New music
Thomas H. Green
Anywhere the Chemical Brothers’ music has been posted online at least a third of the comments are liable to be their 1990s fans moaning. The essence of what they have to say is, “Why doesn’t their new music sound like Exit Planet Dust or all those giant breakbeat monsters they used to do?” This has been going on for a decade. During that time the duo of Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have created some of their most muscular music, including killer singles “Galvanize” and “Do It Again”, the smart soundtrack to Joe Wright’s lethal tween thriller Hanna, and the equally filmic concept album, Further Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
An all-analogue space-rock, Krautrock-influenced, motorik-driven psychedelic ride on Saturn’s rings, Gwenno’s Y Dydd Olaf is a treat from start to end. Her sweet but dislocated vocals mesh with snappy bass guitar, bloopy synths and the otherworldly atmosphere of Ralph & Florian Kraftwerk. Apart from a track in Cornish, the Welsh-language album has its own flavour with exotic, lilting, almost-Japanese melodies, but it fits snugly with other recent-ish albums drawing from similar influences which also lean towards the conceptual by Eccentronic Research Council, Jaakko Eino Kalevi, Jane Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Love Affair/Steve Ellis: Time Hasn’t Changed us - The Complete CBS Recordings 1967-1971The connection between Sex Pistols, the stars of last week’s Reissue CDs Weekly, and late-Sixties London soul-pop hit-makers The Love Affair is unlikely, but genuine. Shortly after they formed, when their repertoire of originals was thin, the instigators of UK punk rehearsed a version of The Love Affair’s 1968 Top Ten single “A Day Without Love”. Despite the supposed year-zero ethos of Brit-punk, Sex Pistols covered a fair amount of pre-hippy nuggets, including – as well as that Love Affair song Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
“It’s gonna get loud, it’s gonna get heavy,” purrs Nina Gordon on “The Gospel According to Saint Me”, the opening track from what must surely, if you overlook Independence Day getting a sequel 20 years later, be one of the more unlikely of the current wave of Nineties reunions. It’s a lyric that succinctly captures what were always the band’s best features – gooey back-and-forth harmonies and an unyielding commitment to the distortion pedal – and one that bodes well for the Chicagoans’ first album together since 1997.Sonically, Ghost Notes picks up where Eight Arms to Hold You left Read more ...
Tim Cumming
The first thing that strikes you at 3am is the light, that strange disembodied glow of Norway’s midsummer midnight sun casting its rays over a landscape soaked in fantasy proportions – sheer glacial drops of greenstone, sweet-water fjords cutting deep into the land, the forests of spruce and pine desending from steep mountainous peaks to the meadow grasses of the valley below.My route to Førde and its 28th annual festival of world and folk music started on a speedy cruiser, leaving on the dot at 8am from Bergen for the island of Krakhella. From there, a postal boat wove its hem through Read more ...
Mark Kidel
The voice is the pinnacle of instruments, the surefire road to the heart. But the core humanity which distinguishes it can work both ways: the vulnerability displayed so powerfully in human song makes possible the expression of powerful emotions but it can also pitilessly expose the flaws in an artist’s work.Chaka Khan is without question one of the great voices of R&B and disco: a belter who could also be soft and tender, a party animal who drove people onto the dance floor for several glorious decades. The audience at Ronnie Scott’s for the last in a series of sold-out performances were Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
What do we do when our heroes become incapable of doing what made them our heroes in the first place? Who are we to say when an artist is too old and broken to be on stage, if that’s where they want to be? Where is the line between thrilling avant-punk chaos and an unrehearsed shambles? When does an enthused audience willing a band to succeed, whatever the evidence to the contrary, slip into the realms of self-delusion? These were a few of the questions that ran through my mind as I watched the disheartening mess that was Suicide: A Punk Mass, part of Californian multi-disciplinary Read more ...
Barney Harsent
I’m in a car and I’m uncomfortably hot. The reason I’m in a car is I’m on my way to a gig on the first day in 14 years that industrial action has brought London Underground to a standstill. No skeleton service, no contingency, just closed doors and solidarity. This means it’s bumper-to-bumper and I’m running late. Very late. I’m on my way to Abbey Road Studios where Studio Two has been opened up for a special performance by pianist and composer Tom Hodge and electronic producer Max Cooper. A team-up with the soon-to-be launched Sonos Studio in Shoreditch, it’s an evening with the focus Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Vintage is word I’m not comfortable with. I make it a point of principle not to pay a 3000% mark-up on clothes someone’s already worn, and when it comes to wine, I’m more likely to shop by ABV in truth. Vintage is however, a word at the heart of The Sweet Pretty Things (Are in Bed Now, of Course . . . ), the new album by R’n’B upstarts-turned-psychedelic story tellers The Pretty Things. Recording on vintage, analogue equipment in a "let’s do the show right here" flurry of activity, the band – a going concern since 1963 – are certainly capable of producing the goods, but, going in, I'm Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Love Supreme, now in its third year, feels like the best of both worlds. Set in the spectacularly rolling scenery of Glynde Place, outside Lewes, it’s only a champagne cork’s flight from Glyndebourne opera house, and if you’re not camping you can share the train home with the penguin-suited picnickers. Yet the format and layout are every bit greenfield rock festival, albeit – how posh is this – with flushing toilets. It’s billed as a jazz festival, but the headline acts are largely from the worlds of funk and R&B, so fans of serious improvisation, it’s also safe to take the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Frank Sinatra is back in London in the centenary of his birth. His disembodied voice is returning in a show called Sinatra: The Man & His Music. At the London Palladium, where he made his British debut 65 years ago, there’s to be a 24-piece orchestra, 20 dancers and video effects galore in a multi-media concert featuring many of his best-loved songs. At the heart of it will be footage supplied by the Sinatra Estate. For those who never saw Sinatra live, the idea is that this will be the next best thing, at least since the last time he was exhumed.In 2005 Sinatra at the London Palladium Read more ...
Guy Oddy
If Jerry Dammers was a time-traveller who had decided to launch the 2-Tone movement in 2015 instead of back in the late 1970s, it would be easy to imagine that the predominant sound might be something similar to the glorious noise of Asian Dub Foundation. This is a place where lively indie rock collides with drum‘n’bass beats, reggae toasting and bhangra sounds and textures – all with strident and political lyrics.More Signal More Noise sees a reformation of sorts of Asian Dub Foundation and marks the return of original members Dr Dass and Ricky Singh, as well as long time on-off vocalist Read more ...