelve-inch single. It’s also all too often marked by a startling lack of musicality. A typical drum and bass single usually starts off establishing the now-familiar…
For decades France’s superiority over America in the area of wine was unquestionable. America retaliated by sending its finest jazz artists to France, where critics and music lovers elevated them to the highest levels of esteem. In the post-cold war era, during which California wines have rivaled the best of…
“Electro and bass is Miami, whether we like it or not. You can’t get away from it,” says Seven, the elusive figure behind Chocolate Industries, the local record label famed for bringing experimental sounds to the world and in the process putting Miami on the map as a hotbed for…
Prominent American musicians wax lyrical over him. In his own country a colleague wrote a tune about him, transforming his name into a verb. Lately it seems that people all across the world have become “Caetano-ized.” But for Brazil’s Caetano Veloso, the universal embrace that he’s currently receiving has been…
Maybe it’s because they recorded tough R&B, raunchy blues, and wildcat rockabilly in a city where straight-line honky-tonkers ruled the Nashville nest. Or maybe it’s because its staggering roster of talent never cracked the pop charts. Whatever the reason, Excello Records and its parent company Nashboro have somehow slid through…
Eliades Ochoa y el Cuarteto Patria Sublime Illusion (Higher Octave Music) It isn’t hard to find a silver lining in Buena Vista Social Club, the enchantingly sensual collaboration between Ry Cooder and some of Cuba’s legendary-but-almost-forgotten musicians that became an unexpected worldwide smash. But one of the sweetest aftershocks is…
Juan-Carlos Formell Songs from a Little Blue House (Wicklow) This isn’t your father’s son. It isn’t Juan-Carlos Formell’s father’s son, either. On Songs from a Little Blue House, Juan-Carlos takes the kind of wide departure from the traditional Cuban son, charanga, and “feeling” genres that daddy Juan Formell probably never…
There was something in his eyes, Augustus Pablo’s inevitably reefer-blurred eyes, that was alternately haunting and sad, chilling and beautiful. In the numerous photos of the dub innovator that grace the slew of albums released during his life (which ended May 17 at the age of 46 after a bout…
Ask for James Baldwin. That’s how you get Chris Rock on the phone this morning, by telling the hotel operator in Philadelphia you want to talk to the author of Go Tell It on the Mountain, The Fire Next Time, and Blues for Mr. Charlie. The operator chuckles slightly when…
Where were the Cubans? That was the nagging question hanging in the air at this year’s MIDEM Americas conference. Cuban music may be hotter than ever, but it was virtually invisible at the convention. The official word out of MIDEM head Xavier Roy’s office was that the conference was “diversifying”…
