"I'm not so sure American audiences get us," says Rob Garza, half of Thievery Corporation, chill-out masters from Washington, D.C. But U.S. fans are starting to come around. The band's third studio album, The Richest Man in Babylon, a blend of dub, bossa nova and world music, sold 25,000 copies in its first month, big numbers for a self-released, non-radio-friendly CD. Garza and cohort Eric Hilton scour the globe for new sounds; Persian vocalists and European porn soundtracks get equal treatment. "In some ways," says Garza, "that late-Sixties porn stuff is the most experimental music of all."
KIRK MILLER
(November 21, 2002)