New music
bruce.dessau
It is always easy to remember the first time: 11 November, 1974, Hammersmith Odeon. Sparks. I cannot recall the exact seat where I was sitting when I lost my rock 'n' roll virginity, but it was the second stalls block on the left and the seasoned gig-goer on my right tipped me off that you can tell when a band is going to do an encore because the roadies leave the amps turned on. Look out for the red light. Sure enough, Ron and Russell Mael returned to do their biggest hit to date, "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us".Nearly four decades on they were back in West London last night with Read more ...
howard.male
As all the background information to this new release can be found in Nick Levine’s recent interview with Neneh Cherry for theartsdesk, let's get straight down to scrutinising the music. For this serious contender for album of the year deserves more than just a reshuffling of the information on its press release.Just as one can take pleasure in the physical substance of paint on a canvas (dragged, splattered or elegantly arced), it's also enjoyable when the music issuing from the stereo seems to violently push the air aside before threatening to ransack the room. Take this Read more ...
peter.quinn
If this gig by the new vocal supergroup, BLINQ, had to be summed up by a musical expression, then poco a poco crescendo would fit the bill rather nicely. The group, Brendan Reilly, Liane Carroll, Ian Shaw, Natalie Williams, plus the Mercury Prize nominated virtuoso pianist, Gwilym Simcock – what's wrong with a bit of BLING? – gave their first ever performance at Ronnie Scott's last August. Despite not having clocked up many miles on their musical pedometer, last night the quintet delivered auditory thrills by the bucket load.Balancing the BBC Jazz Award winners Shaw and Carroll Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
When your albums tend to drop into a frenzy of anticipation after gaps of six or seven years, the creation of a certain mythology becomes inevitable. So much has been written in certain circles about Fiona Apple since the release of 2005’s Extraordinary Machine - an album which itself seemed certain to never see the light of day at one point - that it has become impossible to distinguish the music from the character - reclusive, frustrating, challenging.And yet the opening track to Apple’s fourth album (its poetic full title - The Idler Wheel is wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Read more ...
howard.male
The solid, shiny band sound on New Yorker Mike Doughty’s most recent solo album Yes And Also Yes was a reason to get very excited about the prospect of him visiting the UK to do some live concerts. But then a couple of weeks ago a new live double CD The Question Jar Show turned up in the post featuring just Doughty accompanied by celloist Andrew Livingstone. It’s a diverting enough listen but it did look like last night might turn out to be a pat-arse rather than kick-arse kind of show.Then when Doughty took to the stage alone, the heart really sank. But the man who made one of the best rock/ Read more ...
joe.muggs
Coming from a thriving East London improvisation scene, "aquatic Krautrock experimentalists" Snorkel have made a logical step forward and released a single that was entirely recorded in one, improvised take. We are very happy to present here in its full ten-and-a-half minute glory the video of the recording, as well as a free download of a remix by Crewdson of another track from the session.Snorkel now feature in their lineup trombonist/producer Ralph Cumbers aka Bass Clef, who is no stranger to improvisation as his previous collaboration with the London Improvisers Orchestra demonstrated. Read more ...
joe.muggs
Though he first came to public attention via the Los Angeles-based Brainfeeder psychedelic electronic hip hop collective led by Flying Lotus, 25-year-old producer Lorn comes from “the middle of nowhere in Illinois”, and it's easy to see in his music a less sunny disposition than many of his comrades. Most of the Brainfeeder crew have a loose-limbed funkiness to their sound and an accumulation of sonic detail that speaks of heat and humdity. But while Lorn shares their aesthetic of complex rhythms that slip off the grid, there's something chilly and chilling about his industrial-sounding Read more ...
joe.muggs
The formula is well established now. Take a hard-living, lately under-appreciated legend of music approaching the end of their life, give them a modern production sheen to highlight every crack and bit of grit in their careworn voice, stir in some lyrics of regret and redemption and Bob's your uncle. It worked spectacularly for Rick Rubin with Johnny Cash, and for XL Records' Richard Russell with Gil Scott Heron, and now Russell has teamed up with Damon Albarn to perform the same job on soul originator Bobby Womack.Unfortunately, the production isn't as modern or radical as it thinks it isIt' Read more ...
peter.quinn
Django Bates ascribes the variety of musical influences at play in his work to his childhood - growing up listening to his father's remarkably eclectic record collection. In the first part of my conversation with Django, he talks about Loose Tubes, StoRMChaser and his new post at Bern University of the Arts. In this second part of our conversation, he talks about craftsmanship, confounding expectations and why strumming one chord all day can be time well spent.PETER QUINN: Your father’s record collection included Romanian folk music, African music, jazz. I’m intrigued to know how that music Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
If the three-day Songlines Encounters Festival got off to a rousing start with folk-punk rowdiness from Poland’s R.U.T.A, by last night things were decidedly more genteel. The Festival, anyway, was an exhilarating musical voyage. Spiro’s last album is called Kaleidophonica, and sports a dizzying cover. Rather than the lysergic rush that might suggest, their music is pastoral but as intricate as a Swiss watch, seemingly restrained but with visionary undercurrents.The Bristol-based instrumental band have been going for 17 years. A couple of years ago they were signed to Peter Gabriel’s Real Read more ...
howard.male
In this self-sufficient age of laptops and loop pedals you have to admire the Werner Herzog-like vision and ambition of a singer-songwriter who decides his compositions deserve to be fully brought to life by an orchestra. After all, who has their own orchestra these days? Tony Bennett, perhaps, or Barbra Streisand? But certainly not someone who’s most recent video has so far only garnered 400 hits on YouTube. Yet last night in the acoustically idea setting of the Union Chapel, the confident yet surprisingly self-effacing Johnny Parry came across like the million-selling artist he certainly Read more ...
theartsdesk
David Bowie: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars 40th Anniversary EditionHoward MaleLet’s start with the bombshell. Yes, Ziggy is a landmark Seventies album but it’s not the masterpiece it should or even could have been, and no amount of remastering or repackaging can change that. For one thing, it simply doesn’t hold together as a concept album or rock opera. For another, the apocalyptic theme set up by the opening number “Five Years” is never followed through (and anyway, Bowie covered this whole area so much better on Diamond Dogs). Then there’s the sore thumb of Read more ...