The Dance Current March 07, 2018

American Utopia is an upcoming studio album by American rock musician David Byrne. It will be released on March 9, 2018 through Todo Mundo and Nonesuch Records. The release is his first solo studio album since 2004's Grown Backwards and serves as a music component to a larger multimedia project entitled Reasons to Be Cheerful which attempts to spread positivity. Byrne announced the album and posted lead single "Everybody's Coming to My House" on January 8, 2018.

Benny Goodman was the first celebrated bandleader of the Swing Era, dubbed "The King of Swing," his popular emergence marking the beginning of the era. He was an accomplished clarinetist whose distinctive playing gave an identity both to his big band and to the smaller units he led simultaneously. The most popular figure of the first few years of the Swing Era, he continued to perform until his death 50 years later.

Hoick is the solo album from Allo Darlin’ drummer Mikey Collins, who combines his love of solid grooves and joyous harmonies to create a fun and sonically varied record. Mikey played most of the instruments and mixed the record himself, with some assistance from Laura Kovic (Tigercats) on vocals and fellow Allo Darlin' member Paul Rains on lead guitar. The flicker of his previous band provided the building blocks of an upbeat, positive record, but Mikey wanted to add his own quirky, disco spin & sonic expansiveness, aided by co-producer John Winfield (who has worked with Jimmy Somerville), with the aim of making a record that people stood a chance of being able to dance to. To create this eclectic sound, Mikey draws on influences as far flung as Dexy's Midnight Runners, Bruce Springsteen & Todd Rundgren as well as more current artists such as Night Works, Matthew E White and Father John Misty.

Djabe held a surprising premiere concert on March 20, 2019. They played their 1998 Witchi Tai To album, because a remixed and remastered, double vinyl version was released, earlier in 2018, for the album’s 20th anniversary. The record was cut at half-speed at the Abbey Road Studios in London from brand new analogue master tapes. The lacquer master discs were cut by the world-famous Miles Showell. The 45 RPM vinyl record was unveiled, with great success, at the 2018 Budapest Hi-Fi Show. Witchi Tai To is one of the band’s most successful albums to date. Simultaneously with its appearance, Djabe exploded into Hungarian music life. In addition to success among the audience, the original double CD and single LP also received the Golden Giraffe Award from the Association of Hungarian Record Publishers as World Music album of the year. The second disc of the dual CD contained multimedia content for computer playback, created by the interactive division of Abbey Road Studios. This happened to be a world novelty then.

Dream Theater is an American progressive metal band formed in 1985 under the name Majesty by John Petrucci, John Myung and Mike Portnoy while they attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. They subsequently dropped out of their studies to concentrate further on the band that would eventually become Dream Theater…

"Monster Mash" is one of the all-time great holiday songs, resurfacing (and sometimes charting) every Halloween without fail. The Original Monster Mash is the accompanying Top 20 album from 1962, on which Pickett leads off with his big hit before plying his Boris Karloff shtick for another 15 songs. Pickett's other Top 100 monster hit, the Christmas novelty "Monsters' Holiday," is here as well, along with dated jokes about Fabian ("Rabian - The Fiendage Idol") and then-current dance crazes ("Transylvania Twist," "Skully Gully"). "Let's Fly Away" is a brief Stan Freberg send-up that replaces "John and Marsha" with Dracula and Vampira. The Crypt-Kickers were an all-star band that counted Leon Russell, producer Gary Paxton, and other famous folks among its members, and the album remains a fine Halloween party platter year and years later. Unfortunately, the album was remixed for CD release in 1991, and the vocals are obscured in the mix so that the generic rock backing often prevails over the "spooky" dialogue and singing, which defeats the point for a novelty effort such as this.

Ritual Howls create a cinematic blend of twangy industrial-rock that could fuel a post-apocalyptic dancefloor. A collaboration between Paul Bancell (vocals, guitar), Chris Samuels (synth, samples, drum machine), and Ben Saginaw (bass), the Detroit trio's fourth full-length Rendered Armor follows the 'Their Body' EP of 2018 with expansive arrangements sculpted with masterful production.