New music
Guy Oddy
Kannon, Sunn O)))’s (pronounced “sun”) first non-collaborative album since 2009’s epic Monoliths and Dimensions, is a doomy triptych that will make long-term fans of the American band very happy indeed. Taking inspiration from the Buddhist Guanyin Bodhisattva “perceiving the cries of the world”, walls of distorted guitars played very, very slowly provide a cosmic and crushingly heavy groove that suggests that Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson are still very much on top of the drone metal game after their recent, more avant-garde collaborations with Ulver and Scott Walker and almost 20 years Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
You want punk? You got it. The debut album from NOTS explodes into the room and all 11 songs fly by in a rampaging 27 minutes. The all-female quartet from Memphis have been signalling, via singles on their local scuzz-rock label Goner (home to Jay Reatard), that We Are NOTS would be taking no prisoners, and it lives up to such promise. Producer Doug Easley, whose work with Sonic Youth and the White Stripes may have recommended him to the band, does not polish, he merely marshals their fury to a caustic, garage-buzz edge.Occasionally NOTS recall long-lost British Eighties trash-goths We’ve Got Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It might sound hackneyed but Sculpture can only be described as truly psychedelic. They achieve this via a thoroughly original stage set-up. Dan Hayhurst, in a black tee-shirt and military cap, manipulates sounds on a laptop, with a rack of magnetic tape loops to his left which he carefully plucks up and sets on reels, but what makes the London duo a unique proposition is the zoetrope-style visuals of Reuben Sutherland.Moustachioed and clad in an eye-watering multi-coloured poncho, long stripey socks and what appear to be plus-fours, he places cards of images on a vinyl turntable with a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1986, the Russian state honoured Mikael Tariverdiev with the People's Artist of Russia award, a mark of respect given to only the most significant figures in the arts. The Tbilisi-born composer was the head of the Composer’s Guild of the Soviet Cinematographer’s Union and had written concertos, operas, ballet music, song cycles (Russian poetry was a favourite), music for television and for 132 films. He was prolific, saw few boundaries and, in 1956, had set Shakespeare sonnets to music. The following year, he did the same for Japanese poetry. But his film music resonates most as it was Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Jamaican-born R&B singer Ruby Turner has been part of Jools Holland’s touring band for more than a decade now, her rich and athletic tone a great match for the band’s hectic, muscular rhythms. This is a bumper disc with 22 songs, although unfortunately only four of those are new recordings, so serious fans should check how many they already have before splashing out. There’s a modest festive element, with Jools’s arrangement of Wendy Cope’s “Christmas Song” and a couple of spirituals, such as “Get Away Jordan”, but there are no carols, so it’s something that even the Richard Dawkins in Read more ...
Joe Muggs
“May you live in interesting times,” goes the old curse – and for better or worse there's no question that we do. Among the many, many couldn't-make-it-up elements in play in the global landscape in 2015, we appear to have something of a hippie Pope. Alright, there's a lot to pick through in Pope Frank's statements and policies, but at the very least he appears to have just dramatically converted the USA's biggest single bloc of swing voters away from global warming denial and attempted the same with gun worship, and he certainly talks the egalitarian talk a lot louder than any of his Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
If you’re between 12 and 15, The Vamps are big news. Ten million singles sales and 225 million YouTube views. That sort of big. They are, allegedly, not a boy band as they weren’t put together by one of Cowell’s televisual juggernauts. They also “play real instruments”, although I challenge anyone to come up with such software-amped earbud-candy in their garage. In any case, musical criticism is somewhat irrelevant, since the real purpose of this album is to act as a danger-free practice boyfriend for girls just starting to think about the real thing.The lyrics say it all: “Seven AM and you’ Read more ...
Matthew Wright
James Morrison has spent several years out of the limelight, with family difficulties to attend to. Would age and experience give the gravelly soul-pop star’s soft-focus romantic ballads sharper edges on his return? The underwhelmed reviews of his recent fourth album, Higher Than Here, suggested not, but last night’s live show, in a swaying, crooning, heaving Shepherd’s Bush Empire, showed an astute, modestly charismatic performer, and a warm embrace of a gig.Higher Than Here has only been out a few weeks, and it showed in the crowd’s choral reticence, so it was important to mix things up, Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The 100 Club is dark. Really dark. People are shrouded in the ink-light. I think it’s to save their embarrassment as they order a drink and realise they’ll have to either apply for a loan or sell a child in order to get drunk. In any case, the indoor gloaming provides the perfect setting for the opening act of the evening, Demian Castellanos. The creative helm of psych-rock act The Oscillation, he's on his own tonight with a wordless solo set showcasing new material.Starting off with tones and drones, Castellanos doesn’t so much create a mood as conjure up musical weather. There’s a gadget Read more ...
Mark Kidel
There was a magic moment in West Africa when, shortly after independence, in countries like Mali, Guinea and Senegal, the new leaders financed and encouraged new dance bands – telling them to dig deep into their own traditions and no longer feel obliged to imitate the music of their recently departed colonial masters. That exuberant joie de vivre shines through in the extraordinary music of that time, and this new compilation of rare and unreleased material from Senegal, subtitled "Sonic Gems and Previously Unreleased Recordings from the 70s", provides a delightful range of music that evokes Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Last month, Ludovico Einaudi's album Elements debuted at No 12 on the UK album charts, which made it the highest-charting modern classical album since Henryk Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs reached No 6 in 1992. It was proof of the quietly burgeoning allure of Einaudi, which has been stealthily expanding around the world since his first solo release, 1988's Time Out.Subsequent albums such as Le Onde, Eden Roc and I Giorni have lodged several of his limpid and haunting compositions in the ether, whence they might descend to be played on radio, or heard in commercials or on movie Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Say what you like about The Corrs, there was never any denying their talent – or the voice of raven-haired youngest sister Andrea, fronting the familial quartet with ferocity and grace. It’s why it’s so disappointing that White Light – the band’s first album in a decade – begins with egregious autotune and woeful EDM-by-numbers.As far back as “Runaway” (released in September 1995) the band always tried to pair the instruments and flourishes of traditional Irish folk music with whatever was happening in the charts – but given the extent to which contemporary pop is itself Read more ...