Who’s seven feet tall, has flow like a fractured iceberg and gets his paycheck signed by Omar A. Rodriguez-Lopez of the Mars Volta? Giovanni Marks, leader of the underground hip-hop cabal Subtitle. The L.A.-based rapper might look more like a starting forward for the Lakers than a musician, but his…
Blackalicious showed off its linguistic prowess some years back on a single called “Alphabet Aerobics.” As for lightning-lipped Los Angeles MC Busdriver — another denizen of the hip-hop underground — he’s spent the double-aughts pushing his verbal virtuosity past levels that’d wear out manic Celebrity Fit Club trainer Harvey Walden…
Saxophonist Fred Hess shows no signs of caring about stardom or fame or any of the other forces that drive so many of his fellow musicians. He’s more concerned with nudging his work forward day by day, month by month, recording by recording — and his latest disc, How ‘Bout…
Few DJs are as synonymous with their craft as Alexander Coe, aka Sasha. Throughout the ’90s, Sasha and his partner, John Digweed, did more to legitimize the art of deejaying than perhaps any other performers. They sold untold thousands of records and CDs and opened up markets that hadn’t previously…
The first thing Out on Bail wants to talk about isn’t the songwriting process or artistic integrity or any other of rock’s bullshit shibboleths. It’s booze. “Picture yourself in Pierre, South Dakota,” bassist Mike “Mad Dog” Taylor jumps in before the tape recorder is even rolling. “We’re touring with our…
Brian Howe is making a big noise as a Denver DJ — even if he lives in Loveland, a quiet backwater better known for its Valentine’s Day postage seal than its thriving electronic scene. Howe moved to northern Colorado from the Bay area a year ago. “I really just kind…
Montreal’s Stars have been living a couple of jackpot years. Crashing stateside with the wave of “collective” bands from the Great White North (including neighborhood chums Broken Social Scene), the five-piece has managed to make the heavy-rotation list on Adam Brody’s iPod and collect a broad constellation of accolades and…
Sometimes, Mira Romantschuk still can’t believe her luck. “Two years ago we were in Paris, without homes, in a very critical state,” she exclaims. “We left Paris for Finland to work on our music and try to survive on what we had.” Romantschuk is recounting the origins of the duo…
Jack Dangers, the main man behind Meat Beat Manifesto, has been credited with plenty of musical innovations over nearly two decades, but he’s never received the praise he feels he’s due for his work in another creative medium: hairstyling. During the early ’80s, he and Barry Andrews, a onetime member…
Dear Sir, released in 1995, marked singer-songwriter Chan Marshall as one Power-ful Cat — but as the years wore on, she proved to be a relatively sedentary one, as well. On disc after disc after disc, her spare arrangements and tenderly purred vocals came to both define and entrap her…
Check out the collabos on Jamie Foxx’s new album, Unpredictable: Ludacris, Twista, the Game, Snoop, Mary J. Blige, Kanye West and Common. Then there are the tracks produced by Babyface and Timbaland. Homeboy even thanks Oprah in the liner notes. Think Foxx is connected? It makes sense: When you’re the…
Electronics are the new orchestras, at least insofar as they allow a standard three-piece like Slow Runner to fold in layers of interior and pockets of depth that only studious listening can completely excavate. Michael Flynn articulates with Rufus Wainwright weight on every phrase, a romantic bit of overkill that…
Tunnel Vision Brilliance could prompt purchases with its cover alone, as long as designers supplement its disturbing imagery (lumberjack-like Scott Reeder floating shirtless in amniotic fluid) with a sticker that reads “The solo debut from the bassist of Obsessed and Kyuss.” Like a more intimate expression of the latter band’s…
It’s likely that brothers Pete, Phil and Tony Lewis were on something — probably a lot of something — when they recorded RV Livin’. The disc feels gleefully inebriated, as if the alcoholic or chemical cocktails that fueled its creators somehow seeped into every song. The CD’s sound quality falls…
Buddy, let me tell you what: These here Railbenders are the real McCoy. For my money, these urban cowboys play some of the most authentic honky-tonk this side of Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys. And Showdown, their third full-length and first for the Texas-based Stag imprint, is by far…
Clear Static, Make-Up Sex (Maverick). Clear Static is bad, and not in a good way. With a puke-inducing mix of hipster fashion, Debbie Gibson-on-a-bad-day vocals and recycled ’80s rock, this teenage quintet is everything that’s wrong with major labels today. Props for gigging at the Viper Room at age thirteen,…
Hard Times Are in Fashion was one of the great surprises of last summer. After honing its emo chops, Koufax shook things up with its third record — an irresistibly hooky slab of dark, danceable rock. Like the Strokes forced to play Ben Folds and Psychedelic Furs covers, the feisty…
Pedal-steel-guitar sensation Robert Randolph owes much of his rapid rise over the past several years to a simple if seldom-stated fact: In the minds of many music fans, hot chops more than compensate for a lack of originality. Randolph, who appears at the Fillmore with the Motet, developed his pedal-steel…
If there’s any justice in the great beyond, a celebrated wuss like Kenny G will end up working the men’s room in hell, force-fed a never-ending diet of his own dreck, groveling for poop tips from Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. Until that happens, radical jazz trio the Dead Kenny…
The sons of famous fathers start out several rungs higher on life’s ladder than do the rest of us, but this head start doesn’t guarantee superstardom, as the career of James McMurtry demonstrates. The singer-songwriter’s 1989 debut, Too Long in the Wasteland, appeared on a major label, Columbia, thanks largely…
Reggie and the Full Effect is like the composite scenester kid that’s been at the ass end of every good/ dumb punk-rock trend from the past five or six years. Songs Not To Get Married To is a VH1 special of “I Love Hot Topic Band T-Shirts” that ironically and…
Always the bridesmaid, never the bride: That might as well be Sevendust’s mantra. Although the Atlanta quintet is perpetually on the verge of breaking through, it’s never quite reached the status of past tourmates — Limp Bizkit, Creed, Drowning Pool and Incubus — that have leapfrogged the act both critically…
