New music
Guy Oddy
Barry Adamson has forged an impressive solo career since the soundtrack-without-a-film of Moss Side Story in 1988. His epic cinematic noir sounds have absorbed blues, jazz, rock and a myriad of other musical designs along the way and Love Sick Dick happily doesn’t stray too far from that tradition. Much like his debut, Love Sick Dick is a song cycle that follows an implied narrative and features a lonely and paranoid bloke adrift in the big bad city as he crashes ever downwards. In fact, despite outward appearances, Love Sick Dick is really a blues record.Things start with a zap and a pop, as Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Frankie Goes to Hollywood of “Two Tribes”. Talk Talk. Stadium-era Depeche Mode. Laibach. a-ha’s aural dramas “Stay on These Roads” and “Manhattan Skyline”. “New Year’s Day” by U2. These are the musical building blocks of Ulver’s The Assassination of Julius Caesar.The death of Princess Diana. The attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan. The Greek goddess Artemis (Diana, in the Roman myths) and story of Actaeon the hunter who saw her naked body so was killed by dogs. The Bernini statue The Rape of Proserpina, used as the album's cover image. The death of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As 1967 ended, The Beatles’ “Hello Goodbye” sat at the top of the British singles chart and Billboard’s Hot 100 in America. Musically trite – “blandly catchy”, declared the writer Ian MacDonald – the single’s banal lyrics pitched opposites against each other: yes, no; stop, go; goodbye, hello. Although Paul McCartney was saying little with the song, he was playing a game with inversion.The new compilation Jon Savage's 1967: The Year Pop Divided meets another of 1967’s schisms head on. One which The Beatles were at the heart of. As Savage puts it, “1967 was the year the ‘60s divided. During Read more ...
peter.quinn
While this is a big beast of a record, it’s one that’s surprisingly light on its feet. Consisting of Danish bassist Jasper Høiby, British pianist Ivo Neame and Swedish drummer Anton Eger, anyone who’s familiar with Phronesis knows that metric shifts, whiplash-inducing changes of gear and tricky ostinatos are meat and drink to these musicians.Commissioned for their 10th anniversary, the album sees the trio’s back catalogue cast in dazzling, widescreen big band arrangements courtesy of sax player, bandleader, arranger and conductor Julian Argüelles, together with the acclaimed Frankfurt Radio Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Mulatu Astatke has carved out a particular niche within music. He is a one-off purveyor of what Brian Eno called “jazz from another planet”, smoky, mysterious and playful. He’s about the only artist you could describe as both transcendent and sleazy. The sleazy bit is mainly due to the colours of the horns and vibraphone, suggesting a less than salubrious nightclub, and he himself has something of the demeanour of a lounge lizard.He studied classical music at Trinity College in London at more or less the same time as that other musical visionary, Fela Kuti ( I’d pay to watch a docudrama of Read more ...
Russ Coffey
The Far Field is the fifth album from Baltimore synth-poppers Future Islands, and the first since that performance on Letterman. In case you aren't familiar, a quick recap: the band were performing their single, "Seasons (Waiting on You)" when something mesmerising started to happen. Thumping his chest and screwing up his eyes, singer Samuel T. Herring suddenly became totally at one with the song. The performance soon went viral. It didn't just breathe new life into the band, though; it also put them under a new level of scrutiny.All credit, then, that the boys haven't buckled under pressure Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
The first thing that hits me as I walk into Concorde 2 is the age and energy of the audience, dominated by excitable booze-fuelled teenagers. Black Honey themselves are pretty young for a band capable of quickly selling out a 600-capacity venue, with the singer noting that “it feels like just yesterday we played here and couldn’t sell two tickets”. Their following has grown steadily over the last few years, thanks to their accessible pop singles and constant comparisons to Lana Del Rey and Lush. Now, it seems that just about everyone in Brighton wants a ticket to see them.First, however, are Read more ...
Nick Hasted
“But when did you become an object of pity?” Nick Cave asks himself. Brighton’s streets have become an obstacle course of concerned strangers and acquaintances, in the arms of whom he may find himself collapsed, crying. Such indignity was his grief’s smallest cost, after his 15-year-old son Arthur fatally fell from a cliff in 2015.One More Time with Feeling was released in cinemas last year, in a complex 3D process. Watched at Cave’s favourite cinema in his adopted hometown Brighton on its muggy opening night, it felt oppressively intense and increasingly raw, with the 3D adding hallucinatory Read more ...
Liz Thomson
One thing was very clear at Wednesday night’s BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, held at the Royal Albert Hall – at the moment at least, Scotland has something of a monopoly when it comes to folk music talent. While Desert Island Discs suggests the current First Minister’s tastes are rather more commercial than those of her predecessor in the post, if push comes to shove, maybe folk music will be a bargaining chip in the discussions over independence.That’s not to say there wasn’t talent also from south of the border, or from across the Irish Sea (Daoirí Farrell picked up two baubles), or from America Read more ...
Liz Thomson
It’s a while since John Mayall last played Ronnie Scott’s, and the six shows this week didn’t begin to accommodate his many fans. The line to get in on Tuesday started a long while before show-time, and those who turned up hoping for returns will be pleased to know the British blues legend will be heading back to Britain in the autumn. Those lucky enough to possess tickets were treated to an excellent opening show, much of it drawn from his recent album Talk About That.Just as he did when Mayall celebrated his eightieth birthday at Ronnie’s, Nigel Price opened the proceedings with a great Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Brighton Festival, which takes place every May, is renowned for its plethora of free events. The 2017 Festival is curated by Guest Director Kate Tempest, the poet, writer and performer, alongside Festival CEO Andrew Comben who’s been the event's overall manager since 2008 (also overseeing the Brighton Dome venues all year round). This year the Festival’s theme is “Everyday Epic”.“Kate has this sense of the arts being important through the everyday of our lives,” Comben explains, “at the same time as acknowledging that, for everyone, things can take on epic proportions, whether that’s Read more ...
Liz Thomson
As Imelda May releases her fifth CD, it can’t but help that Bob Dylan has come out as a fan – it was, she wrote, "like being kissed by Apollo himself". No doubt his buddy T Bone Burnett passed him a copy of the album, for he produced it in Los Angeles, where it was recorded over seven days, with guest appearances from guitarist Jeff Beck and pianist and band leader Jools Holland, on whose TV shows May has guested several times.Life. Love. Flesh. Blood is the fifth studio outing for the girl from Dublin’s Liberties, and it's full of emotion, polished and stylised. May has performed with Read more ...