Blogs

?Joshy Josh is a journeyman DJ in South Florida who skims the fine line between South Beach and downtown. Some people know him as the spectacled dude with long hair and the perpetual three-day college professor beard, but most know him for his DJ sets of fun. Crossfade caught up with him recently for the rundown.

via myspace.com/mrsupreme

?He's done disco, mixed Afro-funk, Brazilian, and classic rock, and spun at huge venues all over Vegas, L.A., and Vancouver. He's even played dance, Top 40 hits, and '80s tunes for the hipster kids at Santos Party House in New York City. But what DJ Supreme La Rock is best known for is his touch with underground hip-hop and funk. He's celebrating Lumin's birthday and bringing a bit of Seattle soul to the weekly Champion Sound party at Electric Pickle tonight. Crossfade caught up with him by phone earlier this week.

courtesy of punkhouse.org

?If you spotted John Joseph on the street and didn't know any better, you'd probably quicken your pace. Though he's now 47 years old, the New York hardcore god is a compact, tattoo-covered package of brawn who could easily kick the ass of a poser half his age. And at one point, as the frontman of the notoriously volatile Cro-Mags, he probably would.

In this era of dime-a-dozen indie electro-pop duos, one contemporary act stands apart from the rest for sheer substance, stylistic originality and emotional rapport, and that's Ontario, Canada's Junior Boys. Crooner/co-producer Jeremy Greenspan and partner Matt Didemus first began their collaboration in the early 2000s, the fruit of which were the first couple of Junior Boys EPs and 2003's debut album, Last Exit on KIN Records.

Their second full-length album, So This Is Goodbye was released on Domino Records in 2006, and with various remixes and support from the international EDM community, including tracks featured on Sander Kleinenberg and Ghostly International compilation mixes, the duo began to garner serious acclaim. In 2008 they were invited to mix Get Physical Music's Body Language 6 compilation release, further establishing them in both the indie dance and underground techno scenes.

2009 saw the release of Junior Boys' third and most ambitious studio album to date, Begone Dull Care. This endearing collection of delicately-crafted lyrical electronic pop tracks has found them an even broader audience, what with the track "Dull to Pause" chosen as the Starbucks iTunes "Pick of the Week" in August 2009, among other accolades.

Many of you will recall Junior Boys' last Miami performance for a packed room at Vagabond, where their emotionally-searing rendition of all the crowd favorites left more than a few people enthralled. Jeremy Greenspan is back in Miami on Friday night to play an exclusive DJ set at the Electric Pickle's One Year Anniversary Block Party, and we took up the opportunity to catch up with him for a brief Q&A. Read it after the jump.

For going on two decades, German DJ/producer Marc Romboy has established himself as one of the preeminent figures of electronic dance music through a rare combination of innovative vision and heartfelt reverence for the classic forms. A childhood fascination with synthesized sounds, via the likes of Kraftwerk, got Romboy hooked on electronic music, and with the advent of house and techno in the '80s he delved head-on into original production work, employing classic early tools like an Akai sampler and Roland TB-303 synthesizer to develop his own sounds.

By the mid '90s Romboy and partner Klaus Derichs were heading Le Petit Prince, one of Germany's foremost techno imprints in its heyday, and championing the sounds of artists like Phuture, Microwave Prince, Emmanuel Top, and Thomas P. Heckmann until the label's demise in 2000. The following decade saw a bout of intensive international touring during which Romboy cemented his reputation as a world-class DJ, and by 2004 he returned to A&R work with the launch of new label Systematic, marked by the release of debut single "Every Day In My Life" produced in collaboration with Booka Shade.

Two artist albums and further collaborative work with American house/techno legends Robert Owens and Blake Baxter, along with more contemporary cutting-edge artists like Gui Boratto, Stephan Bodzin, and Spirit Catcher, have demonstrated Romboy's creative fluidity and broad perspective as a producer, embracing the future while paying homage to the past. Marc Romboy will be headlining an all-star lineup at the One Year Anniversary Block Party at Electric Pickle on Friday, one of only two exclusive North American dates for his "5 Years of Systematic" tour, and we couldn't pass up an opportunity to pick the man's brain on the cusp of his Miami performance.  

Read the full Q&A after the jump.

Photo by phivephotography.com

Though Fishbone's home turf -- South Central L.A. -- may not have been a typical rock and roll breeding ground, plenty else about the band's birth was fortuitous. The band's early musical brew, heavy on ska, reggae, and a liberal helping of rock, was largely created in an incubator. (These were the early '80s, when underground music news traveled through fanzines on actual, you know, paper.)

Still, it unwittingly dovetailed with the genre-bending post-punk and so-called "Two-Tone" ska revival over in England, which eventually washed back to the shores of mainstream-ish America through bands like the Clash. This, in turn, musically fortified Fishbone other like-minded Southern California acts, including a pre-stardom No Doubt, and helped to touch off what was later known as the "third wave" of American ska.

By the same token, as the '80s progressed, Fishbone itself, never one to have much truck with stylistic complaints, later veered in another direction. Out went most of the straight Jamaican rhythms, in came a new distortion and heaviness, as well as a marked funk. Again, the band found itself at the crest of a movement -- the so-called burgeoning "alternative" scene spearheaded by fellow SoCal scenesters like Red Hot Chili Peppers. (Later funk-rock acts like Incubus point to this era of Fishbone's output as particularly influential).

Aholsniffsglue

Aholsniffsglue is all over the fuckin place; street signs, corner walls, toilet seats, gas pumps. We heard he owns his own trucking company, Ahol Dumps. People say he's the one been killing all those horses in the Redlands. Some lady in line at the store told us that Aholsniffsglue is actually a 13 year old Japanese girl who is very good at computers.

The truth is Aholsniffsglue is an artist and a party maker. See the expert do both at his upcoming Butter Gallery art show, "7.625 Fl Oz.," with tremendo afterparty at Shake at the Vagabond with DJ Tony Touch on Thursday, March 11.

Cuci Amador is the effervescent frontwoman of Afrobeta, a Miami favorite who's currently finishing up a new studio album. Crossfade caught up with her recently to ask her about her musical background, new projects, and that recent almost-Grammy.

This interview is with up-and-coming local DJ Matthew Andrews, a.k.a. MGA. Folks might know him from some downtown hotspots like the Vagabond, where he pops in for the occasional Friday set. His main gig, though, is holding it down in South Miami, at the long-running Shuffle Tuesdays party at Fox's Sherron Inn. Visit myspace.com/shuffletuesdays for more information about the party. 

New Times: I guess we'll start this off with the typical shit that usually starts these things. What is your name, age, shoe size and where do you hail from?
 
MGA: Matthew Andrews is my name. I'm 30 and anything having to do with my shoes is a sensitive topic, and I hail from Miami.
 
You're relatively new to the South Florida scene (in a sense). How do you describe your DJ style?
 
I am not relatively new to the scene, I am new to this scene per se. I have been following electronic music since I can remember. As for my DJ style, I have truly fallen in love with all types of indie music whether it is the rock aspect or the experimental types of tunes I find. I've always loved dance music since the days that I followed electro breaks, drum'n'bass, and house. Dance music is what I do, '80s is what I grew up on, electronic beats are what I found, and I simply combine these influences with what I do behind the decks. I try to knock heads off with great tunes.

photo by Josh Sisk