New music
Kieron Tyler
According to the May 1979 issue of the New York art-paper East Village Eye, James White “is treated [everywhere] with awe and the special consideration lacking in most people's lives.” The adoration was boundless. White is “the star, the proof of the divinity that can be had by those who strive for a life beyond the schemes of men, James White is not an animal creature, James White is one of the breed called God in older times.”For those who hadn’t realised White was a deity, his more commonly known alter-ego James Chance remained a mere cornerstone of the New York-spawned no wave scene Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Swedish drummer Magnus Öström is best known as part of the Esbjörn Svensson Trio, which became a successful jazz-rock crossover act until Svensson’s tragically early death in a diving accident in 2008. Since then Öström has pursued a solo career (with supporting band), and this, his third album, shows him exploring similar generic territory to e.s.t. Yet the mood is very different: e.s.t. had a knack of creating slow-burning, melodic hits that lingered in the memory like a favourite aroma. They were subtle and complex, but accessible to many outside the usual jazz crowd. Öström was a Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
I’ve never understood why the great American train journey isn’t as romanticised as the great American road trip. There’s nowhere else you get quite that same uninterrupted time with your own thoughts: to create, to ponder, to come to terms with everything. Certainly not in the UK, where the six-hour stretch from Glasgow to London is punctuated by so many stops that letting your mind wander as a pushchair or a scalding cup of tea makes its way up the aisle is something you do at your peril.Laura Gibson’s Empire Builder is, perhaps, the first great American rail trip soundtrack, named for the Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Another peripatetic mix of the latest global sounds and reissues from theartsdesk’s resident world music fanatic Peter Culshaw. The radio show features a mindbendingly eclectic mix from Colombia, Louisiana, Angola to Brazil, with some new folk from The Gloaming, alt country from Sam Outlaw, bonkers psychedelia from India, and a couple of old numbers from Ali Farka Touré and the Neville Brothers. An Easter sonic feast.To hear the show click on this linkTrack listingBashir Mal Khalifé – "Wolfpack"Kalyanji – "Ananii"Sidestepper – "Come and See Us Play"Kanatu y el Tigre – "Quien de Queda Quien Se Read more ...
Andrew Cartmel
Although this evening began with an introduction by film director Ben Wheatley (responsible for Clint Mansell’s latest soundtrack commission, High-Rise), Mansell’s most frequent collaborator has been Darren Aronofsky. Among the movies they’ve fashioned together is 2014’s Noah, the music from which provided tonight’s opening salvo.Giant, menacing chords lumbered across a sparse soundscape with a pulsing clash of cymbals from Eric Gardner on drums. Ululating, haunting electronic keyboards were played by Clint Mansell himself. The sound clotted into a dense, menacing texture with sustained Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Vinyl now accounts for almost 6% of the money made from music distribution, more than is accrued through free ad-backed streaming services. In the US last year vinyl sales rose to $416 million. Clearly these sort of figures are no threat to the likes of Spotify but then, there is no need for them to be. The fact is that vinyl is re-established as a boutique format and, culturally, its desirability is reaching a peak. Dismiss this as trendiness at your peril. Whatever buyers’ motivations for buying vinyl and digging their record players out of the attic, it benefits all vinyl lovers, from Read more ...
Barney Harsent
It's been a quite while since 2012's critically acclaimed album The Echo Show. In that time, Parisian psych duo Yeti Lane have been backing band for Can legend Damo Suzuki, played with the fractured genius behind Brian Jonestown Massacre, Anton Newcombe, and managed to forge a new sound for themselves. It's a sound that is darker, stronger, weirder and much, much larger.In a sea of new psych sounds, it's increasingly difficult to go diving and come up with pearls. The key, as Charlie Boyer and Cédric Benyoucef have discovered, is to go deeper. Much, much deeper. Through a series of seemingly Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Three years ago Laura Mvula captured both hearts and minds with her intriguing and seductive debut album, Sing to the Moon. Last night she began again the nerve-wracking process of revealing new music, in this case her second album, The Dreaming Room, to be released in the summer.Though critics loved Sing to the Moon, it was hindered commercially by its subtlety and tendency to duck the big glitzy climax in favour of a left-field closure. With the arrival of drummer and producer Troy Miller, now Mvula’s musical director, to work on this album, there was a chance this collection would be more Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In the run-up to the release of his second album Grapefruit, Kiran Leonard has revealed the musical touchstones which map out his world. Boredoms, Kate Bush, the jazzy French Canterbury-rock types Etron Fou Leloublan, Fela Kuti, Swans, Scriabin and Sleaford Mods all colour his prog-tinged vision of music. And he looks elsewhere for ideas. The album's “Ondör Gongor” takes its title from a Mongolian giant while “Half-Ruined Already” is inspired by a Werner Herzog film.Leonard has also declared that his liking for Bush is based on a surmise that her music is not spontaneous: she has, he says, a Read more ...
Martin Longley
The Tectonics festival concept began in Iceland, 2012, created by the Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov. Although, loosely speaking, it’s concerned with a modern classical programme, there’s a peculiar aspect to Volkov’s orientation that lends a special quality. Much of his chosen music is devoted to environmental shaping, stasis, ambience, stately processes, repetition, and a general questioning, if not confrontation, of the accepted staging stance, and sometimes volume, of a performance. Volkov’s players and composers are frequently interested in jazz, rock, electronic and improvised sounds, Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Tad Doyle was the mainman in grunge first-wavers Tad, who helped to put Seattle firmly on the rock’n’roll map in the late ‘80s with such fine discs as God’s Balls, Salt Lick and 8-Way Santa. He’s now back in action and back on the road in the UK and Europe with his new outfit, Brothers of the Sonic Cloth: a sludge rock beast whose self-titled debut album showcases some truly heavy music with real soul.GUY ODDY: I remember seeing your first group, Tad, on the first Nirvana tour of the UK in 1989 and to be honest, I thought that you were the more entertaining act. Did it frustrate you that you Read more ...
joe.muggs
Once upon a time, techno was the future, and Orlando Voorn was right at the heart of building that future. The Dutchman was in early on the late-1980s wave of Detroit electronic production – in which small groups of black Americans surrounded by decaying industry drew the natural link between Kraftwerk and funk, filled themselves with equal quantities of utopian and dystopian visions, and set a blueprint that would irrevocably alter the sound of music worldwide. Indeed, he worked with and for many of Detroit's finest, and his tracks were very often some of the most stunningly beautiful of the Read more ...