mon 07/07/2025

New Music Features

theartsdesk Q&A: Hedvig Mollestad, Norway's bridge between heavy metal and jazz

Kieron Tyler

Norway’s Hedvig Mollestad Trio reset the dial to what jazz fusion sought to do when it emerged, and do so in such a way that it’s initially unclear whether they are a jazz-influenced heavy metal outfit or jazzers plunging feet-first...

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10 Questions for DJ / producer Rob Smith of Smith & Mighty

joe Muggs

Rob Smith & Ray Mighty are truly the unsung heroes of British bass music. Coming out of the same cultural melting pot in Bristol that gave us Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead and mega-producer Nellee Hooper, they looked to be among the city's big successes when they first emerged in 1987.

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More Blood, More Tracks review - Bob Dylan opens up

Tim Cumming

You get plenty of Dylan for your buck these days, with the Mondo Scripto exhibition currently at the Halcyon Gallery in London, and a totemic and arrestingly beautiful set of Jerry Schatzberg's photographs of mid-Sixties Dylan in all his fuzzy glory just published by ACC Art Books.

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10 Questions for singer Live Foyn Friis

Matthew Wright

Norwegian-Danish singer Live Foyn Friis (for English-speaking readers, Live is her first name) has released six albums, and leads several different ensembles, scattered intriguingly across the divide between jazz and pop.

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'I read French from left to right and Arabic from right to left': remembering Algerian rebel rocker Rachid Taha

Peter Culshaw

Rachid Taha, rockeur and provocateur, died this week of a heart attack. He was one of the last of the rebel rockers, a devotee of both The Clash and Oum Khalsoum. He brought rock and Algerian music together in a fabulously invigorating way.

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theartsdesk in Cologne: urban boutique on the Rhine

Kieron Tyler

The terrace beside the restaurant in Cologne’s Stadtgarten – the city park – is heaving. Agreeably so. A bar and a food counter facing onto it are fringed by rows of long tables. Overhanging trees unite in a canopy suggesting this might be forest clearing.

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theartsdesk at Camp Bestival 2018 - from Astley to apocalypse

Thomas H Green

Gusting. It’s not a word I’ve ever given much thought. You hear it on weather forecasts but I’m not a farmer of a fisherman so when they say it’ll be windy “with possible gusting speeds of up to 45 miles per hour” my brain doesn’t really register what that means on the ground. Until now. Camp Bestival 2018 was eventually defined by gusting (that and, apparently, Mary “Irrelevant” Berry). It was the...

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'Stepping right out of my comfort zone': James Gilchrist on mixing Debussy with jazz

James Gilchrist

Debussy is having a good year. It is wonderful to see such wide and varied celebrations of his life and work, and to let the century since his death bear witness to the huge influence he has had on writers in every field of music.

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theartsdesk in Orkney: St Magnus Festival 2018 - choral music to the fore

David Kettle

With – unusually – no visiting orchestra at this year’s St Magnus International Festival in far-flung Orkney (the fall-out from delayed funding confirmations, we’re assured), there was a danger that the annual midsummer event might have felt a little – well, quiet.

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10 Questions for Trumpeter Keyon Harrold

Matthew Wright

Trumpeter Keyon Harrold grew up in Ferguson, Missouri and studied alongside Robert Glasper at the School of Jazz at The New School, in Greenwich Village, NYC. He has been a sideman with many of the biggest performers in music including Eminem, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Dr Dre, Maxwell and Common, and recorded two albums in his own name.

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