Ostensibly, Winter Music Conference and Miami Music Week provide thousands of very serious electronic dance music fans with an annual opportunity to meet, mingle, and discuss the current state of EDM.But c’mon, that’s bullshit. The truth: Both WMC and MMW are just excuses for totally out-of-control beat freaks to strip…
Beethoven’s father was a drunk and his momma was dead. His guts were twisted up. He was clinically depressed. And his mind was full of screaming from the dying cells inside his ears. Cash was low, the girls he loved couldn’t love him back, and the aristocratic bastards he hung…
When it comes to New York City hardcore, Sheer Terror is one of just a handful of bands from the ’80s to still be around and playing shows. The band’s lead singer, Paul Bearer, got into punk rock as a kid in Staten Island. He’s got a face like a…
Attention passengers. You’re normally allowed one carry-on per flight. But Ultra Music Festival is going to go ahead and upgrade that to about 10. No, we’re not actually flying anywhere, but Ultra is spreading the love with their Carry On series of after parties throughout Miami Music Week. Festivities kick…
Waka Flocka Flame’s Spring Break Kickoff at SoBe Live March 8
The Casualties at Churchill’s Pub March 8
Amtrac and Brass Knuckles at Grand Central March 8
Ricardo Arjona at American Airlines Arena March 9
Experience Hendrix 2012 Tour at Hard Rock Live March 14
Who leads a sexy life of million-dollar beats, limitless bottles, sweaty groupies, massive megaclubs, rooftop condos, famous friends, and international travel aboard personally branded private jets? Well, we certainly don’t. But Tiësto does. And as usual, the Dutch electronic dance music superstar’s gonna be returning to his second home –…
The excitement of talking with Ralf Hütter, the man behind legendary krautrock crew Kraftwerk, proved overwhelming. An interview seemed like a long shot, especially considering the fact that the last thorough press clip I could find was a June 2009 chat with The Guardian’s John Harris. And my over-sharing on…
Before Steve Aoki was voted DJ Most Likely to Waste Champagne, he already had a pretty sweet reputation as the head of Dim Mak records. When he started the label back in 1996, he focused mainly on signing massive indie rock acts like Battles, Bloc Party and The Von Bondies…
To the three producers who make up Swedish House Mafia — Axwell, Steve Angello, and Sebastian Ingrosso — operating on a massive scale is no big deal, pun intended. From the beginning of the trio’s rise to international prominence, they’ve seemed to always operate at a sweeping level, beginning with…
Even after 27 years, four albums, and a few line-up changes, Jane’s Addiction is holding on strong. In fact, Perry Farrell and company’s latest album, The Great Escape Artist, made it to the third spot on Billboard rock chart. So rather than kick the habit in 2012, these ’90s alt-rock…
See the full 42-photo Nine Mile Music Festival slideshow. Nine Mile Music Festival 2012 With Stephen, Damian, and Julian Marley, alongside Capleton, Burning Spear, and others Virginia Key Beach Park Saturday, March 3, 2012 Musicians come and go. But their music becomes immortal. Bob Marley transcended racial barriers in the…
Rising Swedish star Avicii is one of the hottest DJ-producers in contemporary house music. His massive hit “Levels,” which samples recently deceased Etta James’s “Something’s Got a Hold on Me,” gets so much play that it’s almost become obnoxious. But before you start hating on the guy for no reason…
As the world’s most comprehensive electronic party extravaganza, Ultra Music Festival is dominated by the sonic phenomenon known as the drop. Simultaneously present in seemingly unrelated genres — such as the soulful vocal crescendos of house, the interlocking pulses of techno, or the bombastic bass-wobble breakdowns of dubstep — the…
In terms of bleep-bloop music, few do it better than the French. Over the past decade, Pedro Winter’s Paris-based Ed Banger Records has dropped some of house music’s dopest seven- and twelve-inches, CDs and MP3s. Celebrated as one of electronic music’s most prominent labels, the Ed Banger family of artists…
Hank III might be Satan’s favorite grandson. His daddy was a cactus, his mama was a bear trap, and he was born with his boots on in a river full of moonshine. At age 11, he ripped out his own throat and cooked it over a forest fire. The next…
Art and politics can make strange, confusing bedfellows. German playwright and all-around commie Bertolt Brecht would say: Unless your work directly protests the global capitalist hegemony by alienating the bourgeois theatergoing audience, it amounts to little but titillation for the ruling classes. On the other end of the spectrum, though,…
Though obviously rooted in the beat matching and live mixing of the disc jockey, the mashup, as we know it today, is a distinctly ’00s phenomenon that revealed itself at the very beginning of the decade. And the modern blueprint for expertly splicing together two songs (often from mind-blowingly disparate…
No genre has been more ripped off, watered down, and straight-up bastardized than techno. To the layperson, say a classic-rock aficionado or maybe a jazz head, the mere mention of this Detroit-bred electronic music genre (and really, less a conventional genre than an unwieldy collection of variants, everything from minimal…
