New Music Features
theartsdesk in La Réunion: Safiko FestivalTuesday, 26 June 2012
Some people go on holiday to relax on a beach. Others to trek through a glorious landscape. Or to explore magnificent architecture/extravagant nightclubs. Myself, well, I’m a musical tourist. Which often means I’m in rather blighted states. I’ve spent more time in Mississippi than New York, regularly returned to Romania yet barely know France. So when the offer came to attend a musical festival in La Réunion I didn’t have to think twice. Read more... |
London 2012: Peace One Day, Derry-LondonderrySunday, 24 June 2012
The minister for culture Ed Vaizey has said that London 2012 isn't just about London, but showcasing Britain to the world. This may be true in the simple geographical spread of events leading up to the Olympic Games, but in Derry-Londonderry's case, it ís equally about instilling a sense of civic pride. In 1991, Irish poet and playwright Seamus Heaney adapted Sophocles' Philoctetes as The Cure at Troy. Read more... |
Exclusive First Listen: Mala In CubaTuesday, 19 June 2012
It's a nervous beginning. This is the first ever presentation of the first proper album by one of the lynchpins of British underground music, and the soundsystem isn't right. Record label personnel and friends are flung across Paris to requisition new loudspeakers, while the invited audience drinks mojitos. After all this, it would be deeply embarrassing if the record turned out to be bad. Read more... |
The Arts Desk Radio Show 4Saturday, 16 June 2012
So here it is, our fourth show of new, rare, exclusive and peculiar music - as ever recorded at Red Bull Studios with Brendon Harding ably manning the machines. Read more... |
Extract: The Stone Roses - War and PeaceSaturday, 02 June 2012
There is film footage of those opening magical, transformative moments: of Brown intoning, “The time, the time is now. Do it now, do it now.” Film, however, could not capture the effect the band’s arrival had on the mood of the crowd; it was a jaw-dropping biblical reaction, of relief, amazement, worship and unadulterated joy. “It was like a massive pilgrimage to witness,” said Roddy McKenna, the man who had been instrumental in signing the band to Jive/Zomba. Read more... |
R.U.T.A.: Polish punks with fiddlesThursday, 31 May 2012
With the yelling and posturing, R.U.T.A. are clearly a punk band, but it’s like no punk band you’ve ever heard before. The lyrics are in Polish, for one thing, and there are no guitars, but Middle Eastern lutes, archaic fiddles and a battery of percussion. They only formed last year, but already R.U.T.A. – a jokey acronym for the Movement of Utopia, Transcendence and Anarchy - have stirred up controversy. Read more... |
Interview: Melody Gardot, Mysterious TravellerThursday, 31 May 2012
It was already apparent from Melody Gardot's last album, My One and Only Thrill, that she harboured a more than passing infatuation with the music of Brazil and Latin America. "I love Brazilian music, it's one of my favourite genres," she said at the time. "I love the Stan Getz bossa nova years, I love Getz/Giberto, Jobim, Caetano Veloso... " Read more... |
The Arts Desk Radio Show 3Tuesday, 29 May 2012
After a double set of live studio guests in our last show, it's just Joe and Peter this time, and thus a lot more music and discussion. Our intrepid explorers ponder whether there's anything new under the sun, looking at new-sounding folk and old-sounding electronica, angry British hip hop, Swedish jazz-punk, Mexican boutique hotels, murder blues and Crowley-referencing ambient music. Read more... |
Interview: 10 Questions for Russell WatsonMonday, 21 May 2012
A Salford lad who used to work as a bolt-cutter by day and sing in working men's clubs at night, Russell Watson started out in showbiz by singing popular hits by Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond or Simon & Garfunkel alongside a few belters from famous musicals. One night the patron of the Wigan Road Working Men's Club suggested he should have a go at Puccini's "Nessun Dorma". Read more... |
George Harrison: Something in the VaultsMonday, 14 May 2012
My, what strange and wondrous treasures await the record producer given exclusive access to the private vaults of a Beatle. He will, for instance, find entire radio programmes preserved on multi-track tape, and recordings of F1 cars roaring past at some unspecified race track. He will stumble upon a humbled Fab being given his very first sitar lesson by Ravi Shankar, and be privy to a brief musical moment beamed in across the decades from a room at the Jaipur Palace Hotel. Read more... |
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