New music
Dylan Moore
Before playing a version of “Out of Time”, the lead single from Blur’s 2003 album Think Tank, Damon Albarn explains that “at Glastonbury, it really was out of time: there was a problem with our monitors and we were about a bar a half out.” Last night’s rendition at Royal Festival Hall was not perfect, but the Syrian National Orchestra’s backing was enough to earn a fist pump from Albarn, who skipped off the stage theatrically as if to underline his pleasure.The night’s imperfections – a rare frog in Albarn’s throat for The Beatles’ “Blackbird”, a couple of technical hitches, the odd bit Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It begins with “Never Never Let Me Down” by Formulars Dance Band. “You’re the only good thing I’ve got,” declares the singer of a garage-band answer to The Impressions over a rough-and-ready backing where a shuffling mid-tempo groove is driven along by wheezy organ and scratchy lead guitar. When the band unites to sing harmonies, the massed vocal is distorted: a sure sign of an overloaded microphone. If this were America, “Never Never Let Me Down” would have been an obscure independent soul release issued around 1966. But this was Nigeria and Formulars Dance Band – whose personnel are unknown Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Around the Summer Solstice seems a fitting time for Dylan Carlson’s latest solo album to appear under his Drcarlsonalbion guise. For Falling With a Thousand Stars & Other Wonders From the House of Albion is a collection of old folk ballads from pagan and rustic England and Scotland that deal with relations between humans and faeries and other supernatural creatures.It’s not an album that is likely to sit comfortably with the traditionalist folkie crowd though, as Carlson’s approach is to reinterpret tunes like “She moved thro’ the faire” and “Tamlane” as instrumentals played slowly as a Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Around the turn of the millennium, two producers – the Californian Otis Jackson Jr aka Madlib, and the late James Yancey aka J Dilla from Detroit – started a revolution in hip hop: knocking beat patterns off the musical grid, searching further and wider than before for obscure and psychedelic sample sources, and generally making things weird and wonky.This abstracted approach is only now really making its mark on the mainstream thanks to Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar, but it has also created a well-established underground known simply as “the beat scene”, where producers from LA to Saint Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The EU referendum isn’t the only thing causing polarised opinion over European issues. The question of what constitutes Balearic Beat looms large over the music community. For some, it’s a fixed point, namely celebrated DJ Alfredo’s record box in the mid-80s. For others it’s built on more shifting sands, a sentiment DJ and author Bill Brewster summarises with trademark élan: “Balearic Beat today is the same as it was in 2011, 1999 and 1984. It’s shit pop records and brilliant EBM records. It’s everything and nothing.”International Feel record label boss and producer Mark Barrott’s take is Read more ...
Joe Muggs
A few beers down, in the middle of a crowd listening to music you love, you tend not to think of the latest news story as your highest priority. But Britain's relationship to Europe weighs heavy on the mind these days, and when the news of the violent attack on Jo Cox started filtering through as we danced under the Catalan sun on Thursday afternoon, it threw the nature of Sónar festival into relief.Unlike a lot of international music events, which can often be little more than monocultural awaydays for Brits and/or Germans seeking hedonism in the sun, Sónar is both proudly reflective of its Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Completed from scratch in seven days, The Magic features 15 songs veering from spindly, fidgety No Wave excursions to tuneful yet harsh pop-New Wave nuggets and headache-inducing bangers. In short, Deerhoof’s 13th album proper encapsulates everything they have done to date from 1997’s debut album The Man, The King, The Girl.The prescriptive approach is nothing new. Its predecessor La Isla Bonita was similarly speedily tracked live in a basement, and the album before that, 2013’s Breakup Song, was collated from digital files each band member had made separately. Seemingly, Deerhoof are Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
For new, independent artists, access to putting music on vinyl can seem daunting, especially to those who’ve grown up in the era of virtual music. There are schemes out there to counter this, notably the VF Selects programme, wherein the self-explanatory Vinyl Factory, together with FACT online magazine and the crowd-funding site Born.com, offer an opportunity. Between these organizations, the weight of funding, production and promotion is carried. Music is vetted, partly, by considering what chance it might have of selling, but, then, that’s been the way of all art forever, so it’s surely Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
How does Hannah Georgas’s 98-year-old grandmother feel about her collaborations with Graham Walsh, her two-time producer better known as part of Canadian electronic quartet Holy Fuck? It is, one suspects, one of a few aspects of this rich, immersive record that the Evelyn of its title might raise an eyebrow at – but in its themes of family, longing, loyalty and resilience, particularly on the gorgeous not-quite-title track, there’s plenty for her to be proud of.It was obvious from their work together on her 2013 self-titled album that Walsh had a knack for drawing out the unexpected from Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Punk rock, or what’s touted as punk rock, is practically inescapable right now. In London, a series of events tagged as Punk.London: 40 Years of Subversive Culture includes concerts by reanimated bands, exhibitions and film seasons. Backers include the British Fashion Council, the British Film Institute and the Design Museum. The Mayor of London is an official supporter. Sponsorship has come from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The year 1976 was apparently when punk began, and it’s time for these august bodies to celebrate the anniversary.Joe Corré, the son of Sex Pistols’ manager Malcolm McLaren Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
DJ Shadow, AKA Californian producer Josh Davis, is a renowned figure in the world of electronic music. His profile was especially high during the millennial period, primarily down to his groundbreaking 1996 debut album, Endtroducing…, which was built entirely from samples. It was a listening experience based around hip hop principles yet accessible to aficionados of post-rave electronica, and influenced multiple producers, leaving Shadow a figure of unassailable esteem.In more recent times, Shadow himself has clearly felt that, after a 20-year career in the wake of his landmark work, he’d do Read more ...
Barney Harsent
After two albums in rapid-fire quick succession, 2012’s eponymous debut and its 2013 follow-up, Shangri-La, Jake Bugg could be forgiven for taking a little longer to get his third out into the world. There was talk of working with the Beastie Boys’ Mike D, of taking risks, and rumours were of something darker, different and more diverse.Feburary’s unveiling of the new album’s title track, “On My One”, gave no such sense of a shift. Although Bugg reigned in the worst excesses of his nasal tones, it was familiar and surprisingly safe ground. Then, barely a week later, “Gimme the Love” arrived, Read more ...