A few months ago I caught some buzz on Santogold as someone to check out. At the time, her record wasn’t out, and I simply forgot about it. This week I found a slip of paper (amongst many) on my desk that said simply ‘Santogold.’ Coincidentally, her album dropped in the [...]

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I saw the Blind Boys of Alabama open for Tom Petty many years back. I wish I was at the Knitting Factory in LA a few nights ago to catch the purple one jumping on stage to jam with them on “I’m a Soldier in the Army of the Lord”.

So a few years ago, [...]

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I realize that I’m about a week or two behind the curve of the blogosphere in gushing over the new Hot Chip record. Much like their last record I needed to listen to it a couple of times before forming my opinion. It’s not a bad thing, but I find that with many of these [...]

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M.I.A.
I respectfully defer to Wayne when I say: “Schwingg!”
Her follow up to her very successful debut, Arular, was released a couple weeks ago. It’s called Kala, and I have to say, I’m enjoying it even more than her first. I love cool sounds. This album has ‘em. She had originally planned to get in [...]

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Dropping back into the early new wave scene, we go to a June 1980 show featuring the original lineup of the Human League. The founding members were Philip Oakey, Martyn Ware, Ian Craig Marsh, and Philip Adrian Wright (who ran films and slide shows onstage, but was still credited as a full band member). Oakey [...]

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The Sri Lankan beauty’s new video for “Jimmy” has Ickmusic central breaking out in a hot Bollywood sweat! Zeowie!

M.I.A.’s Official Site (if you’re prone to seizures, do not visit)

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Luke Steele. If that isn’t a name destined for show biz, I don’t know what is. Luke is the main man in The Sleepy Jackson from Perth, Australia, one of the most isolated big cities on God’s green earth (The most, maybe?). He’s a man of many instruments influenced by George Harrison, Walt Disney, and [...]

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Into the “jazz drum & bass” realm we go. Mocean Worker is the recording alias of producer Adam Dorn. He’s the son of well known Atlantic Records producer Joel Dorn, who has produced everyone from Coltrane and Mingus to Roberta Flack and the Allman Brothers.
Adam (or Mowo, his self-dubbed nickname) has a pretty impressive [...]

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Looking ahead to October’s releases, ESL Music (Thievery Corporation’s label) will be releasing Thunderball’s latest, Cinescope. Washington DC’s Sid Barcelona and Steve Raskin are the force behind Thunderball. They excel at drum and bass, breakbeats, dub, and downtempo - all with a classic 70’s cinematic feel behind it.
They recruited Afrikaa Bambaataa for a couple [...]

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It’s an 80’s triple assault! First Journey, then Prince’s ‘88 aftershow, and now the circle is complete with a 1984 Amsterdam set by Shriekback. I posted a year ago about my fondness for their 1986 record ‘Big Night Music‘. This show comes a couple years before that release.
Made up primarily of Barry Andrews, Dave [...]

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