New music
Kieron Tyler
A 55-minute set without an encore. Songs bleeding into each other. No announcements, no talking from the stage. A constantly moving frontman seemingly channelling a yen to merge Merce Cunningham moves and tai-chi. A band who, barring the odd grin from one of the guitarists, focus on what they are doing without expression. An absence of “please-like-me” posturing.Then there’s the music. In high gear from the moment the stage is taken, it’s a motorik-bedded onslaught systematically augmented with crescendos and mounting power. Beyond the Krautrock influence, other nods are made: New Order when Read more ...
peter.quinn
Whether performing with the ground-breaking Jazz Warriors big band (which he co-founded in the 1980s) or Marque Gilmore and DJ Le Rouge in Project 23, taking the lead roles in Julian Joseph’s jazz operas Bridgetower and Shadowball, or emceeing one of the legendary Metalheadz nights at Blue Note, Hoxton Square, Cleveland Watkiss has been one of the most unfailingly creative, daringly protean artists on the UK jazz scene. For his 60th birthday celebration as part of this year’s EFG London Jazz Festival, the award-winning vocalist, actor, composer, broadcaster and educator performed Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
This edition of Peter Culshaw’s global music radio show has a great guest – the hugely talented Brazilian singer, writer and producer Arthur Nogueira who just played his first-ever concert in London. Arthur plays several of his pellucid, lyrical songs live in the studio. He comes from Belem in the state of Pará in North Brazil on the edge of the Amazon and the show concentrates on music from that region. Pará is the size of France, but its amazing music scene remains a closely-guarded secret. One of the local specialities is the retro Dick Dale-style surf music developed by the likes of Read more ...
Asya Draganova
Do you remember Jack Peñate? His name may have been forgotten by some, or not heard yet by others. But his new album After You, following from Matinée (2007) and Everything is New (2009), is worth the listen for the fans of smart, intricate pop music that is true to the independent vibe. Jack has very audibly moved away from his original playful, naïve indie rock sound which led to his early success, to pursue a much more mature take on making music. But will his original audience follow?Well, they might, and Peñate is likely to gain some new listeners too, because After You is a clear Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
If the prices fetched by original pressings are a guide, Mighty Baby are notable. Their eponymous first album, issued by the fittingly named Head label in November 1969, sells for at least £150 and has changed hands for over £500. A Blue Horizon edition of A Jug of Love, their second and last album (October 1971), tops out at £600.Mighty Baby and A Jug of Love are rare, totemic British underground albums. The first is a glistening fusion of psychedelia and John Coltrane-inspired textures with overt nods to American west coast rock. Traffic were on a similar path. For the second album, Mighty Read more ...
Liz Thomson
It’s always good to be among friends and it’s safe to say that everyone gathered at Islington Assembly Hall on Saturday for the third and final North London gig of Billy Bragg’s One Step Forward, Two Steps Back Tour was left of centre. The tour began in July on the south coast, planned long before Borrissey, as Bragg calls the PM, conned the country in going to the polls but events have certainly given it a new urgency.The gigs have been organised in groups of three – the first night ranging across Bragg’s 35-year career; the second songs from his first three albums; and the third from his Read more ...
joe.muggs
In the eight years since theartsdesk last spoke to Carl Craig, a lot has happened. He moved from his native Detroit for a sojourn in Barcelona (partly for ease of access to his summer DJ residencies in Ibiza), then recently returned. He's reinvented tracks from his back catalogue for orchestra, in a style he dubbed "action and adventure" - certainly more John Williams than Debussy - and has performed them as such around the world. He's successfully built the Detroit Love brand for compilations and club nights via his Planet E label, featuring the city's unsung heroes like Stacey Pullen, Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
There was something fitting about the Lumineers entrance in Glasgow. As “Gimme Shelter” blared around the SSE Hydro, lights pulsating over the crowd, it was drummer Jeremiah Fraites who took the stage and started the opening beat of “Sleep On The Floor”, an array of phones quickly whipped out to act as a welcoming committee from the crowd. The rest of the band followed in due course, but this is a group for whom the drums are at the heart of their stomping songs, no matter what.The other key element is, of course, the voice of Wesley Schultz , an unassuming and laid back frontman, who Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Leonard Bernstein talked about “the infinite variety of music” and the late maestro would have been thrilled by the variety on display at the Royal Festival Hall where Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi were as exciting and exhilarating as anything I’ve heard.Their performance, part of the EFG London Jazz Festival, lasted two hours but could have gone on for 22, a display of brilliant musicianship and total engagement that was breathtaking, two classically trained performers absolutely in command of their material and sharing their love and knowledge of it. The prior evening Giddens and Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Time moves fast in the music business. It has only been a matter of months since Fontaines DC were playing the far smaller confines of King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow, and here they were at a sold out SWG3, celebrating the success of debut album “Dogrel”. If that record is one of the finest released this year, then this gig was not quite the victory lap hoped for, albeit still a show that displayed evidence of their quality.The record itself is rich in thoughtful lyricism, the nuances of which were somewhat lost in a live setting. That was not particularly problematic, because the sheer Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Less really is more. Vinícius Cantuária is a musician who has done it all, but has reverted to the simplicity of singing classic Jobim bossa nova songs, to which he brings a quite astonishing lightness of touch. Last night at the Barbican, alone on stage, with just a nylon string guitar for company, he made the 1,850-seater Barbican feel like the most intimate of small clubs.Cantuária’s sublime art is to glide through chord sequences as if they are a liquid. Whereas jazz musicians can sometimes turn the act of working through a song form into a ponderous and self-conscious exercise of landing Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Composer, classical guitarist and ensemble leader Simon Thacker has spent the past decade immersed in distinct musical cultures; from the reinterpretations and reimaginings of the musical traditions of eastern Europe and the Roma people that underpin his Songs of the Roma trio, to his collaborative work with musicians from across the Indian subcontinent under the ever-expanding Svara-Kanti name. Simon Thacker’s Ritmata is a back-to-basics of sorts: the first album from Thacker’s original musical ensemble, Táradh is a collection of mostly original compositions which draw inspiration from Read more ...