Red Baraat’s musical approach almost seems too contrived: Bhangra meets New Orleans brass meets jazz and funk and go-go. But since this Brooklyn nine-piece group formed a little over three years ago, it's made this largely instrumental style work, and garnished a following to show for it. The group includes three percussionists and six horn [...]
Animal Collective member Avey Tare (aka David Portner) is in town tonight promoting his swampy new album, Down There. Besides keeping the animal association rolling—his website is called Alligatorland and the creature is a motif in his music and visuals—Avey Tare explores themes in his solo work that run parallel to Animal Collective. In a recent interview, [...]
Rave culture may seem like a product of the ’90s, but massive modern events such as the Electric Daisy Carnival prove young people will always want to get high (on life) and shake what Shiva gave them. The Identity Festival is a traveling rave featuring nearly 30 artists whose main goal is to get this [...]
Tonight, New York's Trouble and Bass Crew presents its monthly bass rave at U Street Music Hall. The lineup includes club music kings like Philly's Tim Dolla and Brenmar from Brooklyn, but D.C. resident Willy Joy may be the most exciting of the bunch.
Willy Joy—his legal name— is a Minneapolis native, Brown University graduate, and [...]
U Street Music Hall co-owners Will Eastman and Jesse Tittsworth aren't the only D.C. tunesmiths who have benefited from the venue's 40,000-watt sound system. Nouveau Riche crew member Steve Starks has excelled recent with a hybrid of sensuous and moody tech house and percussion-heavy Baltimore club.
Today, Starks released the free track "Problem," which is built around his [...]
Among its many activities, the group Sulu DC has become known in the last few years for spotlighting local Asian-American hip-hop culture. But tonight it's importing some culture from other cities, with a headlining set from San Francisco sensation Rocky Rivera at U Street Music Hall. The showcase is called "Miss Fortune: Spotlight on AAPI [...]
Volta Bureau—the disco-for-history-nerds trio of local DJs Will Eastman, Micah Vellian, and Outputmessage—released a new single today, which you can download over at the group's Soundcloud page. "Love Cubed" is basically bottled bliss, pitch-shifting already-shimmery sounds in the direction of heaven. The band makes its live debut at Eastman's U Street Music Hall on June [...]
Yep, there's another Moombahton Massive party at U Street Music Hall tonight—the third, but it's a little different from the first two. First, Dave Nada—the inventor of the microgenre—won't be headlining under his own name, but as part of his duo Nadastrom. Second, Munchi, the Dutch wunderkind who made his name via Moombahton and has helped [...]
We're not big on retrospective articles for their own sake, but it's worth noting that tonight is U Street Music Hall's first anniversary. Jesse Rose, Justin Martin, and hometown heroes Nadastrom are spinning tonight at 9 p.m. And so we bring you this encore showing of "Big Bang Theories," a little film we made last [...]
Every March, South by Southwest corrals the music industry in Austin, Texas. Record labels, publicists, and hip blogs program warring bills throughout the Texas capital’s 200 venues; red-eyed bands cram eight gigs into three days. The taco trucks are superb. Everybody’s there.
But Travis Jackson, the owner and founder of Windian Records, is opting out this year.
“Talking [...]
