New music
Guy Oddy
To say that the music industry’s response to the ongoing world financial crisis has been pitiful is an understatement. There’s been no “Ghost Town”, no “Step down Margaret” and no “Holiday in Cambodia”. However, Napalm Death have come to remedy this situation with a heavy album for heavy times. Apex Predator – Easy Meat takes on the 1% in no uncertain terms and it’s safe to say that no future Tory Prime Minister will be drawing on it when he or she gets invited onto Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.For those unfamiliar with these mighty Midlanders, Napalm Death’s muscular metal is characterised Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Latvia likes to be different. At least that’s the message they sent out with the cultural programme marking the start of the country’s presidency of the Council of the European Union. Pomp and circumstance were out, and instead we got a Cage-inspired happening, an audio/visual presentation that was many things: part video installation, part performance art. The only thing you couldn’t describe it as was a choral concert.Production values were high, reflecting perhaps the diplomatic motivations. Above the stage was positioned a frame incorporating four huge screens in a rectangular formation, Read more ...
Mark Kidel
If humanity first emerged in Africa, so did music, that’s for sure. The continent provides an endless reservoir of sounds and rhythms that have fed into blues, gospel, rock and jazz and influenced musical culture the world over. Not surprising perhaps that a work as primal and rich in possibility as Terry Riley’s In C should work miraculously well when played and recorded in Bamako, one of Africa’s most vibrant musical cities. The piece is structured around repeated groups of notes and rhythms, taken up by different instruments – strings, percussion, and in this case vocals – which Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Some have suggested that the title of Panda Bear’s fifth studio album means this could be the last we hear of Noah Lennox’s musical alter ego. If he is going, he’s certainly not doing it quietly, as this follow up to 2011’s Tomboy takes the intense sophistication of that album, hits delete and replaces it with day-glo drumbreaks and crayon-coloured consonance that dazzle and amaze like a disco ball shooting rainbows.On top of that, the album is peppered with vocal flourishes that are straight from rock ‘n’ roll’s diner heyday. This is most noticeable on the irresistible “Butcher Baker Read more ...
Russ Coffey
After three albums the question remains: is Die Antwoord more than a just a clever joke or is the act simply a caricature of South Africa’s trashy “Zef”-side? The guys and gal behind "Ninja and Yo-landi Vi$$er" are in no doubt – they claim to be “conceptual artists”. And many fans agree, saying that besides the posturing lie some real cultural truths. Last night three or so thousand descended on Brixton to make up their own minds.As I arrive the crowd is evenly split between hipsters, ravers and students. Fragments of conversation reveal the thought they have given to the band. The lad next Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Musically speaking the mid-1980s stank. The electro-pop blitz and general post-punk aftershock had faded, but the first hints of the rave revolution were years away. 1984 to 1987, whatever retro-fetishists might say to the contrary, consisted of Phil Collins; of Jermaine Jackson telling us we didn’t have to take our clothes off to have a good time; of David Bowie recording noodle with Pat Metheny; of Phil Collins; of Michael Jackson’s massively overrated Bad album (truly, have you listened to it lately?), and of endless stuff like DeBarge, Mr Mister, Steve Winwood, Five Star, Pete Cetera, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Radio Birdman: Radio BirdmanLike Magma, last week’s stars of theartsdesk’s reissues weekly, Australia’s similarly black-clad Radio Birdman favoured a uniform look. And also in common with the idiosyncratic French combo, they had a logo – an ominous, diamond-shaped, red and black symbol chosen for the cover of this box set over an image of the band. Instead of wearing their logo as pendants like Magma, Radio Birdman sported it on arm bands.There’s no musical similarity between Magma and Radio Birdman, but both sought to portray themselves as united, as if by a cause, and apart from Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
In interviews, Sleater-Kinney have been at pains to point out that their first album in nigh-on a decade is not a “reunion”. It’s certainly not a word I’d reach for to describe No Cities to Love: it’s too cosy a word – one that conjures buried grudges and a comfortable rediscovery of the things that made a band great in its youth. But there were no grudges behind Sleater-Kinney’s “indefinite hiatus” in 2006, and the music across their seven-album discography was never comfortable. There was little chance of them starting now.Taking a little of the fire of 2002’s politically charged One Beat, Read more ...
Guy Oddy
All-seater, up-market concert halls can be a bit intimidating to bands when they are used to more intimate venues. Silences can feel awkward and stage talk can dry up or be reduced to perfunctory “thank you”s. So it almost proved this evening when First Aid Kit strode onto the stage of Birmingham’s Symphony Hall.Kicking off with “The Lion’s Roar”, the title track from their profile-raising second album and quickly moving onto “Stay Gold”, the title track of their new disc, the Söderberg sisters barely acknowledged those that had come to see them and initially received muted applause for their Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Decamping to Manchester from Philadelphia after a personal crisis seems an unlikely move. But this is what Brian Christinzio – who is BC Camplight – did in 2012. How to Die in the North was recorded in Bredbury, near Stockport.As cross-continental relocations go, Christinzio’s is improbable but – whatever the the demons he was escaping – it has proved a tonic for his music. The first two BC Camplight albums, 2005’s Run, Hide Away and 2007’s Blink of a Nihilist, were good but not remarkable, piano-borne, singer-songwriter efforts that posited Christinzio as a quirky Ben Folds or Sufjan Stevens Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The Waterboys’ lynchpin, singer, guitarist and main song-writer, Mike Scott clearly has no interest in pretending that he’s still a young man. Modern Blues, the band’s first set of new material following 2013’s 25th anniversary celebration of Fisherman’s Blues, is a mature album of tunes that contemplate the world from a distinctly middle-aged perspective with all its attendant regret, nostalgia and more than a dash of hope for the future. Scott’s singing freely references the likes of Sun Ra, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Elvis. There’s even a sample of a Jack Kerouac monologue from On the Read more ...
Matthew Wright
With his new soul-inflected rasp, there aren’t many singers better equipped to perform through a bout of tonsillitis than Paolo Nutini. (Tom Waits won’t, alas, be selling out the O2.) Last night’s gig was re-scheduled from November when the infection struck. It was postponed even longer than expected for the members of the audience arriving on the broken-down Jubilee line. Add in a miserable day, with grenades of drizzle flung across the North Greenwich peninsula, and it was going to take a remarkable feat of showmanship to re-heat the audience. Fortunately, that’s just what we got. The Read more ...