New Music Features

The Master Musicians of Joujouka review - a 4000 year-old rock'n'roll band

mark Kidel Thursday, 15 April 2021

The Master Musicians of Joujouka, described by William Burroughs as a “4000 year-old rock’n’roll band”, and recorded by Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones in the late 1960s, have always been something of a cult – even in their own land.

theartsdesk Q&A: Daryl Hall

Owen Richards Monday, 08 March 2021

Writing something people want to stream one billion times is inconceivable for most of us. But then, most of us aren't Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Daryl Hall.

Britney Spears (1998-present): The Video Special

Thomas H Green Monday, 22 February 2021

Interest in Britney Spears has not waned.

Disc of the Day 10th Anniversary: the level playing field

joe Muggs Friday, 19 February 2021

Theartsdesk is a labour of love. Bloody-mindedly run as a co-operative of journalists from the beginning, our obsession with maintaining a daily-updated platform for good culture writing has caused a good few grey and lost hairs over the years. But it has also been rewarding – and looking back over the 10 years of Disc of the Day reviews has been a good chance to remind ourselves of that.

Reviewing music off-piste: reflections on working beyond the comfort zone

mark Kidel Wednesday, 17 February 2021

Writing for theartsdesk offers a freedom that I‘ve never experienced before. Encouraged by the much-missed Sue Steward and by Peter Culshaw, two of the website's founders, I started by writing solely about music – something I've done since I was a student. But very soon, I was covering theatre in Bristol, where I lived at the time, and I occasionally wrote about the visual arts, and then the cinema.

First Person: Paul Bullock on making BBC Young Jazz Musician 2020

Paul Bullock Saturday, 21 November 2020

Producing music programmes for TV with live performance during the past few months has not been without its challenges, but somehow doing so right now feels more important than ever – both for the pleasure it brings audiences and as support for the performing arts.

Singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter: 'I wanted to do something. I wanted to be useful in some way'

Liz Thomson Tuesday, 08 September 2020

Music has never been more important than in these dark, dislocating and death-stalked days, fear and grief visiting us in ways once unimaginable. The lack of live music – the lack even of the possibility of live music in the near future – is an absence keenly felt. However much we love to listen in the isolation of our own headphones, nothing can ever replace the communal concert event.

Comment

Ennio Morricone 1928-2020: A lost afternoon in his apartment in Rome

Peter Culshaw Tuesday, 07 July 2020

Ennio Morricone was a genius, or as close to that description as makes no odds. If we mean someone who created a unique body of work, one that changed culture, had a distincive style and was massively influential, then Morricone fitted the bill. theartsdesk's Joe Muggs was discussing today on Facebook and Mixmag his influence on dubstep and Jamaican music, for example.

The Songs of Coronavirus and Lockdown Life

Thomas H Green Tuesday, 26 May 2020

At the start of March an obscure alt-metal outfit called Cegvera released a concept album titled The Sixth Glare. The physical album featured the headline “DISEASE” alongside a photograph of a woman in a protective facemask, and the sleeve notes expand on the idea that, if we don’t tend to our environment, an illness will arrive to which the world doesn’t have immunity.

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Little Richard (1932-2020) - sexuality, spirituality and rock'n'roll's gospel roots

mark Kidel Wednesday, 13 May 2020

The day that Little Richard’s death was announced, my friend the soul singer PP Arnold wrote on her Instagram feed, of a “sanctified boogie-woogie piano style that was just electric”. She went on, recalling first hearing the man’s undiluted craziness: “I loved it when he did that "ooo" thing after the “Tutti Frutti aw Rudi” bit that sounded like one of the high soprano sisters in church”.