New music
Barney Harsent
The 100 Club is dark. Really dark. People are shrouded in the ink-light. I think it’s to save their embarrassment as they order a drink and realise they’ll have to either apply for a loan or sell a child in order to get drunk. In any case, the indoor gloaming provides the perfect setting for the opening act of the evening, Demian Castellanos. The creative helm of psych-rock act The Oscillation, he's on his own tonight with a wordless solo set showcasing new material.Starting off with tones and drones, Castellanos doesn’t so much create a mood as conjure up musical weather. There’s a gadget Read more ...
mark.kidel
There was a magic moment in West Africa when, shortly after independence, in countries like Mali, Guinea and Senegal, the new leaders financed and encouraged new dance bands – telling them to dig deep into their own traditions and no longer feel obliged to imitate the music of their recently departed colonial masters. That exuberant joie de vivre shines through in the extraordinary music of that time, and this new compilation of rare and unreleased material from Senegal, subtitled "Sonic Gems and Previously Unreleased Recordings from the 70s", provides a delightful range of music that evokes Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Last month, Ludovico Einaudi's album Elements debuted at No 12 on the UK album charts, which made it the highest-charting modern classical album since Henryk Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs reached No 6 in 1992. It was proof of the quietly burgeoning allure of Einaudi, which has been stealthily expanding around the world since his first solo release, 1988's Time Out.Subsequent albums such as Le Onde, Eden Roc and I Giorni have lodged several of his limpid and haunting compositions in the ether, whence they might descend to be played on radio, or heard in commercials or on movie Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Say what you like about The Corrs, there was never any denying their talent – or the voice of raven-haired youngest sister Andrea, fronting the familial quartet with ferocity and grace. It’s why it’s so disappointing that White Light – the band’s first album in a decade – begins with egregious autotune and woeful EDM-by-numbers.As far back as “Runaway” (released in September 1995) the band always tried to pair the instruments and flourishes of traditional Irish folk music with whatever was happening in the charts – but given the extent to which contemporary pop is itself Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1973, alone and with an acoustic guitar, Marc Bolan recorded the revealing “This Is My Life”. Over its five minutes, a strummed elegy akin to the T Rex B-side “Baby Strange” evolves from a finger-picked blues. The lyrics name-check B.B. King, Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B Goode” and mention a visit to New York State, playfully rhymed with steak. “Everything I did when I was going to school was just an imitation of Carl Perkins singing ‘Don’t be Cruel’,” he sings, no doubt well aware the Elvis Presley hit did not figure in Perkins’ usual repertoire. Once Presley hit big, Perkins was firmly Read more ...
peter.quinn
With a moto perpetuo of looping accompanying figures in piano and bass underpinning a memorably angular melody in the sax, the opening track of The Day I Had Everything, ”Squared”, announces both a cliché-free collection and a work of trenchant individuality.Presenting 11 new pieces written by sax player and bass clarinettist Mark Lockheart (Polar Bear/Loose Tubes), pianist Liam Noble (Pigfoot, Sleepthief) and bassist Jasper Høiby (Phronesis), the album sees the trio developing a musical collaboration which began in 2009 when they first convened on Lockheart’s quintet album In Deep.Penned by Read more ...
Tim Cumming
How, exactly, are you supposed to review a Keith Jarrett concert – solo, completely improvised, just one man and his Steinway, audience on all sides, ushers walking up and down the aisles bearing signs forbidding any record of the evening's music?“Someone asked me, ‘How do you know what to play?’” he said to us between one of the half dozen improvisations of the first half of his first-ever concert for the EFG London Jazz Festival. Long pause. Good question. He looked down at his instrument. “This is a really good piano.” In the second half, he had more: “Here's how I do this.” Long pause. “ Read more ...
Russ Coffey
In 1987 Def Leppard released Hysteria, a high-water mark in the history of soft rock. Not only was it gloriously infectious but there was also a moving backstory. To recap: the band’s drummer, Rick Allen, lost an arm in a road accident during recording. The group’s response was to help Allen build a custom, digital drum kit and carry on. This new set-up forced them all to tighten their focus, and the result combined technical excellence, good taste and real passion. Sadly, it was arguably the last really decent record they ever made. Def Leppard attempts to recapture those Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
From the second song, “Teenage Icon”, the Brighton Centre crowd are in the palms of Vaccines’ frontman Justin Young’s hands. It’s not a capacity crowd but they sing along to the perfectly crafted indie-pop stomper as if they were. “I’m nobody’s hero,” Young roars, clad in black, wearing his own band’s tee-shirt, but it’s not true, he’s clearly everybody’s hero here. His audience are mostly late teens and early twenties but there’s a hefty smattering of older faces and loads of women. The latter is striking as so often gigs are just hordes of men. The Vaccines clearly have a wider appeal. By Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Eska Mtungwazi (b 1971) was born in Zimbabwe and grew up in Lewisham, south London, her early musical tastes inspired and shaped by her father’s vinyl collection, and her experiences singing both church music and in classical ensembles. She studied Maths originally, and has built a career incrementally, spending ten years as a session musician, and accumulating generic and stylistic influences which have shaped her hugely varied act. She released ESKA, her debut album, in April this year, and has found rapidly increasing acclaim for her unique blend of soul, jazz and folk, tinged Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The anticipation for Adele’s new album has been building for months. It’s been nearly five years since her last, 21, which became the biggest-selling album of the 21st century, shifting over 30 million copies.Numbering the ages at which she wrote most of the material, 25 is a make-up album where 21 was a break-up and 19 just plain ol’ heartbreak. There’s no question about whether or not 25 will live up to the hype of the absurdly successful former albums – the first single , "Hello", shot straight to the top of the UK and US charts and was viewed an average one million times an hour on Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Heading into the final straits of 2015, it’s pleasing to read announcements by the BPI (British Phonographic Industry), the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and Nielsen Soundscan that the year has been the biggest for vinyl sales this century. The sales figures are, respectively, a year-on-year rise of 35% and 56% in the US and the UK, with Europe following the pattern. We might expect the market to mainly consist of middle-aged men but, again, research by respected music business analysts MusicWatch runs counter to that, with nearly half of all sales to under-25s and 44% to Read more ...