New Music Reviews
Supersonic Festival 2017, BirminghamTuesday, 20 June 2017
The Supersonic Festival is Birmingham’s annual gathering of the sonically weird and wonderful pitched at “curious audiences” happy to lend their ears to sounds that would ordinarily be difficult to discover without a lot of effort. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Lynn CastleSunday, 18 June 2017
In a 1967 headline, The Washington Post pegged Lynn Castle as a “Shapely Blonde in Blue Jeans, Popular Barber in Hollywood”. She had attracted attention as the hairdresser of choice for The Byrds, The Monkees, Del Shannon, Sonny & Cher and Stephen Stills. Known as “The Lady Barber”, she also cut the hair of music business movers and shakers Lee Hazlewood and Monkees’ songwriters Boyce and Hart. Read more... |
Guns N' Roses, London Stadium review - venue almost ruins night of glorySunday, 18 June 2017
It had been a perfect summer's day and around the stadium denim-clad punters sipped ice-cool beer and discussed how this reunion would sound. Everyone knew how Axl had aced it, right here, a year ago, filling in as AC/DC's lead singer. Many hoped it would be just like when the classic line-up last played London in 1992. Except this time the sound quality would be better. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Pop MakossaSunday, 11 June 2017
In Summer 1973, Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” peaked at 35 on the American charts. Originally the A-side of a France-only single issued in 1972, the song had been discovered by New York DJ David Mancusso. After Mancusso repeatedly played it, “Soul Makossa” was licensed by Atlantic, charted and became integral to what was bracketed as disco music. Read more... |
Vindauga (Wind Eye) featuring Sam Lee, Kings PlaceMonday, 05 June 2017
It’s the seventh Songlines Encounters festival, with musical meetings ranging from Portugal (Thursday’s Ricardo Ribeiro) to India (Friday’s Bollywood Brass Band with South Indian violinist Jyotsna Srikanth). Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The DoorsSunday, 04 June 2017
Fat cigar at hand, Jim Morrison is pondering the future of music. “Maybe it might rely heavily on electronics, tapes,” he says. “I can envision maybe one person with a lot of machines, tapes and electronic set ups, singing or speaking and using machines.” When that prediction was first broadcast in late June 1969, what he described may have seemed outlandish but it came to pass. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Hoyt AxtonSunday, 28 May 2017
Hoyt Axton’s songs were heard most widely when recorded by others. Steppenwolf recorded his “The Pusher” in 1967. It featured on their early 1968 debut album but was most pervasive in summer 1969 after it was included on the soundtrack of Easy Rider. Axton himself didn’t release a version until 1971, when “The Pusher” appeared on his Joy to the World album. The title track, another of his best-known compositions, had charted earlier that year for Three Dog Night. Read more... |
Swans, Asylum, BirminghamSaturday, 27 May 2017
There are not many bands who are obtuse enough to begin a gig with a 45 minute unrecorded song, especially when they are preparing to go their separate ways at the end of the tour and have no plans for further recording. Sonic adventurers Swans, however, have no such qualms. After taking to the stage with a minimum of fuss and looking like Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch gone feral in the backwoods of Twin Peaks, they pick up their instruments and launch into “The Knot”. Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 28: Manic Street Preachers, Joep Beving, Wreckless Eric, SWANS and moreFriday, 26 May 2017
While the 36 records reviewed below run the gamut of Wreckless Eric to Democratic Republic of the Congo Afro-electronica, this month there’s also a special, one-off section for modern classical. This is due to an ear-pleasing haul of releases reaching theartsdesk on Vinyl lately. Read more... |
London Vocal Project, Jon Hendricks review - towering homage to a Miles Davis classicTuesday, 23 May 2017
Almost 50 years since he started working on it, and following its world premiere in New York in February, it was a huge thrill to hear Jon Hendricks' lyricisation of the classic Miles Davis-Gil Evans album Miles Ahead at Kings Place. Read more... |
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