New Music Features
theartsdesk in Zanzibar - behind the veilSaturday, 09 March 2019
Damn exotica. Read more...
|
Keith Flint, 1969-2019Tuesday, 05 March 2019
It is hard to absorb the news that Keith Flint of The Prodigy has been found dead at his home in Essex. Keith Flint! The guy with the double Mohican and panda eye-liner who terrified Middle America in the video for “Firestarter”. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Shirley Collins - 'There was no way I could ever sing to be popular'Friday, 25 January 2019
When Shirley Collins appears at The Roundhouse next week, it will be 50 years since she last played there. On 30 May 1969, she and her sister Dolly were on a bill promoting their then label Harvest Records. When she plays there on 31 January, she is the main event. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Hedvig Mollestad, Norway's bridge between heavy metal and jazzSaturday, 19 January 2019
Norway’s Hedvig Mollestad Trio reset the dial to what jazz fusion sought to do when it emerged, and do so in such a way that it’s initially unclear whether they are a jazz-influenced heavy metal outfit or jazzers plunging feet-first... Read more... |
10 Questions for DJ / producer Rob Smith of Smith & MightySaturday, 24 November 2018
Rob Smith & Ray Mighty are truly the unsung heroes of British bass music. Coming out of the same cultural melting pot in Bristol that gave us Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead and mega-producer Nellee Hooper, they looked to be among the city's big successes when they first emerged in 1987. Read more... |
More Blood, More Tracks review - Bob Dylan opens upWednesday, 31 October 2018
You get plenty of Dylan for your buck these days, with the Mondo Scripto exhibition currently at the Halcyon Gallery in London, and a totemic and arrestingly beautiful set of Jerry Schatzberg's photographs of mid-Sixties Dylan in all his fuzzy glory just published by ACC Art Books. Read more... |
10 Questions for singer Live Foyn FriisTuesday, 18 September 2018
Norwegian-Danish singer Live Foyn Friis (for English-speaking readers, Live is her first name) has released six albums, and leads several different ensembles, scattered intriguingly across the divide between jazz and pop. Read more... |
'I read French from left to right and Arabic from right to left': remembering Algerian rebel rocker Rachid TahaFriday, 14 September 2018
Rachid Taha, rockeur and provocateur, died this week of a heart attack. He was one of the last of the rebel rockers, a devotee of both The Clash and Oum Khalsoum. He brought rock and Algerian music together in a fabulously invigorating way. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Cologne: urban boutique on the RhineSunday, 09 September 2018
The terrace beside the restaurant in Cologne’s Stadtgarten – the city park – is heaving. Agreeably so. A bar and a food counter facing onto it are fringed by rows of long tables. Overhanging trees unite in a canopy suggesting this might be forest clearing. Read more... |
theartsdesk at Camp Bestival 2018 - from Astley to apocalypseWednesday, 01 August 2018
Gusting. It’s not a word I’ve ever given much thought. You hear it on weather forecasts but I’m not a farmer of a fisherman so when they say it’ll be windy “with possible gusting speeds of up to 45 miles per hour” my brain doesn’t really register what that means on the ground. Until now. Camp Bestival 2018 was eventually defined by gusting (that and, apparently, Mary “Irrelevant” Berry). It was the... Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
London Tide, National Theatre review - haunting moody river...
“He do the police in different voices.” If ever one phrase summed up a work of fiction, and the art of its writer, then surely it is this...
Watts, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Bignamini, Barbica...
Anyone who’d booked to hear soprano Sally Matthews or to witness the rapid progress of conductor Daniele Rustioni – the initial draw for me –...
The Songs of Joni Mitchell, Roundhouse review - fans (old an...
For most people’s 40th birthday celebrations, they might get a few...
Fantastic Machine review - photography's story from one...
The first photograph was taken nearly 200 years ago in France by Joseph Niépce, and the first picture of a person was taken in Paris by Louis...
Album: Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department: The Ant...
Taylor Swift’s unfathomable ability to articulate human emotion shines as brightly as ever in her latest double album The Tortured Poets...
Jonathan Pie, Duke of York's Theatre review - spoof pol...
If you don't like sweary comics – Jonathan Pie uses the c-word liberally – then this may not be the show for you. In fact if you're a Tory, ditto...
Baby Reindeer, Netflix review - a misery memoir disturbingly...
Richard Gadd won an Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2016 with...
Machinal, The Old Vic review - note-perfect pity and terror
Virtuosity and a wildly beating heart are compatible in Richard Jones’s finely calibrated production of Renaissance woman Sophie Treadwell’s ...
Simon Boccanegra, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester...
If ever more evidence were needed of Sir Mark Elder’s untiring zest for exploration and love of the thrill of live opera performance, it was this...
All You Need Is Death review - a future folk horror classic
Music, when the singer’s voice dies away, vibrates in the memory. In the hypnotic new Irish horror film All You Need Is Death, those who...