Milo Miles

The African guitarist and his international trio (drummer from Hungary and bassist from Italy via Sweden) have been performing together for eight years. Their latest album, Karibu, is an eloquent fusion of jazz and Afro influences.

Fresh Air's music critic reviews three new deluxe reissues on the Universal Music label: Elvis Costello's This Year's Model, Beck's Odelay and Lynyrd Skynyrd's Street Survivors.

Fresh Air music critic Milo Miles reviews music from Russian rock group Auktyon. The band is currently on tour in the U.S. Auktyon, like some other Russian rock groups, found their footing during the censorship-free period of glasnost in the former Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev.

Fresh Air's world-music critic reviews The Mande Variations, the new CD from Malian kora player Toumani Diabate. Diabate says he descends from 71 generations of griots, or traditional song-storytellers.

When British musician and record producer Martin Atkins visited Beijing in 2006, he wasn't sure what kind of music scene he'd find. As it turned out, the sounds emerging from the Chinese underground were surprisingly familiar. Milo Miles reports.

Milo Miles reviews percussion-centered albums.

Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru is the first album of Chicha music released outside of Peru. The unique music style grew out of the booming cities of the Peruvian Amazon in 1970 and incorporates surf guitars, synthesizers and distinctive melodies.

Critic Milo Miles reviews the new four-DVD set, Popeye the Sailor 1933-1938. The animated series features the classic Popeye cartoons by the Fleischer Brothers studios. Miles calls the set a first-rate reissue.

Fresh Air's music critic Milo Miles considers the work of the art-punk band Sonic Youth; the group's 1988 album Daydream Nation has just been reissued in a deluxe double-CD edition.

Critic Milo Miles reviews a pair of what he considers rarities — all-instrumental albums that don't belong to a clear school or style of music. But in the case of the band Massacre and the Claudia Quintet, he says that's a good thing.