Drummer Brant Bjork’s musical family tree is more like Sherwood Forest. He was the original skins-pounder for Kyuss, a legend in stoner-rock circles, and his musical association with fellow Kyuss members Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri subsequently extended (briefly) to Queens of the Stone Age and (for a longer haul)…
Stay up channel-surfing some night and you might run across an old episode of It’s Showtime at the Apollo. On it, a boyish rap duo throws down some goofy rhymes over deep, dexterous scratches and beats. The mixmaster is a zit-faced kid named DJ Jazzy Jeff; the MC is some…
After replacing beloved Rastaman Michael Rose in reggae supergroup Black Uhuru in time for the Brutal album in 1986, Junior Reid quickly established himself as a worthy successor to Rose’s crown, one whose flavor was still roots-oriented but even more contemporary. Combining the half-singing, half-rapping “sing-jay” style popularized by the…
The Taste of Colorado is still right on the money when it comes to providing quality acts — like, for instance, Eddie Money, who’s headlining this year’s festival. Accruing interest since 1977, the Brooklyn-based singer garnered platinum sales with songs such as “Baby Hold On,” from his self-titled debut. In…
Here’s where the last installment of the adventures of Reverend Dead Eye left off: After a shit-kicking, soul-scorching sermon at the Westword Music Awards Showcase in June — a raw, bluesy baptism of hellfire that featured Eliza Jane Smith of the Emmas on drums — the Reverend’s six-string sidekick, the…
In 2001, John Digweed was voted the number-one DJ in the world by DJ Magazine, a periodical with a reputation for being an accurate barometer of what’s going on in electronic music worldwide. He has also maintained a spot within the top ten for more than a decade alongside the…
Summing up the Melvins’ contribution to rock and roll is a fool’s errand at best. While the band introduced the world to a slow-plodding sludge later marketed as grunge, the sound’s early pioneers moved from Washington to San Francisco well before the mega-hype hit the fan. And though former Melvins…
I have a brother-in-law in the military who got shot with an AK-47 in North Korea,” says Asdru Sierra. “And we’re not even at war with North Korea…not really.” Sierra doesn’t want to talk about himself today. The vocalist and trumpet player for Latin-jazz/hip-hop ensemble Ozomatli doesn’t want to talk…
The Great Super Bowl Rogue Breast Disaster of 2004 reached truly epic levels of overexposure, with every pundit, columnist, blogger and dude-standing-behind-you-at-Subway scrambling to weigh in on the moral outrage of it all. But in our haste to denounce either our shot-to-hell sense of human decency or the Puritan prudes…
Condensing the depth and complexity of a Joan of Arc record into a terse string of words is impossible. Instead, please accept this list of half-assed associations. This disc’s opener, “Questioning Benjamin Franklin’s Ghost,” is an out-of-whack tap dance of piano, cello and babbling that revisits the crankier side of…
After orbiting near the top of electronic-music crop circles for a decade and a half, the bit-meddling siblings of Orbital have reached the end. Though the thought that it’s over may bring some down, Blue offers plenty of ups. Blue’s second track, “Pants,” proves who wears them in the Hartnoll…
Just ask the Dixie Chicks: The revolution will not be countrified. But that hasn’t stopped country-rock rebel Steve Earle from making The Revolution Starts…Now, his most political — and sadly unconvincing — statement to date. Whereas his past work deftly straddled the line between rhetoric and song, Revolution thrashes and…
It’s too bad the pop-music marketplace has been overrun by nostalgia merchants, but things could be worse. After all, a sizable percentage of today’s sonic impressionists rip off decent bands as opposed to aping Fred Durst. Considering the alternative, who wouldn’t be in favor of that? The Scissor Sisters, on…
No Roots, the fourth installment from U.K. powerhouse Faithless, is an emotional exploration that restores faith like a religious epiphany. After ten years together, Maxi Jazz, Sister Bliss and Rollo Armstrong prove that the power of music is still alive in the hearts of true believers. Introducing guest lyricist and…
Lila Downs is perhaps best known to American audiences as the bewitching voice behind Salma Hayek and Ashley Judd’s scintillating tango in the 2002 film Frida. Her fourth album, Una Sangre, takes that voice through astounding acrobatics in a profoundly seamless assemblage of musical genres. Downs effortlessly blends and invokes…
Trumpet-driven acid jazz and loose-limbed reggae tempos dominate the followup to Sons of Armageddon’s funky self-titled debut, which utilized no less than nine players from various local outfits — including the Psychodelic Zombies, Groove Kitchen and the Emergency Broadcast Players. Whittled down to five this go-round (with its core of…
Luke Fairchild must have some obsession with flashing lights: The singer/guitarist’s last band was named Sparkles, and his new project is dubbed White Dynamite, which is funny because the seven cuts on The Bleeder Broadcast are anything but illuminating. Instead, they cast a pall of darkness and disorientation over Fairchild’s…
Scott Redmond has a posse. Rabid followers of Rush Limbaugh and Jim Rome refer to themselves as Dittoheads and Clones. And now some of Tom Martino’s listeners seem hell-bent on making names for themselves as Neanderthals and bigots. Last Wednesday, DJ Quote, aka Quentin Jones, got caught in the Troubleshooter’s…
Thirteen may be an unlucky number for some, but DJ Dan planted the seeds of his career at that young age, when he figured out how to jimmy-rig his tape deck to the family turntable. Eager to follow in a famous American pioneer’s coonskin-cap-wearing footsteps, however, he enrolled in Seattle’s…
Hot on the heels of last week’s Curiosa festival comes Levinhurst (above, right), the new project by erstwhile Cure member Laurence “Lol” Tolhurst. But, in contrast to many of the acts that appeared at Curiosa, don’t expect the Cure redux; while Tolhurst was a founding member of Robert Smith’s glorified…
Along with tunesmith David Rawlings, Buddy Miller is a relatively low-profile member of the Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue, a lineup of rootsy performers anchored by Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin and Gillian Welch — but that doesn’t mean he’s low on talent. Indeed, Miller happens to be one of the most…
“What is it/This anger dissected?” wails Gabe Shapiro of Volante in the song “Everybody Loses.” Little does he know, he’s already answered his own question. “Anger dissected” pretty much nails his band’s sound: a surgically wrought revelation of buried strife, a biopsy of amputated desires and in-grown rage. When Volante…
