While purists continue splitting hairs over “true” heavy-metal style, Danava combs the genre into a weave of fantastic art-rock wizardry that leaves the shtick straight by the wayside. For its full-length debut, Kemado Records’ dark horse moves between kohl-cloaked glam and by-the-misty-bog Zeppelin hallucination fantasies; gargantuan stoner rhythms and high…
At 75, Ike Turner is still one mean motherfucker. Risin’ With the Blues, his first release of new material in three years, is as tough and weathered as the man himself, full of searing guitar work and his ever-prevalent tough-guy persona. Mixing half a dozen quality originals (including the signature…
Tucson may seem like an unlikely home for a French man who plays jazzy, eclectic pop-folk, but Parisian transplant Naim Amor is a man of many flavors. While his own melancholy music is filled with dreamy, soft instrumentation and his smoky-voiced accent, he considers everyone from the Sex Pistols to…
Roots-rockers the Damnwells may have had their first taste of major-label compromise when Epic Records blanked out the title to their debut’s 41-second leadoff track, “Assholes.” Come on, Epic — is that really still a bad word? Anyway, the band reprised the song in full, fleshed-out glory for last year’s…
Don’t let those could-be-Finnish song titles fool you. Anathallo hails from Michigan, its name draws reference from a Japanese folktale, and its debut, Floating World, bears little resemblance to any of the zillion CD-Rs recorded in recent years by Avarus or Avarus-associated concerns. This five-years-running septet fuses the reeling, jet-stream…
Damn, Diosa’s sure got some mad DJ skills. The punky female turntablist, who got into the scratching-and-spinning biz after witnessing a “life-altering” performance by Z-Trip in 2000, is not only a member of such she-jay collectives as Females Wit Funk, but she’s also been featured in the pages of Sonik…
If Las Vegas can have its homegrown Britpop, why not Tucson? The Killers acclimated us to Yanks and synths again, but The Year of Acceleration is here to say, “What about surliness and passionate songs about the sun never shining and prescription medicine, then?” This is no ironic re-creation of…
The last time you encountered Native American music, you were probably in the middle of a deep-tissue massage. Long Winter Nights, on the other hand, should be blazing over the PA at a bustling pub. This is round dance music — raw, joyous drum and chant, far from the sedative…
Thursday 9 AZ 88: Mr. P-Body (synth pop, electro) Bunkhouse Lounge: DJ Doom (dance) Chilly Bombers: DJ Statik (hip-hop, dance) The Door: DJ J. Nasty (hip-hop, Motown, Top 40) e4: “Passport” with DJ Tranzl8r (hip-hop mash-ups) E-Lounge: DJ Domenica (hip-hop, house) Grilled Expedition: DJs Playboy & JeX (Top 40) Hollywood…
The Breadwinners In tomorrow’s new ish of the paper, I hang out with the Breadwinners, a four-piece traditional bluegrass group that plays at the Loft in Tempe every Tuesday night. There ain’t much bluegrass in these parts, but these four bring it with an authenticity you can’t find anywhere else…
While my esteemed blogging colleague (blog-eague?) Stephen Lemons has been busy picking fights with the fiesty commentators at AZPunk.com, I’ve had my ears glued to the formidable portal’s latest compilation of local punk bands, AZPunk.comp V5, which will have its release celebrated Friday night at The Sets in Tempe. This…
Pacific Coast News Happier Times Lefties get the House, maybe the Senate, Rumsfeld resigns, but even better than that – Britney filed for divorce!! Ordinarily I stick to BS-ing about local music steez up in this piece, but I had to pass on the fantastic news that Britney Spears is…
ProjectGuerilla.com Back in late August I wrote a feature on revolutionary rapper GRIME (the acronym stands for “Got Revolution In My Eyes”) and his musical perpetuation of the Revolutionary But Gangsta movement. Apparently GRIME’s getting up in the election day today in his own unique way, releasing his new single…
DJ Aaron Roberts Local producer Aaron Roberts released a tricky little EP of booty shaking house beats called Hip-Hop Stop on Nashville label Photo Records this week. The “hip-hop” reference is deceiving – this is bass-heavy house with chopped-up vocals and dancefloor cuts. Not really the sort of thing I…
Wormwood Brothers This local self-described “dustcore” outfit called Wormwood Brothers sent me a beautiful little track called “Trigger Happy” that reminds me of shoegazers with a taste for y’all-ternative bands like Wilco, Son Volt, and their ilk. It’s pretty fucking melancholy, as are the other tracks up on the band’s…
After I posted a couple of songs from the enigmatic Janis Joplin Crap N Vomit last week, the band sent me a couple of emails to explain what the deal is. And it just got weirder. Here’s the illumination from “Pete aka Solvent the Solution”: “Two piece, bass and drums…
Woodpile in New Times There was a little e-mail scuffle between an L.A. Times writer named Chris Lee and myself recently, when I wrote a column refuting his assertion that local white rapper trio Woodpile are white supremacists (he wrote that in a front page story for the beleaguered newspaper)…
Z-Trip’s Bling Phoenician ex-patriate and now Los Angelian DJ Z-Trip, who I’ve toured through the Pacific Northwest with before and is currently hitting up European dance floors, has been pretty damn busy lately, getting married in this summer and posting some new and old cuts on his website and continuing…
Jimmy Eat World I’m sure you’re all aware that tomorrow is election day, which I wouldn’t ordinarily type about up in this piece, but it’s made for some strange endorsements this year. Check out the video here, and you’ll see local music scene players like Jim Adkins of Jimmy Eat…
You probably remember Chronic Future if you’ve been around the ‘Nix for a while… “Scottsdale Brat”?? nevermind that shit though, Mike Busse is a sick fuckin’ MC these days, and they’re down with one of the most innovative/weird/twitchy beatmongers around, Ryan Breen. Breen is known publicly as Back Ted N…
There’s mu-fuckin’ two tonight, cuz its mu-fuckin’ friday… if you’re one of the artsy types, you ought to hit up the afterparty at Angelo’s Lounge (16th St. north of Osborne) and check out Telemore Repair from Long Beach, along with local mofos Underwater Getdown and An Aesthetic (stupid name guys,…
There are good radio-ready songs and there are shit radio-ready songs; a while ago i wrote about the Heartless here, now the boys are back in the studio and preparing some new jizm for yr ears. Cuz they’re nice guys (even if they’re pop-punkers), they dropped off this new track…
