New music
joe.muggs
We Out Here Festival, now in its fifth year (and fourth edition, as 2020 was of course cancelled for Covid), has become an institution. Curated by jazz-centric veteran DJ Gilles Peterson and actualised by Noah Ball – best known for his role in creating Outlook Festival in Croatia which has served as UK bass music’s metting point in the sun since 2008 – it joins the dots culturally through generations of music both strange and hedonistic and attracts a faithful crowd that reflects that.The diversity of the crowd is the first thing you’ll notice about the festival. Though it has grown a lot Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Introducing the fifth number in this evening’s set, Erin Birgy speaks to the audience for the first time. “This is our last song, thank you,” she says. Thoughts of early Jesus and Mary Chain shows instantly surface. Is this going to be a 20-minute wonder? A five-song digest of where Birgy – who records and writes as Mega Bog – is now, playing her first UK dates since the release of her seventh album The End of Everything? Is it the end of the show?Despite the announcement, it isn’t. Ten songs are played over 50 minutes. But the proclamation is emblematic of the issues and questions inherent Read more ...
joe.muggs
A little remarked fact of modern music is just how lush the sound of modern R&B and adjacent music is. A decade ago, the relative harshness of trap beats and EDM synths seemed to dominate sonically, or on the more bohemian fringes there was a meandering haziness derived from the UK influence of James Blake and Burial. But now, in the work of artists like Kehlani and Tinashe – and filtering outwards into pop from Billie Elish to Ariana Grande – all of this is folded together, the electronics smoothed into more traditional musicality, and with production that is sometimes as Read more ...
Tom Carr
Only a few artists can be said to have exploded on to the scene like Hozier. The solo, Irish musician – full name Andrew John Hozier-Byrne – shot to stardom with the omnipresent hit “Take Me To Church” back in 2014. Although his work since hasn’t taken over the pop culture zeitgeist in the same way, he has nonetheless gone on to be very successful.Unafraid to tackle weighty, thoughtful themes, such as LGBT rights, religion, or economic strife, married to his powerful vocals and heavy folk influences, Hozier has marked himself out as a poignant artist. He returns with his latest album and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s been a sense of anticipation around Ghanaian-Australian Genesis Owusu ever since his ebullient 2021 debut album Smiling with No Teeth. He won a bunch of Arias, Australia’s Grammys, but could he break internationally? He’s toured the US with Paramore and is due to hit Europe in the Autumn, including a stop at Berghain.His new album is a match for its predecessor, in terms of eclecticism and bravado, and has a higher quantity of immediately hooky songs, so it shouldn't be a hindrance in taking things next level. Owusu has said that it was partially inspired by Waiting for Godot and Read more ...
joe.muggs
On the face of it, this is an extremely simple record. It is big, stomping, party-monster neanderthal synth-rock.There’s no new sounds here: the structures are classic garage punk, the synthesisers’ growl and squeal sounds like some jerry-rigged setup from the 1970s, and the double drum kits and John Dwyer’s growls and yelps are downright primal. Aside from the equally retro-sounding big synth pop ballad finale “Always at Night”, it’s music to fling yourself around and get loose to, and in a sense that’s all you need to know. But the more you live with it, the more complex and perplexing Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Between the late 1950s and around 1971, Robert “Mack” McCormick (1930–2015) travelled through his base-state Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, west Louisiana and parts of Arkansas and Oklahoma looking for musicians to record. It wasn’t a random process: he covered 700 counties using a grid system, so nothing would be missed. As well as tapes, he made lists, filled notebooks and took photos. He kept everything.After archivists at the National Museum of American History went through what was donated by McCormick’s daughter to the Smithsonian Institution in 2019, they found his collection encompassed Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Welcome to one of Peter Culshaw’s occasional global radio shows, hosted by Music Box. Today’s guest is the celebrated essayist, novelist, music composer and singer Amit Chaudhuri.TO HEAR THE SHOW CLICK THIS LINKChaudhuri became known for some strange juxtapositions of western pop or jazz classics and Indian ragas – a version of "Layla " or a Doors number can collide with Indian music to spectacular and usually charming effect. His first album had the intriguing title This Is Not Fusion while his new album is called Across the Universe, the title track a warped and beautiful version of Read more ...
Liz Thomson
In late 2019, BC, another age, Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi stepped on to a Southbank Centre stage and gave one of those mesmerising performances that forever stays in the memory.In the three years or so since, Giddens has been given a clutch of awards, most recently a Pulitzer for her opera Omar. A musical seeker, her career is a journey of exploration through the highways and byways of American music and its intersections. All attempts at categorisation are rejected, Giddens seeing them – largely correctly – as a marketing tool. No doubt that’s why she remains at Nonesuch, an Read more ...
Tim Cumming
A curious and rather marvellous sonic chimera manifests in the twilight of the rock gods, an album from 1977 finding its physical release 46 years after it was committed to acetate, and then abandoned, reasons unknown. Neil Young’s Chrome Dreams comprises 12 songs, including early versions of "Powderfinger" and "Like a Hurricane", among others, and was recorded at various sessions and stage shows between 1974 and 1976, including at Young’s Broken Arrow Ranch with his band Crazy Horse.Sixteen years ago, Neil Young decided to release Chrome Dreams II, while the original, unissued album Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Sky at Night” begins Radio Red. Its brooding atmosphere is shared with Saint Etienne’s “Hobart Paving.” Also, a sinuous sense of melody is at one with Todd Rundgren’s finest ballads. Melodic filigrees suggest Laura Nyro or Brighton band The Mummers. It’s some album opener.Subsequently, the Shipley-born, London-dwelling Laura Groves’ first album under her own name takes in gently soulful reflections and floating creations – mostly built around an electric piano and her multi-tracked voice – which are hard to pin down. Perhaps she’s been listening to The Carpenters, maybe Tin Drum-era Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The world might end with a whimper or an inferno, but it’s hard to imagine a day will dawn that extinguishes John Lydon’s scorn for other people’s fecklessness and idiocy. That hand-made polemic typically drives the cauterising post-punk hosannahs and disarming post-pop ditties on Public Image Limited’s 11th studio album.Maintaining the momentum of This Is PiL (2012) and What the World Needs Now (2015), also recorded with the settled lineup of Lydon, Lu Edmonds (guitar), Bruce Smith (drums), and Scott Firth (bass and keyboards), End of World opens with two barnstormers. "Penge", seemingly Read more ...