If you followed our CMJ coverage last week, you might recall our correspondent Jamie Falkowski’s lament at having missed a performance by up-and-coming Gary, Indiana, rapper Freddie Gibbs at S.O.B.’s.—seems he might possibly have been yanked off the stage after exhibiting his fondness for a certain controlled substance. That report might have smelled like urban myth, but the stark new video for “Boxframe Cadillac,” a track from Gibbs’s outstanding mixtape MidwestGangstaBoxframeCadillacMusik, lends credence to the claim: In no uncertain terms, the rapper describes his policy for mental-enhancement therapy behind the wheel. The video is beautifully shot and the hook is addictive; some of the language, needless to say, is NSFW. (Hat tip to The Smoking Section.)

Download MidwestGangstaBoxframeCadillacMusik at the Smoking Section.

Trust us when we say that countless otherwise sage people have sacrificed years of their lives trying to accurately summarize the music of Kayo Dot. Singer, composer and chief conceptualist Toby Driver once allied himself with doom metal’s experimental wing. But over the course of three extraordinary studio albums made with ever-shifting lineups, Kayo Dot has become a protean entity that draws equally upon goth rock, free jazz, prog, contemporary classical music and much, much more.

Coyote, Kayo Dot’s forthcoming album, finds the group continuing to break new ground. Recorded in Seattle with engineer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth, Six Organs of Admittance), the session features a wind-heavy lineup that combines the pulverizing force of early Kayo Dot with the extraordinary finesse and attention to detail found on the band’s last album, Blue Lambency Downward. In addition to Driver (on bass guitar and vocals) and Kayo Dot mainstay Mia Matsumiya, the group now includes multi-instrumentalists Daniel Means, David Bodie and Terran Olson, plus special guest trumpeter Tim Byrnes. Coyote is due out in early 2010 on Hydra Head, but thanks to the band, the label and Solid PR, the Volume is proud to offer an exclusive preview track: “Whisper Ineffable,” 11 minutes and 15 seconds of shock and awe that could have come only from Kayo Dot.

“I heard that someone from the South got booed last night,” Kam Moye said to a nicely filled house at Brooklyn’s Southpaw on Thursday night. The North Carolina rapper, formerly known as Supastition, was referring to the well-publicized incident in which Atlanta’s OJ da Juiceman was booed off the stage at B.B. King’s the previous night (as we reported here). But Moye had nothing to worry about during a CMJ showcase sponsored by local entertainment marketing and PR firm Audible Treats. As he pointed out, he got “nothing but love” from a crowd primarily drawn in by three marquee acts—Bay Area combo Souls of Mischief, the local heroes in Tanya Morgan and a newly formed supergroup, Trinity, featuring Sadat X from Brand Nubian, A.G. and DJ Jab.

In fact, if Wednesday night’s imbroglio was seized upon by some observers as lending credence to a spreading meme about hip-hop’s marginalization, dissolution and impending irrelevance, Thursday night at Southpaw amounted to a four-and-a-half hour “yeah, right”—or stronger words to that effect.

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It was sometimes tough to spot Raekwon on the stage at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill, thanks to the approximately 347 photographers, videographers and hangers-on surrounding the Wu-Tang member during Better Recognize, a Wednesday night CMJ showcase presented by hip-hop blogs Nah Right and Onsmash. What you couldn’t miss, though, was the Chef’s hoarse croak as he fought through an undisclosed malady to present his set before a packed house. “Appreciate me cuz I appreciate y’all!” Raekwon shouted as he beat his retreat some 20 minutes after he started.

Not much of a set, maybe, but it was enough to turn the tide after the crowd had booed Atlanta rapper OJ da Juiceman off the stage following a three-song set stuffed with so many samples of his mentor Gucci Mane’s trademark yelp that Gooch might as well have been on stage himself. It was the only genuinely ugly moment during a fast-paced event with a handful of big surprises.

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“You’re all incredibly polite, and it’s very much appreciated,” 19-year-old English folkie genius Laura Marling said to a rapt crowd assembled at the Music Hall of Williamsburg during a CMJ showcase presented by influential music blog Brooklyn Vegan on Tuesday night. In this case, polite implied far more than a restraint from jaded snark. Audience members waited in respectful silence as Marling—a diminutive figure who made the stage seem improbably huge—expressed her self-deprecating envy toward the American knack for clever banter while tuning her guitar. Accompanied by a cellist, Marling presented a mix of new tunes from a forthcoming album and older songs that much of the crowd clearly knew. Looking down from the mezzanine, you spotted fans in the audience mouthing the words as Marling sang “Ghosts.”

Marling’s set was just one highlight of an evening capped by tremendous performances from two of the festival’s most buzzworthy acts: England’s Fanfarlo and Brooklyn trio the Antlers. But perhaps the most satisfying thing about the showcase was its overall consistency: During a festival whose participants usually clubhop with mercenary tactical skills, here was one event you could happily linger over for hours.

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Ever since we first heard about hard-rock supergroup Them Crooked Vultures, we’ve been chomping at the bit to catch this band in action. And with every leaked song snippet, every grotty cell-phone video on YouTube and every report from one of the trio’s previous shows, we’ve grown more convinced that this union of Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal), John Paul Jones (Led frickin’ Zeppelin) and Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters) might just be the rawk event of 2009. So it’s with great, great excitement that we share with you what we just learned: Them Crooked Vultures have just announced a local date at Roseland Ballroom on Thursday, October 15. Tickets go on sale via Live Nation this Saturday, September 26, at noon.

“Daniel Johnston is one of the few singers out there that’s a real American outsider artist,” Mike Doughty says in a e-mailed press release sent with an MP3 from his forthcoming album, Sad Man, Happy Man (out October 6 on Dave Matthews’s ATO Records). “Genuine folk art,” Doughty’s statement continues. “He takes a pop cartoon like Casper the Friendly Ghost and turns him into a mythological figure; he finds the spooky and mythological under the shiny American veneer.”

Doughty, no stranger to cartoons or ghosts given his colorful, tempestuous past fronting ’90s NYC quirk-rock band Soul Coughing, performs a warm, faithful version, revealing in the process—as have Mike Watt, Yo La Tengo, Kathy McCarty, Beck and many others before him—that you’ll usually find a solid, memorable pop hook lurking under the cracked veneer of Johnston’s songs.

And just for the sake of comparison, here’s a 1992 live performance by Johnston—whose own new CD, Is and Always Was, also comes out on October 6.

Johnston plays the Highline Ballroom October 14; Doughty wraps up his fall tour at (Le) Poisson Rouge October 31.

Not to be outdone by yesterday’s announcement of a free dress rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera, today the New York Philharmonic announced its own plans for a free open rehearsal on Wednesday, September 16, at 9:45am. That evening, Alan Gilbert officially takes up the reins as the Phil’s music director, with a program that includes the world premiere of EXPO by Magnus Lindberg, the orchestra’s newly appointed composer in residence. Also on the opening-night bill are Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mi, featuring superstar soprano Renée Fleming, and Berlioz’s hair-raising Symphonie fantastique.

You’ll have to get up pretty early to take advantage of this offer, of course; general-admission tickets will be distributed on the Lincoln Center plaza starting at 8am (limited to two per person), and the last two times the Phil did this, thousands heeded the call. But the orchestra is making it worth your while to wait in line: You can sign up to receive program notes and submit questions for Gilbert via text message, and you’ll be eligible for prizes such as free concert tickets, autographed concert programs, discounts at the Phil’s Gift Kiosk and iPods pre-loaded with recordings by Gilbert and the orchestra.

Should you be unable to attend the morning rehearsal but still want to catch the concert without paying, you’ve got two options: Turn up in the evening to watch the program broadcast live on screens above the Lincoln Center plaza, or stay home and watch the tape-delayed PBS broadcast. And if for some reason you still need further motivation to turn up for catch Gilbert’s opening bow in person, check out his blazing performance of Bohuslav Martinu’s Symphony No. 4 with the Berlin Philharmonic, recorded in April.

Anticipation is running high for the start of the Metropolitan Opera’s new season, which opens with a fresh production of Tosca, Puccini’s bloody tale of lust, revolution and revenge. Director Luc Bondy is in charge of restaging the repertoire staple that George Bernard Shaw musicologist Joseph Kerman once deemed a “shabby little shocker” (in a memorable but apparently much-misattributed quote), with fiery Finnish soprano Karita Mattila singing the title role and music director James Levine conducting.

But if you just can’t wait for opening night on September 21, you’re in luck: The Met is opening the final dress rehearsal—Thursday, September 17—to the public, free of charge. Doors will open at 10:30am for the 11am rehearsal, and you can stick around for a Q&A with the artists afterward. Free tickets, limited to two per person, will be available at the Met box office on Sunday, September 13, at noon—and they’re going to be snapped up fast, so don’t sleep in.

You’ll have two more chances to see the Met’s biggest stars for free in final dress rehearsals this season. You can catch Bartlett Sher’s new production of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, with Anna Netrebko and Joseph Calleja, on November 30, and Mary Zimmerman’s staging of Rossini’s Armida, starring Renée Fleming, on April 9. We’ll have the details for those open rehearsals as the dates draw near.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you already know that Kiss has a new CD on the way: Sonic Boom, exclusively available at Wal-Mart, walmart.com and Sam’s Club on October 6, is the first studio album by the band’s current lineup—founders Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, plus seasoned drummer Eric Singer (in the Cat makeup) and road-tested guitarist Tommy Thayer (adorned as the Space Ace). The album comes with a second disc of newly rerecorded greatest hits, as well as a DVD filmed in Argentina during the band’s current Alive 35 tour. Speaking of which, just in case you’ve missed the Internet news alerts and the animated billboards that have suddenly popped up all over Manhattan, Kiss is playing two local shows on its latest stateside jaunt, hitting Nassau Coliseum on October 9 and Madison Square Garden on October 10.

True to form, Kiss is setting up Sonic Boom with hyperbolic claims that it’s the best Kiss album since the late ’70s, and maybe ever. But the buzz about a preview clip from the first single, “Modern Day Delilah,” got me guardedly curious, so I went poking around the Internet and found the complete track. Having heard it, I’m not ready to accept that the album will outshine everything that came after Destroyer—for one thing, the song is closer in style to Kiss’s ’80s output circa Animalize. Still, Singer provides further evidence that he’s the best hard-rock drummer in the business, and Thayer holds up his end of the bargain handsomely. And to the 11-year-old fanboy in me, it’s an unadulterated thrill to see Kiss acting—and sounding—like a real band again for the first time in more than a decade.

Maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but as far as I’m concerned no list of crucial metal acts from New York City is worth its pixels unless Brooklyn’s mighty Candiria is somewhere very close to first place. Founded in 1992 by vocalist Carley Coma, guitarists Chris Puma and Eric Matthews, and ridiculously versatile drummer Kenneth Schalk, Candiria blazed trails and battered skulls with its distinctive mix of thrash, hardcore, hip-hop and free jazz—ages before most other bands started dabbling in genre-mashing. Shaken up by a horrific 2002 van accident, a respectable bid for broader appeal with 2004’s What Doesn’t Kill You… and a three-year wait for 2006’s follow-up, Kiss the Lie (finally issued privately earlier this year), the band members eventually splintered.

Now Coma and guitarist John LaMacchia, having finally won control of the group’s critical early catalog, are making Candiria a going concern once more with the release of Toying with the Insanities, a four-volume series of remixes and rarities. The first track from the series—from Volume One, due out on September 9 from LaMacchia’s Rising Pulse label—is a remix of “Faction,” originally found on 1999’s Beyond Reasonable Doubt. Remixed by industrial drum ‘n’ bass artist Edgey, the cut updates Candiria’s uncompromising ferocity for a new generation of listeners. Brace yourself…

And now that you’ve taken the plunge, check out a vintage video of Candiria ripping up Wetlands, courtesy of Metal Injection and tipped by MetalSucks.

Update: Once you’re finished watching this live mayhem, head over to Metal Injection for a newly posted video interview with Coma and LaMacchia, covering Candiria’s Insanities series and the band’s potential return to live action. Horns up!

Hands up—who remembers Romeo Void? Clearly, Philadelphia singer, rapper and Spank Rock collaborator Amanda Blank does—or at the very least, she’s among the millions affected by the once-heard, never-forgotten money line from “Never Say Never,” the Bay Area alt-rock band’s 1981 hit: “I might like you better if we slept together.”

Blank’s latest single, “Might Like You Better,” spins a snatch of Romeo Void’s original riff into something downright nasty, in the process transforming Debora Iyall’s sexual nihilism into maneater braggadocio. Listen to Blank spit the NSFW dirt amid a big bank of shiny Mylar balloons in her new video (above, with a tip o’ the hat to Sheena Beaston), then visit RCRD LBL and download an exclusive Blaqstarr remix. And while you’re surfing, check out the original video for Romeo Void’s “Never Say Never,” so arty and conceptual that the music doesn’t even start until more than a minute into the clip.

Radiohead remains one of the few acts whose every new utterance can set the Internet on fire…though we confess that we were initially confused (but delighted!) to learn that the band had just issued a song paying tribute to American maverick composer Harry Partch. On closer investigation, we found out that Thom Yorke & Co. were actually honoring Private Harry Patch, the last surviving English veteran soldier who saw combat in World War I. Patch passed away last month at the wizened age of 111.

How’s the song? “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)” sounds rather a lot like an outtake from one of Jonny Greenwood’s orchestral scores, like the music used in the film There Will Be Blood. Over lush waves of strings and keys, Yorke croons lines adapted from Patch’s own latter-day recollections. You want this, of course, and you can buy it exclusively through Radiohead’s Web store for the measly price of one pound—approximately $1.70 by this morning’s exchange rate. What’s more, you definitely want to cough up the cash: All proceeds from sales of the track benefit the Royal British Legion.

Once you’ve listened to the song (above), lend your ears to Patch himself, as he shares his recollections of the 90-day Battle of Passchendaele in a 2007 interview.

I was shocked and saddened to learn yesterday of the sudden, unexpected passing last weekend of Robert Hilferty—a keen arts journalist, astute critic, admired colleague, dazzling raconteur and gregarious bon vivant. Although he hadn’t written for TONY in some time, Robert was an important contributor to this magazine’s early success; among the other publications whose pages he enlivened were Stagebill, The Advocate, Gramophone and Opera News.

More recently, Robert served as an on-screen interviewer for Muse, Bloomberg TV’s now-defunct arts program, for which he interrogated the likes of Renée Fleming and Philip Roth. Here’s a clip of Robert in action, interviewing cyberpunk author William Gibson on Muse:

Current TONY contributor David R. Adler got to know Robert during a visit to the Fés Festival of World Sacred Music last summer, and shares his thoughts (and a few choice video clips) on his blog, Lerterland. I can relate to what David says in his post; I, too, got to know Robert better during my own trip to the Fés Festival in 2006, and I’ll never forget any part of the experience—even if I wasn’t treated to any dance episodes like those that David describes.

You can read some of Robert’s most recent writing on his blog, The Hilferty Harangue, appropriately subtitled “Rants, Raves and Revelations Across the Arts.” He was one of a kind…and he’ll be missed.

Postscript: Michael Petrelis has posted more details of Robert Hilferty’s life—including his important work as a documentary filmmaker and AIDS activist—and of his sad passing on his blog, The Petrelis Files.

It’s nasty, hazy and brutally hot outside: what better time to share a new song by Slayer? The mighty thrash-metal combo is hard at work wrapping up its tenth studio album, World Painted Blood, due for release later this summer. For proof that anticipation is running high for the latest from Tom Araya, Kerry King, Jeff Hanneman and Dave Lombardo, consider this: Since “Psychopathy Red,” an initial track from the album, leaked last October, it’s reportedly been streamed a half million times. Today the band issued a second track from its forthcoming opus: “Hate Worldwide” is available as a limited-edition CD single at Hot Topic (a name synonymous with terror, warfare and malaise) as of today. The band also granted ShockHound an exclusive stream a few days before release—but of course you’ll now find competing “video” versions on YouTube. This one, for instance:

It’s been six long years since we’ve heard anything new from groundbreaking NYC hard-rock band Living Colour—though anyone who mainly remembers the group for its anthemic defining hit, “Cult of Personality,” might be surprised to learn that guitarist Vernon Reid, singer Corey Glover, bassist Doug Wimbish and drummer Will Calhoun have actually been back in action for nearly a decade, albeit in a mode more low-key than the brief period in which they ruled MTV and toured with the Rolling Stones. Last heard on 2003’s Collideøscope, Living Colour will be issuing an all-new album, The Chair in the Doorway, on September 15; this afternoon, the group and its new label, Megaforce, set the stage for the release with a moody leadoff single, “Behind the Sun.” You can download your own free copy of the track—legally, mind you—right here. Living Colour will be celebrating its new album with a release show on October 30 at the Highline Ballroom.

Prince, the once-and-future baddest artist there is, delighted his fans this afternoon by providing a new single to the Montreux Jazz Festival, where his Small Purple Funkiness will be playing two shows on Saturday (July 18). When you go to this page on the festival’s site, the image you see above pops up and stares intently into your eyes, keeping you hypnotized while you’re serenaded by a slick, breezy track, “In a Large Room with No Lights.” (Don’t click our screen grab, by the way: Nothing will happen, and you’ll just annoy yourself—and probably Prince, too.)

Naturally, the track leaked to the usual sites within hours. But what makes this particular single extra-special for hard-core Prince devotees is that it’s actually a freshly recorded version of a much-bootlegged 1986 track originally intended for Dream Factory, the sprawling would-be follow-up to Parade that eventually metamorphosed into Sign o’ the Times, shedding numerous cuts (including this one) along the way.

Compared with the original demo (which is far from difficult to find on the Internet, not that we condone such activities), the new “Large Room” is much slicker, and much more clearly the work of an almost one-man show. The track also raises a fascinating notion: Why shouldn’t Prince rework his own still-viable castoffs for future projects? The idea certainly worked for the Rolling Stones, after all.

By now it should be obvious even to casual readers that we’ve fallen hard for Brooklynati, the latest CD from hip-hop trio Tanya Morgan, and we’re eager to share our obsession. We’ve streamed a single for you, we’ve reviewed the album, and we’ve helped you hear a recent freestyle, and we’d been hoping to shoot a live video with the group for some time now—easier said than done, given that the members still split their residence between Brooklyn and Cincinnati. We prevailed at long last this morning, when Ilyas, Donwill and Von Pea hit the Hudson River piers to rock an a cappella version of “So Damn Down,” the leadoff single from Brooklynati. Have a look, then head out to Southpaw on Wednesday (July 8) to catch Tanya Morgan on a bill with Marco Polo and Torae.

Up to now, the widest attention Iranian-English hip-hop aspirant Mams Taylor has attracted was probably the buzz he generated for putting a smackdown on Desperate Housewives bit player Jesse Metcalfe outside a Hollywood nightclub in February 2008. Turns out, though, that the burly rapper, who’s collaborated with hip-hop bigs like Snoop Dogg and T-Pain, can throw a righteous hook with more than his fists. Earlier this afternoon, Taylor leaked two versions of a new single, “United for Neda,” written in memory of Neda Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old Iranian woman whose senseless murder during the recent election protests in Iran made her a symbol of resistance around the world.

Taylor enlisted some of Iran’s most prominent artists to pitch in on the new single: iconic singers Dariush, Sattar and Morteza, actors Shoreh Aghdashloo and Parviz Sayyad, Iranian-American composer and vocalist Sussan Deyhim, and many more. One version of the track is performed entirely in English, the other includes verses in Farsi; both feature the same poignant, singsong melody and media sound bites, including a snatch of a speech by President Obama. With the situation in Tehran far from settled, Taylor’s single could hardly be more of the moment.

True confession: I did not care for R.E.M.’s Murmur when it appeared—which is the same as saying that if I’d attempted to realize my nascent rock-crit aspirations a year or so sooner than I did, I’d have been dead at the starting gate. At the time, the rock-crit rulebook looked something like this:

1: Murmur is the greatest American rock record issued in 1983.

2. See No. 1.

Years later, Murmur’s kudzu mumble would finally take hold. (The recent deluxe reissue is an easy recommendation.) Where I came in was Reckoning, R.E.M.’s second full-length album. Issued in 1984, the album showed no sign of the much-cited sophomore-slump phenomenon. What it did show was a band capable of playing lean, wiry jangle rock with muscle and heart, stripped clean of the preciousness that delayed my appreciation of Murmur.

Heard again now, the ten songs that make up Reckoning still hold up. “Harborcoat,” with its near-ska guitar shuffle, is as brash an opener as you could want; “So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)” and “Pretty Persuasion” remain among the band’s strongest cuts, and “Camera” retains its mystery. Still, it’s “(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville,” the most straightforward song—and the only one with lyrics not penned by Michael Stipe; Mike Mills wrote the tune back in 1980—that sticks in my mind most, not least because of a couplet that still resonates with all the power it had for a then-recently dumped collegiate:

At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don’t care that you’re not here with me
’Cause it’s so much easier to handle all my problems if I’m too far out to see

The album sounds crisp, clear and fresh in Universal’s new deluxe repackaging, part of a series that will presumably see the band’s entire I.R.S. catalog spit-shined one last time for the twilight of the CD era. The bonus disc seals the deal, offering a terrific live show taped on July 7, 1984, at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. Hearing the young band play, you get no glimmering of a later grandiosity that would inflate into pomp and border on parody. Listen to “Driver 8,” an as-yet-unrecorded track that would turn up on 1985’s challenging Fables of the Reconstruction, and what you hear in Stipe’s insistent twang, Mills’s nimble basslines, Peter Buck’s melancholy jangle and ominous gnarl, and Bill Berry’s affirmative thump is a combination of hunger and confidence that proved R.E.M. had the stuff of greatness.