electronica
hilary.whitney
In 1970, Annie Nightingale became Radio 1’s first female DJ. The appointment was made somewhat grudgingly - DJs, believe it or not (and we’re talking about the likes of Ed “Stewpot” Stewart and Tony Blackburn here), were perceived to be “husband substitutes” and it was generally accepted that a female voice would alienate the listeners. And yet 40 years later, Nightingale is the only DJ left from the original line-up.She has always been passionate about discovering and sharing underground and new music – quite a heady mix over the past four decades - and thanks to her championing of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Of all the multiple micro-genres that make up the obsessively over-defined world of electronica and dance music, perhaps the dullest has always been deep house. The very words conjur up images of soul boy oldsters who misrecall rave as a jazzual dinner party plod, or poncey clubs that are supposedly classy where no-one actually breaks a sweat on the dancefloor. That reputation is about to change drastically. Over the last couple of years a wave of labels, producers and DJs have taken cues from minimal techno and dragged deep house somewhere slow, subterranean, and ketamine psychedelic.Nicolas Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There's been a lot of waffle lately about rock'n'roll being dead. This is down to mainstream radio turning its back on guitar music in favour of a stew of electro-pop and R&B, and the fact that just three spots in the Top 100 UK bestselling singles (ie downloads) of 2010 were held by rock songs (for the record, Journey's "Don't Stop Believing", Train's "Hey, Soul Sister" and "Dog Days are Over" by Florence + the Machine). Whenever this sort of media babble starts, it's time to run for cover because there's undoubtedly another tedious wave of guitar bands waiting gleefully in the wings. Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The Detroit electro-techno duo of James Stinson and Gerald Donald aka Drexciya never gave away their secrets easily. Almost completely anonymous and never photographed during their 10-year existence – which ended with Stinson's 2002 death after a long illness – they surrounded their music with a complex mythos and mischievous wit comprehensible only to a small, obsessive cult audience. Only now are they getting wider appreciation, with a new generation of electronic musicians like Rustie hugely influenced by their sparse electronic funk, and the art world being introduced to their Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Avant-garde art, by its very nature, always treads a fine line between the sublime and the ridiculous, and between entertainment and alienation. Thankfully this is something understood very well by the joint curators of Friday night's show at the Vortex Jazz Club: Baron Mordant of the Mordant Music record label and Jonny Mugwump of the Exotic Pylon website and radio show. As the names perhaps suggest, these are people versed in the potential deep silliness of what they do, even as they take it very seriously indeed – and their event certainly ranged far and wide between the weird, the Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Carl Craig is extraordinarily easygoing. Most dance producers of his seniority and level of achievement would come with at least a publicist in tow, but when we meet him in his London hotel, his only entourage is his nine-year-old son, playing happily with an iPad or chatting to the photographer as we talk, and Craig is very easy and engaging company. One might expect someone more driven-seeming, given that, in the notoriously fickle world of club music, he has managed to keep both fiercely snobbish techno fans and mainstream club audiences on side for over two decades, branching out Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
James Blake's "Limit to Your Love" was a bolt out of the blue at the end of last year, perhaps even a quantum leap in soul'n'bass culture in the same way that Massive Attack or Roni Size once were. This fact was swiftly acknowledged in various New Face of 2011 polls which Blake started cropping up in.The 22-year-old from Enfield had quietly built a respectable reputation with some of dubstep's deepest heads (such as Ramadanman and Mount Kimbie) but his way with a keyboard on "Limit to Your Love" had a Spartan Classicism that was strikingly stark, different and effective, particularly Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
This month we have some unjustly hyped rubbish electro-pop, some unjustly ignored brilliant eletcro-pop, some postmodern retro-disco, some dubstep, some grime, some sampledelic New York punk, and, at the top of the pile, one of Britain's brightest young actors proves he's equally adept on the microphone. Thomas H Green and Joe Muggs plough loudly through the lot with glee and the odd barbed word.Riz MC All in the Ghetto (Confirm/Ignore)
So actors shouldn't try to become hip-hop MCs, right? Remember Warren Beatty in Bulworth? Riz Ahmed, however, was an MC long before he made his name with a Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Club music has always been hard to keep track of, and never more so than in the current climate of constant genre meltdown and cross-fertilisation. Which is why the DJ's art is more important than ever, particularly in the case of scene figureheads like the indefatigable Gilles Peterson – known for over 20 years as a patron of all things jazzy, but lately proving brilliantly adept at reaching all corners of what he refers to as “left-field dance music”. Shows like his are ideal – necessary, even – for nurturing, contextualising and showcasing new generation genre-agnostic talents like Read more ...
Joe Muggs
I'm absolutely horrified to hear of the death this morning from pneumonia, following a swine-flu infection, of Trish Keenan of the band Broadcast. I had only ever spoken to her on the telephone, but many friends knew her well and she was one of those rare people in music who was universally liked and admired by all who met her. Far more than just a singer and frontwoman, Keenan, 42, was a visionary artist: from their beginnings in the Birmingham alternative scene, she and her partner James Cargill, who always formed the core of the band, always blended art and life, and created a beautiful Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Simon Raymonde's Bella Union label occupies an enviable position within the music world. Successfully (although, as you'll see below, only just) weathering the travails of an industry beset by downloading and market fragmentation, it enters the 14th year of its existence strong and confident, with an impressive roster of maverick artists with actual or potential mainstream appeal. But then Raymonde knows a thing or two about making the weird popular: as part of the Cocteau Twins from 1979 to 1997 he brought some really intensely strange and beautiful music to mass audiences around the world. Read more ...
Joe Muggs
2010 saw some major shifts stirring up the UK club music ecosystem and unleashing some fascinating hybrids and variants of existing sounds out into the wild. As the hefty bass of dubstep muscled its way firmly into the heart of the mainstream, everything else was forced to rearrange its position, with some surprising results. The most aggressive sounds proved to have a sensitive or celebratory side, the hoariest old rhythms were given a new lease of life and – despite the supposed globalisation of the weird wired world – highly localised club scenes were once more at the forefront of Read more ...