It takes more than big beats to make a crowd shake it. Sure, kicking beefy 4/4 beats onto the floor is essential — but too many DJs, hip-hop producers, techno auteurs and dance-punk wannabes forget to sweeten the pot with anything resembling melody or feeling. It’s like the old carrot-and-stick…
As Plastikman’s protegé, Magda’s duties include warming up the planet’s Plastikheads by crafting wicked tracks for the reigning king of techno’s vanity label, m-nus. Making her name in Motor City, America’s techno capital, and hooking up with the all-goddess disc-jockey collective Women on Wax brought Magda to Richie Hawtin’s attention…
If you’re like me, the words “Christian metal” bring to mind visions of Stryper’s Michael Sweet strutting around the stage in leopard-print spandex, belting out hair-metal hymns. ZAO, however, ain’t your father’s Christian metal. Since its debut album in 1996, the group has created hard-hitting, truly heavy music with often…
John Roderick, the focal point of the Long Winters, gets by with a little help from some noteworthy friends on the band’s latest album, When I Pretend to Fall, released last year on the Barsuk imprint. The Posies’ Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow (who co-produced Fall), plus the Young Fresh…
Back in the Reagan years, pop acts with serious messages were more subtle — which meant you could still have fun and enjoy the music. The Fixx, a British band that hit these shores in 1982, won fans with a smart New Wave sound in hits you could either dance…
Ask Alice Gilbert what gets his rocks off, and he’ll tell you: pop music. More specifically, underground, independent pop music, the stuff that makes Modest Mouse look as pretentious and impenetrable as Proust. One such unassuming outfit is Bad Weather California, which just put out a self-titled, split EP with…
In electronic circles, Ali Shirazina, aka Dubfire (far right), and Sharam Tayebi are household names. These D.C.-based producers, known collectively as Deep Dish, are the remixers of choice for pop icons looking to reinvent themselves — and validate their forays into the dance world. They’ve already remixed material for Madonna,…
LoDo has lost its Lucky Star. The twinkling testament to the ’80s was recently snuffed out, becoming a part of the past — the Do Me Generation — that it celebrated so slavishly. What happened? The club’s lease expired, and the property’s owners decided against renewing it. Rumors are streaking…
I’m not interested in chamber pop. I don’t even know what that really means,” says songwriter Dan Bejar. “If it means, like, ‘Eleanor Rigby’ or something, I don’t really listen to that. Chamber pop kind of bugs me.” As captain of the Vancouver-based vessel Destroyer, Bejar knows a thing or…
Whether we’re talking about the funky-fresh, breakin’, gold-chain hip-hop fans of the 1980s or the glow-stick, lollipopped PLUR set, music has always been as much about the community and culture surrounding it as the scales and octaves within it. Adapting to the times and new technology, the website-cum-record-label Okayplayer has…
Chris Carrabba once said that if he had heard Jonah Matranga’s Onelinedrawing records first, he might not have bothered to create Dashboard Confessional. Listening to The Volunteers, it’s easy to see what he meant. Like Carrabba, Matranga has done time as a rock-and-roll frontman, first leading the Sacramento-based outfit Far,…
Last month, T.I. was sentenced to three years in jail after violating his probation. And while the Atlanta-based rapper shares his rap sheet throughout his sophomore release, Trap Muzik, he also offers a bit of insight and advice. On “Doin’ My Job,” he muses that, like it or not, selling…
Heavy metal and bluegrass go together like angry steelworkers and precious little cucumber finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Nonetheless, the acoustic pluckers in Alabama’s Iron Horse take on the music of Metallica, to middling results. No doubt this horse knows its way around a dobro, a mando, a…
I’ve gotta be honest with you: This album pissed me off! Thumbs up for the cover, on which the Divine Miss B displays a hottie hairstyle, bare shoulders and a smile that seems to say, “Hey, sailor — plastic warms to the touch.” When I popped in the disc, though,…
Does Denver have a good music scene? Absolutely. The bad news, though, is that you’ll have to look somewhere besides this compilation to truly find it. Local Shakedown Vol. II is a two-CD set showcasing 43 Colorado acts and was compiled over the course of the past two years by…
Sure, most concept albums are dreary, but that’s only because the ideas behind them are usually pretentious and overwrought. Selections From 52 Songs, in contrast, is based on a notion that’s as simple as it is elegant. Potts, a computer-age instrumentalist, decided that he would write and record one song…
Mtley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx has toured the world, headlined stadiums, written anthems and sold millions of albums. He’s shagged everything within reach, and he’s died twice. Now he has a new band, the Brides of Destruction, and he’s finally set to achieve one of his lifetime goals: playing the…
When it comes to sensitive singer-songwriters, I generally subscribe to the thinking of cult obscurity Tonio K., who in 1979 wrote, “Yes, I wish I was as mellow/As, for instance, Jackson Browne/But ‘Fountain of Sorrow’ my ass, motherfucker/I hope you wind up in the ground.” Nonetheless, there’s still a place…
The Shins (above) make the kind of ’60s pop rock that never existed, a brand of revisionist guitar glee that sounds like Crowded House just got its MFA. The band’s Phil Ek-produced sophomore release, Chutes Too Narrow, is a guitar-driven party record, peppered with surprises like “Gone for Good,” a…
What’s the sound of one hand clapping? Probably something really close to that of a guy jacking off. Likewise, one-man bands tend to embody the more masturbatory traits to which musicians are prone: self-absorption, self-indulgence, self-congratulation and lots of other annoying qualities prefixed by the word “self.” Eric Crespo (below),…
Listing all of the side projects associated with Chicago’s Tortoise would take up the lion’s share of this modest blurb, otherwise intended to sing the praises of a high-conceit art band that somehow found a way to make an instrumental stroll sound pretty dang engaging. How is it possible for…
Bob Dylan should be pissed. Forty years after he launched his iconic career, people still can’t get his name right. For example, producer Robert Metzgar’s bio refers to him as “Bob Dillon.” If you were a musician with nowhere near the track record of Dylan, would you take career advice…
