Rubén Blades was the first important salsa performer to integrate rock aesthetics into his music. After a successful stint with Willie Colón, the Panamanian-born New Yorker went solo, rocketing to the top of the salsa charts with songs that avoided the music’s clichés in favor of topical narratives and carefully crafted imagery. The best of…
On his compulsive own, Eugene Chadbourne (previously the guitarist and leader of Shockabilly) has spewed forth a ceaseless stream of records and cassettes (the latter on his own Parachute label) that easily represent the oddest version of country and folk music ever. While the notable left-winger’s guitar playing is looser than clams, it harbors wildly…
The international appeal of Senegal’s Touré brothers — Ismaila, Sixu Tidiane and Ousmane — must be attributed in large part to their soothingly mellifluous voices, tones that wash over the listener like warm milk. Of course, their sultry and tasteful integration of Afro-urban and Western dance music have something to do with it too. Like…
#abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzCompilations A lot of important music has been released via compilation albums–genre anthologies, label samplers, local scene collections and high-concept creations. There are live albums, new studio works, repackages of existing material, movie soundtracks, replays of rarities, field recordings of exotica, etc. — thousands of records of wildly varying quality and value. Many bands who…
These folks either wrote reviews that appear on the site or wrote for Trouser Press magazine. If anyone listed below cares to E-mail us with a link you’d like added, just let us know. And ditto if anyone is AWOL from this list. Grant AldenDavid AntrobusJem AswadTroy J. AugustoMichael AzerradCary BakerMichael BakerEmily BeckerSeth BenderJohn BergstromArt…
