June 10-16, 2004

musicpicks

Amp Fiddler

hip-hop

In the future-funk game, Detroit's Joe "Amp" Fiddler is a vet. Besides creating his own brand of persnickety electronic R&B as keyboardist-singer for Was (Not Was), Prince, Parliament-Funkadelic and Carl Craig's Detroit Experiment, Amp was one half of Mr. Fiddler, the house-hop duo who made one of my favorite unheralded CDs, With Respect, in the early '90s. Fast-forward a decade. After having made mad, mod-soul sounds with "Moodymann" Dixon on 12-inchers like Basementality, Amp finally went solo with his full-length debut, Waltz Of A Ghetto Fly (Pias). With co-producer Raphael Saadiq, Amp — a creamy, dreamy singer with a guttural yowl at his command — pushes Moog-driven R&B beyond the mellow bliss of '70s-centric followers into something stammering and sweat-inducing on "Superficial" and a title track (sung with mentor-boss George Clinton) that proves Fiddler's up for the downstroke.

Tue., June 15, 10 p.m., $5, Black Lily at the Five Spot, 5 Bank St., 215-574-0070.

—A.D. Amorosi