New music
theartsdesk
This month's CD selection is headed up by extraordinary albums from modern folkist Chris Wood, a startling come-back from Gil Scott-Heron and pretenders to the New Rave throne New Young Pony Club. Among the new releases we have the late Johnny Cash, Krystle Warren, Midlake, John Hiatt, Frightened Rabbit and ex-e.s.t bassist Dan Berglund. The compilation of the month is from Soweto and there's a fabulous tango soundtrack. A veritable audio feast. Our reviewers are Russ Coffey, Peter Culshaw, Thomas H Green, Howard Male, Marcus O'Dair, Neil Spencer, Sue Steward, Adam Sweeting and Graeme Thomson Read more ...
bruce.dessau
The past might be a foreign country but sometimes they don't do things so differently there. Two decades ago I found myself backstage at Wembley Arena discussing music with one of MC Hammer's rubber-limbed dancers, nicknamed No Bones. Who was his favourite band? A bunch of geeky white Brits called Depeche Mode, who, I discovered, were a huge influence on the Detroit Techno scene. Twenty years on it is payback time. Detroit Techno is now a huge influence on another group of geeky white Brits, Hot Chip.Their fourth album, One Life Stand, draws heavily on Derrick May's turbo-charged orchestrated Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The blogs are alive with the sound of Thom Yorke of Radiohead's new band, which he told us today had the name Atoms For Peace. "It seemed bleedin' obvious," said Yorke of the name on the Radiohead website Dead Air Space. Nerdy, pacifist, retro, ironical: the name ticks all the boxes. An antique phrase of "super-group", once used to describe bands like Blind Faith, has been dusted down to describe the band which includes Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Beck drummer Joey Waronker, bassist Flea and percussionist Mauro Refesco. "Atoms For Peace" was also a song on Yorke's solo record, The Read more ...
joe.muggs
Two London clubs currently appear to be under threat. The Ministry of Sound, one of the most successful brands in club music's history, is kicking up a fuss because new housing block planned opposite it may make it vulnerable to noise complaints. Meanwhile, rumours have flown around over the last 48 hours that police are lobbying Hackney Council against Plastic People in Shoreditch whose licence is currently under review for reasons of “prevention of crime and disorder and public nuisance basis”.It's funny that these two have become news at the same time, as you could not find two more Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
A new report from Freemuse, the organisation which campaigns against music censorship, describes the oppression of heavy metal musicians in numerous countries. From the underground to the mainstream, heavy metal is a global phenomenon attracting millions of fans – but along the way it has gained many enemies too. “Long-haired music”, as it has been described in Malaysia and China, has been banned by both governments.In several Middle Eastern countries, both musicians and fans have been arrested and accused of devil worship. Heavy metal continues to be banned from radio and Read more ...
sue.steward
Latin Music USA is a long-overdue exploration of the Latino influence on American popular music. The four-part BBC Four Friday-night series zooms in on the bicultural American populations rooted in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Mexico, but living in their original entry points, Miami, New York, LA and the Tex-Mex border. The series examines the lifestyles and politics behind the music and their impact in the US beyond Spanish-speaking neighbourhoods. “Each programme looks and feels different, matching the cultures,” explains the London director, Jeremy Marre. In the early days, the Cubans and Puerto Read more ...
howard.male
Here’s a deceptively simple question. What is African music? Does a band make African music simply by dint of the fact they come from Africa? One of last night’s three African Soul Rebels acts was South Africa’s Kalahari Surfers. Ensconced behind a table’s worth of laptops and other gismos, they made subtly menacing, dubby rock with an early '80s slant. And in fact they did it rather well, conjuring memories of Gang of Four and their ilk.Warrick Sony, the band’s vocalist looked and sounded a little like Billy Bragg, and his fractured, edgy guitar work was involving. There was even one moment Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
This week’s birthday videos include guitarists Andrés Segovia playing a fandango, Japanese heavy metal hero Akira Takasaki and George Harrison. Then there’s Johnny Cash and murdered Afghan singer Nusrat Parsa. It's also the birthday of the mighty Handel. Videos below.
21 February 1893: Andrés Segovia plays Frederico Moreno Torroba’s Suite Castellana Fandango.
22 February 1961: Akira Takasaki is the metal guitarist’s guru as a member of the top Japanese band Loudness. Here he shows his impressive axe credentials.
26 February 1932: The Man in Black, Johnny Cash, sings “Ring of Fire” from a Read more ...
graeme.thomson
There is something eternally refreshing about catching a band on the first show of their first tour after the release of their first album. Banter remains untarnished by overuse; smiles appear spontaneous and gratitude genuine; mistakes are swatted away with a giggle and a sly curse. Hope – that most intoxicating of emotions – fills the air like the scent of fresh cut grass. When the group march off stage at the end of the set and plonk themselves behind the merchandising table, it almost seems churlish not to hand over your cash, if only to buy into the dream that, right now, everything Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
And so to the windswept hangar of Earls Court, and the 30th Anniversary Brit Awards. Except it wasn’t, because as any pedant knows the very first Brits (then mystifyingly entitled the British Record Industry Britannia Centenary Awards) occurred in 1977. No matter. Lady Gaga cleaned up with her outlandish couture-pop, the increasingly annoying Lily Allen turned up in her underwear to win the Best British Female Solo Artist award and daringly told host Peter Kay to **** off, and Liam Gallagher oafishly threw the microphone into the audience after picking up the Brits Album of the Last 30 Years Read more ...
bruce.dessau
The death at the weekend of Doug Fieger, the co-founder of The Knack, meant that melodic US pop had lost a fine exponent. But more than 30 years on from the eternal über-hit "My Sharona" the appeal of infectious hook-lined music lives on in the work of preppy foursome Vampire Weekend, who have made their name by mixing new wave revivalism with African beats, dubbing their style “Upper West Side Soweto”.Contra, the quartet's January follow-up to their 2008 eponymous debut, received mixed reviews. theartsdesk came down particularly hard on the band's derivative style, which frequently owed a Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Oumou Sangare, Malian diva and one of the world’s great singers, is not, as I eventually found out myself, a woman to be trifled with. When she bought some land outside Bamako, the capital of Mali, a local official by accident or oversight also sold the land to someone else who planted the fields. Sangare turned up with a bulldozer and destroyed the man’s crops. She also had a quiet word with the President of Mali and got the offending official sacked. I could easily imagine Sangare in her preferred garb of traditional colourful African robes and Parisian stilettos in the driving seat of a Read more ...