Blog: Bossa Blog

PDX POP Now! is a labor of love, bringing together local volunteers to put on a free, nonprofit, all ages, KICK ASS music festival in the heart of Southeast Portland, Oregon. Mixing the biggest and smallest acts, the softest, quietest and the brashest, loudest, PDX POP Now! goes well beyond the bounds of pop music, incorporating folk, experimental, instrumental, hip hop, electronics, and more. The PDX POP Now! 2006 Compilation is (not surprisingly) similarly diverse. Exclusive tracks from Stephen Malkmus, The Thermals, Menomena, Viva Voce, Vursatyl (of Lifesavas), Talkdemonic, Tara Jane O’Neil, and more highlight PDX Pop Now! 2006. It’s [...]

In a career which spans over a decade and includes eight collaborative albums and solo albums, Azam Ali has confirmed her place as one of the most prolific, versatile, and gifted singers on the world music stage today. Her dedication to defying cultural specificity in music, and her unwillingness to settle into one form of musical expression have earned her the respect of both her peers and critics worldwide. When one looks at her entire body of work, it is hard to deny Azam her rightful place among the best singers and composers in music today. Elysium [...]

Urbs, aka Paul Nawrata has been dj-ing for 15 years in Austria usually playing hip-hop but also breakz. After years of dj-ing he has now produced his first album 'toujours le meme film..' Starting in 1997, Urbs' first production 'Closer to God' made it on several compilations. Both the original version and the remix by Thievery Corporation. From 2000 to 2003 Urbs worked together with DJ Cutex and the track 'Break of Dawn' became his international breakthrough. For the last two years Urbs has been working on [...]

Birdy Nam Nam (the name's an obscure reference from a Peter Sellers film) is a DMC World Championship scratch team... from France. And while they obviously have the chops to be able to attain that level of turntablist success, they're more about making "songs" and "music" as opposed to cutting together repetitive loops and gimmicky licks. They've clearly got a good sense of humor to match their deep musical knowledge, genre dexterity and assumedly vast record collection! Much in a similar style to Kid Koala, they piece together a patchwork of source material that runs from jazz to soul to [...]

Cell phones often inspire devotion, but few have a following like T-Mobile's Sidekick. The device has long been the instant messaging and e-mailing device of choice among hipsters because of its nifty flip screen and comfortable rapid-fire keyboard. But users have griped about the poor camera, crippled Web browser, and lack of expandability. The Sidekick 3 improves those areas to varying degrees and delivers Bluetooth and a smaller design. The Sidekick 3 is 20 percent smaller than its predecessor but weighs a bit more (6.7 ounces versus 6.5 ounces). The keyboard's old membrane keys have been replaced with hard plastic [...]

Ever since Antonio Carlos Jobim came north to record with Frank Sinatra in the 60s, artists like João Gilberto, Caetano Veloso, and Gilberto Gil have carried the legacy of MPB â€" the acronym for “Brazilian Popular Music” â€" to a global audience. Recently a younger generation has cemented Brazil’s place as a superpower in the music world. But Brazil, we now learn, has been holding out on us: with Lenine, Americans finally have a chance to hear the man who virtually swept Brazil’s annual TIM awards last year, winning “Best CD,” “Best Male Vocalist” (both in the judges’ voting and [...]

Masters Of Groove Meet Dj-9 is The follow up to “Masters Of Groove Meet Dr. No” JZZ 20306-2 which Featured: B3 great, Reuben Wilson - Organ, Grant Green, Jr â€" Guitar, & Bernard “Pretty” Purdie Drums. “Four all-star jazz-soul-funk-groove veterans (together for the first time) take on the music from the first 1962 Bond adventure film “Dr. No”. Masters Of Groove Meet Dj-9 takes on a electronica groove and focuses on collaborations with Dj-9, the Pro Tools & Production wizardry of Producer POLO and features Jazz, Groove, multi keyboardist Marc Cary whose credits include Roy Hargrove, The RH Factor, Joe [...]

As the voice of Morcheeba, Skye soundtracked our lives on albums such as Big Calm, she sold five million records and graced stages around the world. And yet somehow, she’s always remained an enigma. Private about her personal life and modest about her achievements, she never really played the pop star game. Skye’s debut solo album, MIND HOW YOU GO, is not so much a leap into the dark as a step into the light. Yet it was also a journey into the unknown. Of course, there is much that is familiar - the beguiling quality of her voice, the [...]

The hand held Sony Vaio UX Micro PC runs on Windows XP Pro and features wireless communication via Bluetooth and Cingular's high-speed Edge network. A bright screen (1024x600) makes the Vaio easy on the eyes and it does an excellent job playing back movies from the 30GB internal hard drive. The UX measures 5.9x3.74x1.5 inches and features a slide out keyboard and touch screen with stylus, two built-in cameras, plus a fingerprint sensor to enhanced security. It's priced around $1,800 and comes with a a docking station with Firewire and Ethernet connections, plus a miniature [...]

With Madrid de los Austrias’ first full length album release “Amor” in 2001 they developed a trademark sound that can be easily distinguished. The album created a huge buzz with train spotters around the world and got great support from listeners and fans all over the globe. After their successful album release they teamed up with Richard Dorfmeister for several remixes for such amazing artists as Zero 7, Groove Armada, Willie Bobo, Koop and Pressure Drop to name a few. Recently they released the summer jam “Valldemossa” together with Richard Dorfmeister which has gained a lot of airplay on radio [...]

How do you describe someone as eclectic as Apollo Nove? A modern-day pop Tropicalista, crooner, songwriter, pianist and collector of over sixty vintage synths, keyboards and effects from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s? Apollo Nove is the prime contender for most innovative young producer in Brazil. Res Inexplicata Volans is his solo debut of twelve melodious, deep, moody songs that hover somewhere between psychedelic rock, eerie electronica and spacey folk. Recorded in São Paulo and mixed in Paris by Air engineer Yann Arnaud. Guest vocalists include Cibelle and Seu Jorge.

Toby Marks under the pseudonym Banco De Gaia has spent most of his career focusing on issues that he finds bewildering by expressing his thoughts and observations through music. The electronic musings of an ‘abstract techno/dance’ composer are not traditionally associated with an impassioned political polemic or works of merit and depth. However, his critically acclaimed 1995 album Last Train To Lhasa was written to highlight the plight of the Tibetan people and successfully mixed electronica with a braver vision, although Banco de Gaia himself has lost count of the number of times people have told him that ‘dance and [...]

Argentinean singer Juana Molina’s United States debut ‘Segundo’ quietly but surely worked its way into play lists of discerning listeners. A mixture of acoustic guitars, traditional percussion touches, electronic textures and her disarming vocals, it stands as one of the most evocative and original albums in recent memory. Juana Molina is not easily classified - as her music blurs lines between simple categorization. ‘Segundo’ slowly captured all who would listen, and it continues to do so. It was her first self-produced album, recorded in Juana’s home studio. It would take her a year and a half to finish. She loved [...]

This year San Francisco based Halou celebrates 10 years as a band and returns with their most compelling work to date, Wholeness and Separation. Although It has been several years since their last release on Nettwerk Records [“Wiser” 2001], the band has hardly been dormant. The past few years have been spent using their production skills to help sculpt the sound of such artists as DJ Shadow, Lyrics Born, Frank Sinatra, Blackalicious, John Cale, Low, No Doubt and even a Rod Stewart remix which hit #1 on Billboard. In addition, Halou has scored 2 successful award winning films “This Girl’s [...]

Breaks in the States will never be the same after leading Dutch trio, Kraak & Smaak, bring their massively musical debut full-length stateside. Oscar de Jong, Mark Kneppers and Wim Plug’s much-lauded work, BOOGIE ANGST, has already garnered praised from Pete Tong, Laurent Garnier, Annie Nightingale and so many more. Look for its U.S. release on Quango to include a kick-ass bonus disc of never-heard-before remixes. As a fearless threesome, Kraak & Smaak dose their funked-up breaks and soul jumping grooves (as the name implies) with everything from ‘70s rare groove (“Keep on Searching”) to ‘80s references heard on the [...]

Encountering Psapp’s Galia Durant and Carim Clasmann at their clandestine King’s Cross HQ-cum-studio-playpen is less like meeting a band and more like stumbling into a funny, hazy, miraculous parallel universe. A kind of boho bolthole-meets-Narnia-scape, theirs is a cosy, dusty, otherworldly realm - a clutter of home-made toys, doll’s house ephemera, somnolent cats, glinting laptops, and incalculable bric-a-brac of mysterious provenance. And that’s not to mention the duo’s veritable junkshop heaven of arcane musical instruments and ‘sound emitters’ that range from gleaming pianos and pot-bellied ouds to children’s xylophones, farmyard noise-makers, mechanical ashtrays and squeaky rubber poultry; all of it [...]

Taking their moniker from the 60s new wave of cult French cinema, Nouvelle Vague are a French musical collective put together by arrangers Marc Collins and Olivier Libaux. On their first album, “Nouvelle Vague” the group resurrected lost classics from the 80s “New Wave” music era, and reinterpret them in a saucy bossa nova style. The songs were stripped back to acoustic arrangements with lithe shaker rhythms achieved by gathering a parade of chanteuses from all over the world (six French, one Brazilian and one New Yorker) to sex up everyone from XTC and Modern English to The Clash and [...]