August 30, 2007

Amir Sulaiman Life A Thief In The Night [4/5] If you’re not familiar with Amir Sulaiman, you should be. This gifted rhymesmith takes hip-hop back to it’s revolutionary roots, a time when rappers used their lyrics as weapons. On Like A Thief In The Night (which is brilliantly produced by Minnesota), Sulaiman spits a barrage...

The Secret Handshake Summer Of ’98 EP [3.5/5] Typically, male solo artists clutch guitars like security blankets, lamenting about some sketchy dame. But one-man act the Secret Handshake (aka Luis Dubuc) is flipping the script, opting for danceable hip-hop hooks with copious piano flourishes that ooze with electronica likeability. His debut EP remixes three original...

Junkie XL Music From SSX Blur [2.5/5] With the popular SSX series graduating to the next-gen Nintendo Wii, slapping together a rad ’80s soundtrack a la Grand Theft Auto is sooo old platform. So with a wave of the wand, SSX Blur slices through the slopes with pulsing tunes from Junkie XL, who stacks the...

Dalek/Haze XXL A Purge Of Dissidents [4/5] I don’t think anybody saw this one coming. Gritty respected graphic artist Dalek has collaborated with former Amphetamine Reptile Records honcho/Halo Of Flies leader Tom Hazelmeyer (aka Haze XXL) for a project involving a book, DVD and CD. Haze coordinated the music, receiving lyrical and vocal contributions from...

Cadence Weapon Breaking Kayfabe [4/5] On the onyx globe of hip-hop, there’s old school, there’s new school, and then there’s Canada. Representing that conflicted spectrum is former Pitchfork scribe Rollie Pemberton, the "other brother" that Chuck D prophesized, who says bye-bye to the binary of bling vs. the real thing to hit ’em all up...

Oxbow The Narcotic Story [4/5] You may shudder; you may smile nervously; but you don’t walk away from an Oxbow performance without feeling something. And while you can thank frontman Eugene Robinson-a 200-plus-pound mass of tattooed, street-fighter id who routinely strips naked (literally and psychologically) over the course of any given set-for some of what...

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Se Dice Disonte, No Bufalo [4/5] The Mars Volta’s albums are already so insanely long and unpredictable that guitarist/chief songwriter Omar Rodriguez-Lopez shouldn’t need to channel energy into side projects: Bonus CDs would serve just as well. However, with Se Dice Bisonte, No Bufalo, Rodriguez-Lopez once more oversees a set of jazz-tinged, ’70s-style...

Straylight Run The Needles The Spacee [4/5] Straylight Run’s self-titled 2004 debut was intriguing for what it wasn’t; that is, Taking Back Sunday reloaded. Its follow-up, The Needles The Space, purely excites for what it is, an adventurous waltz through styles and moods that ditches the sometimes deliberate songwriting of album one in favor of...

The Icarus Line Black Lives At The Golden Coast Penance Soiree, the 2004 offering from L.A.-based swagger-rockers the Icarus Line, was a real modern-rock benchmark in a world suffering from emo/screamo overload, Clear Channel-sanctioned blandness and the tides of queefy indie-rock tedium. Lead singer Joe Cardamone spit out his street gospel while the rest of...