New music
Guy Oddy
It’s quite a shock to realise that industrial metal-heads Godflesh have been beating on their particular drum (on and off) for some 30 years. Under lead noise-monger Justin Broadrick, titanic riffs and weaponised beats wrapped up in claustrophobic paranoia have given the British punk, metal and experimental music scenes periodic sonic shake-ups, while also influencing many from around the world with a yen to channel their own primal screams through highly amplified tunes turned up to 11. Godflesh might even be described as a Great British Export, given their somewhat unexpected and Read more ...
Barney Harsent
When Irish rock band U2 marked the release of 2014’s Songs of Innocence by loading it into everyone’s iTunes for free, it was an attempt to find a new angle on the "event release". While it was certainly that, it wasn’t, shall we say… universally well received. Thankfully, for its companion piece, Songs of Experience, the band has opted for an altogether more traditional delivery system. There will be no humanitarian air-drops of WAVs over the shire counties – you can tell the Home Guard to stand down.This, of course, means we're paying for the pleasure this time round – so what do we get? Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“The Prodigal Son of Magnesia” is an attention-grabbing title. So are “Three Legged Giant Centipede” and “Public Execution of the Sleeping Lotus Eater”. Each suggests that the album from which they are drawn could be a prog rock epic inspired by conflating existing myths with newly made-up fancies. Track lengths exceeding 10 minutes further the impression. Yet despite surface impressions, 1 is not a showcase for instrumental prowess or tricky arrangements. The first solo album from Finland’s Timo Kaukolampi is instead about immersive, intense atmospheres.Kaukolampi has form. As a producer, he Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Robin Rimbaud, AKA Scanner, has been releasing music for over two decades. There was a point in the mid-Nineties when he was a media “thing” due to the way he sampled sounds plucked from the airwaves. Shockingly, this included phone calls because cordless home phones are as accessible as any other radio signals. He has long operated on the art-intellectual spectrum, bridging electronic, industrial and avant-classical, collaborating with everyone from Wire to Michael Nyman.So to Fibolae, titled for a word that came to him in a dream, and his first album in eight years. Giving background to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1976, Polydor Records was actively considering signing the Sex Pistols. The label’s Chris Parry checked them out live in Birmingham during August. In September, he had a prime spot behind the mixing desk at the 100 Club’s punk festival from which to consider British punk rock’s figureheads. However, the band’s manager Malcolm McLaren signed them to EMI. Moving on, Parry began pursuing The Clash and recorded demos with them that November. They went on to sign with CBS.Despite being led up the rock ‘n’ roll garden path by the Pistols and The Clash, Parry didn’t give up on punk and, following Read more ...
Katie Colombus
If I found it acceptable to swear at my children, I would serenade them with Björk's "Tabula Rasa". It goes: "My deepest wish, Is that you’re immersed in grace and dignity, But you will have to deal with shit soon enough, I hoped to give you the least amount of luggage, Got the right to make your own fresh mistakes, And not repeat others' failures." It's my own personal vision of utopia, in a nutshell.The rest of the album is equally as sage, and frank - notes and noises that create a soundscape made up of early English evensong ("The Gate"), with flutters of pagan pipes and rushes of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Nick Mulvey (b.1984) is a singer-songwriter who draws from a refreshing and unexpected palette of global roots music, modernist classical and electronica. His second album, Wake Up Now, was released earlier this year, and showcases a man on a quest, an artist who regards music as a direct expression of spirit. Along its course, it contains some of 2017’s finest, most intriguing music.Mulvey grew up in Cambridge, studied music in Cuba, and became part of pop-jazz experimental group Portico Quartet while studying ethnomusicology at London’s School of African and Oriental Studies. He played the Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
It really is quite something to be admired, the sheer longevity and staying power of the Jools Holland franchise. The TV show Later...With Jools Holland, with the same core team running it, has just celebrated its 25th anniversary and put its 51st season to bed. That takes us all the way back to October 1992, just after the summer of John Bryan and Antonia de Sancha, of toes and Chelsea strips. Meanwhile, another part of the franchise, Jools' Annual Hootenanny, with a similar format has been running since New Year’s Eve 1993. Holland and his team have been building all this since his mid- Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Not since the 1960s has there been so much global shit to protest about! The Sixties, of course, gave us the protest song – and how well the best of them have worn. “Masters of War” and “With God On Our Side” are timeless classics. “Give Peace a Chance” can still be heard from the barricades.There’s no doubt Neil Young means well, believes passionately, but the agitprop – much as we all agree with the sentiments – does begin to pall. Much of the music doesn’t quite cut the mustard, though if it won’t stand the test of time perhaps that’s because it doesn’t need to – the goal here is to be Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Not since the 1960s has there been so much global shit to protest about! The Sixties, of course, gave us the protest song – and how well the best of them has worn. “Masters of War” and “With God On Our Side” are timeless classics. “Give Peace a Chance” can still be heard from the barricades.There’s no doubt Neil Young means well, believes passionately, but the agitprop – much as we all agree with the sentiments – does begin to pall. Much of the music doesn’t quite cut the mustard, though if it won’t stand the test of time perhaps that’s because it doesn’t need to – the goal here is to be Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Recorded at beautiful Bantry House in the far south-west of Ireland, The Blue Room is the debut of West Clare’s fiddle player extraordinaire Martin Hayes’ new quartet, comprising bass clarinettist Doug Wieseman, viola d’amore player Liz Knowles, and guitarist Dennis Cahill.It opens in spectacularly tranquil fashion with "The Boy in the Gap", a tune as beautiful as anything Hayes has ever recorded – and given his record with Irish-American supergroup The Gloaming as well as his long association with guitarist Dennis Cahill, that is a high bar indeed, over which his music seems to flow Read more ...
Russ Coffey
First, an admission. I've never quite got the appeal of the Gallagher brothers. In particular, I've found their claims that each post-Oasis album represents some bold new horizon a little risible. And yet there is something intriguing about the brothers' 2017 output. Liam's As You Were came out a few weeks ago and now there's Noel's new one. True to form, the brothers have been trading insults all month.They've also been taking every opportunity to claim their album's the best. That is a matter of opinion. But what's indisputable is that the two records take opposite approaches. Liam's Read more ...