Also this issue:

Burn, Viacom, Burn
When the music biz destroys itself, Chuck D will get to say “I told you so.”
-Chris Parker

No Looking Back
After coming to terms with their past, Wire go back to the future.
-Sam Adams

Gene
-Sam Adams

Sparta
-Andrew Parks

Exile Follies
-Chris Parker

Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone
-Sam Adams

Rudy Adrian
-A.D. Amorosi

The Gig
-Nate Chinen on Jazz

September 19-25, 2002

musicpicks

David Alvarado

Like the West Coast jazz scene of the '40s and '50s, the lean Los Angeles house sound is muted and smooth, weirdly sexy and sandy -- a romantically misty, just-kissed lush Noh-electronica with fluid, pacific bass lines. From the early '80s to the present -- on labels like Strictly Rhythm, PeaceFrog and his own Bomb -- Alvarado's fuzak slinked like a samba. So what's he doing linked now to East Coast tech-house king Josh Wink and his like-minded Ovum label? More of the saucy same and then some as Alvarado adds his own densely directed Brazilliana, Afro-Cubano and bossa nova notions to Rulers of the Deep's "Dirty Grooves" as well as for his own Ovum release, "Polygons"/"Auburn." Summer isn't over yet.

Wed., Sept. 25, 10 p.m., $5-$7, with Josh Wink, Fluid, 613 S. Fourth St., 215-629-0565.

—A.D. Amorosi