New Music Reviews
Music Reissues Weekly: Marc and the Mambas - Three Black Nights Of Little Black BitesSunday, 12 October 2025
A month after Soft Cell’s "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye" single peaked at number three in the UK charts, Marc Almond issued a single credited to Marc and the Mambas. March 1982’s "Sleaze (Take it, Shake it)" / "Fun City" was produced by his Soft Cell partner Dave Ball, who also contributed drums and synth. Read more... |
Trio Da Kali, Milton Court review - Mali masters make the ancient newWednesday, 08 October 2025
Trio Da Kali are griots, and their traditional role in West Africa is to connect: to evoke the glories of the past and to bring communities together through mediation and spiritual admonition. Their role, even though sung in Bambara, without surtitles – a thought worth considering – could not be more appropriate in a world so perilously divided. Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Earlies - These Were The EarliesSunday, 05 October 2025
The reappearance of These Were The Earlies for its 21st-anniversary is a surprise. Although The Earlies' debut LP received a maximum-marks review from NME on its 2004 release – and widespread praise in general – it is not an album instantly shouting “cult item.” Nonetheless, as the reissue and a tie-in reformation of the band show, there is a residual affection. Read more... |
Lady Gaga, The Mayhem Ball, O2 review - epic, eye-boggling and full of spiritWednesday, 01 October 2025
The backscreens pop alive. A wall of photographer’s flashguns. On cyberpunk crutches, Lady Gaga stumbles jerkily towards us. She sings her 2009 global smash “Paparazzi”, her arms clad in armour, on her head a metallic skullcap. Her corseted dress has a train that extends, diaphanous, floating back behind her the entire length of the long catwalk into the audience. It disappears into the darkness of an arch. Read more... |
Slovenian avant-folk outfit Širom’s 'In the Wind of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper' opens the door to inner spaceWednesday, 01 October 2025
The 16-minute album opener “Between the Fingers the Drops of Tomorrow's Dawn” coalesces at the 12-minute point, when clattering percussion meshes with what sounds like a sitar to fashion a hypnotic, repetitive whole. It’s as if Slovenia’s Širom have used the time so far to work themselves into a trance-like state. Iztok Koren, Ana Kravanja and Samo Kutin have surrendered to the drone. Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Peanut Butter Conspiracy - The Most Up Till NowSunday, 28 September 2025
“It's a Happening Thing,” January 1967’s debut single from California’s Peanut Butter Conspiracy, is one of the year’s best. Driving, with a full sound, a psychedelic edge, soaring vocal and immediate tune, it sounds like a hit. Read more... |
Album: Night Tapes - portals//polaritiesWednesday, 24 September 2025
“Helix” is the ninth track on portals//polarities. With this dramatic, acid house-leaning slab of shoegazing-infused electropop, Night Tapes make the case that they’re the real deal. Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Sly and the Family Stone - The First Family: Live At Winchester Cathedral 1967Sunday, 21 September 2025
The remarkable The First Family: Live At Winchester Cathedral 1967 represents the first-ever release of a previously unheard recording of a 26 March 1967 Sly and the Family Stone live show. It is the earliest document of Sly and Co. to surface. Read more... |
Brìghde Chaimbeul, Round Chapel review - enchantment in East LondonThursday, 18 September 2025
Hackney’s Round Chapel is an appropriate venue. Scottish smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul opens her set with “Dùsgadh/Waking.” It has the spirit of a call to prayer: the directness, the insistence, the magnetic quality. All of which draws in anyone exposed to its power. It enchants. Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Robyn - Robyn 20th-Anniversary EditionSunday, 14 September 2025
Sometimes, record labels don’t like what those on their roster have recorded. Such was the case with BMG Sweden and Robin Carlsson who, as Robyn, had made three albums with varying success and a raft of home-country hit singles for the label from the mid-Nineties to 2002. Read more... |
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