mon 21/07/2025

New Music Reviews

Jazzmeia Horn, EFG London Jazz Festival 2018 review - searching for the unexpected

peter Quinn

Aside from her incredible time feel, exceptional range and consistently beautiful timbre, what was most impressive about Jazzmeia Horn’s bravura performance at a sold-out Ronnie Scott’s was the sense of joyousness and vitality that coursed through her music-making.

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Brent Cowles, Thousand Island review – cornering the market in heartbreak and harmony

Ellie Porter

It’s a freezing cold, wet night in north London and Denver-based musician Brent Cowles is braving the grimness to play his first ever UK gig, at Highbury’s tiny, mirrorball-stuffed Thousand Island (the latest incarnation of The Garage’s upstairs venue).

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Orphy Robinson’s Astral Weeks, London Jazz Festival 2018 review - reimagining a masterpiece

peter Quinn

After failing to make the charts on its release 50 years ago this month, Astral Weeks has long since passed into pop mythology, its unique amalgam of jazz, folk and soul influences inspiring musicians, writers and filmmakers...

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Kyungso Park, Near East Quartet, Purcell Room review - hot Korean contemporary

Tim Cumming

The penultimate concert in the eclectic and impressive K-Music Festival of contemporary Korean music on Monday at the Purcell Room featured some of the most exquisite and affecting performances of the season, with the traditional Gayageum stringed instrument paired with an effects-laden, ambient-cum-exploratory jazz quartet featuring one of the most distinctive and arresting drummers...

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Gary Numan, Royal Albert Hall review - the best night of his life

Chris Harvey

There was barely a black-clothed, white-faced Numanoid in sight in the packed auditorium of the Royal Albert Hall as Gary Numan made his first ever appearance at the Victorian concert hall.

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EFG London Jazz Festival, first weekend review - Jeff Goldblum a jazz musician?

Sebastian Scotney

The choice of what to go and hear in the London Jazz Festival can be bewildering: this first weekend of its 10-day run presented over 120 events.

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Florence + The Machine, Genting Arena, Birmingham review - flying the flag for a hopeful future

Guy Oddy

Many established artists, when out on tour, can get all a bit bashful about their new material. In fact, it’s not unusual for bands to hide a couple of new tunes in the middle of their live set with embarrassed mumbling about “you don’t really want to hear the new stuff anyway” before launching into a note-perfect rendition of a tune that was a hit several years previously.

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The Ballads of Child Migration, St James's Church, Clerkenwell review - into the heart of darkness

Liz Thomson

What adjectives best describe a performance of The Ballads of Child Migration? None of those you’d normally expect to see applied to an evening of superlative music-making, for the song cycle chronicles the deprivations suffered by child migrants sent from Britain over the course of one hundred years.

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theartsdesk on Vinyl 44: Thom Yorke, Primal Scream, Elvis, Noisferatu, R.E.M., Bauhaus, Mo'Wax and more

Thomas H Green

Enough hyping! This month, without further ado, let’s head straight to the reviews…

VINYL OF THE MONTH

LOR Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (Lo Records)

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Jazz on a Summer's Day

Kieron Tyler

When Jazz on a Summer's Day was first seen in American cinemas in March 1960, it showed that seeing popular music live could be a leisure activity akin to watching high-end sports. Indeed, director Bert Stern intercut the musical performances he captured on film with footage of yachts trying-out for 1958’s America’s Cup.

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