wed 16/07/2025

New Music Buzz

South Bank goes Brazilian for the summer

Peter Culshaw

As Jude Kelly put it today, the Southbank Centre’s Festival Brazil this summer is about a country "living its future now" (link here...

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Wizard of Oz goes deluxe

graeme Thomson Gurrumul: "A different way of seeing things"

Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu is an unlikely star. A 39-year-old blind singer and multi-instrumentalist from Elcho Island, a remote indigenous community off the coast of Australia’s Northern Territory, Gurrumul’s eponymous solo album was Britain’s best selling world music album of 2009.

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Birthdays on the Tube: 7-13 February

Peter Culshaw

This week's birthday musicians include Gene Vincent singing "Be Bop A Lula" in his first TV appearance, Sergio Mendes with "Mas Que Nada", soul balladry from Roberta Flack, Carole King and a couple of composers - Alban Berg and Leopold Godowsky. Some seriously groovy videos, below.

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The Who play Quadrophenia for Teenage Cancer Trust

Adam Sweeting Roger Daltrey at full blast

Tickets go on sale today for this year's Teenage Cancer Trust benefit concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in March. The Who's Roger Daltrey, a patron of the Trust, has been the driving force behind the concerts since they began in 2000. Having failed to find any willing younger...

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So farewell to the Foundry

joe Muggs Raging, but not always pretty, creativity is everywhere in The Foundry

My abiding memory of The Foundry is being held aloft by my throat by the landlord, Falklands veteran and notorious band manager Alan "Gimpo" Goodrick, as he accused me of stealing a Shirley Bassey album. I had been DJing for a book reading by Mark "Zodiac Mindwarp" Manning, and there was a lot of absinthe being drunk thanks to some fellow from The Idler. I knew at that point I shouldn't have begun the evening by playing the line "there may be trouble ahead" from Bassey's version of "...

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Original Cultures London announced

joe Muggs

Original Cultures is an artistic collective with bases in the UK, Italy and Japan, dedicated to audiovisual collaborations inspired by street art, graffiti, hip hop and electronic music. It is staging its first London event over the course of a week from 27 February to 5 March this year, in which artists Ericailcane, DEM, Will Barras, Hiraki Sawa, Om Unit, Tatsuki and Tayone will be joining to create new works in a series of public events and workshops in and around the Old Truman Brewery,...

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Jim Moray - new album free through Songlines

Peter Culshaw

On April 30 2010 award-winning folk artist Jim Moray will pre-release his new album exclusively through the June issue of Songlines magazine.

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Birthdays on the Tube: 30 January-6 February

Peter Culshaw The 5th Baron Haden-Guest aka Nigel Tufnel

This week's birthdays include a trio of incandescent rock legends – Axl Rose musing about recording a triple album and sacking his drummer, Alice Cooper on corrupting the youth, and Nigel Tufnel, lead guitarist of Spinal Tap, pushing the amp up to 11. There’s musicologist Alan Lomax on prison songs, a clip of a film melodrama with violinist Jascha Heifetz, a tour of the world with Bob Marley on...

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Birthdays on the Tube: 24-30 January

Peter Culshaw Tom Jobim: The Man from Ipanema

This week, the great Brazilian songwriter Tom Jobim, in a duet with Elis Regina, as well as teaching jazzer Gerry Mulligan bossa nova and in a version by Ryuichi Sakamoto. It's also the birthday of songwriter Robert Wyatt, and trip-hop pioneer Tricky, who shares a birthday with Mozart.

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Kate McGarrigle, 1946-2010

sue Steward

I’m no folky but I fell for the songs of Kate and Anna McGarrigle the moment I first heard their album Dancer with Bruised Knees, and it’s remained a companion ever since. It never struck me that their songs and the eclectic backing music was "folk", as it was often categorised; the tag presumably arose from Kate’s accordion and banjo playing, their acoustic guitars and, of course, the French-Canadian chansons they sang at home as children - and thankfully...

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