New Music Reviews
High Focus Records showcase, Brighton Festival review - smart hip hop, dodgy soundSaturday, 13 May 2017
The two main commands coming from the stage at this evening's Brighton Festival event are “Everybody jump, jump” and “Put your hands in the air and go side-to-side”. The crowd are mostly under 30 and emanate dancing energy from the moment the doors open, as DJ Molotov warms up. The set-up is basic, a DJ and some mics, but that’s as it should be for, on one level, this evening takes... Read more... |
Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains, V&A review – from innocence to experience and beyondWednesday, 10 May 2017
The title of this exhibition is typical of Pink Floyd’s mordant view of the world, not to mention their sepulchral sense of humour. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Alice ColtraneSunday, 07 May 2017
A strong candidate for reissue of the year, World Spirituality Classics, Volume 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda is a rarity amongst archive collections as it does what is always hoped for but seldom accomplished. A new story is told, the music is unfamiliar but wonderful, and it has been put together conscientiously. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: HoneybeatSunday, 30 April 2017
Compilations of Sixties girl group or girl-pop sides are innumerable but Honeybeat: Groovy 60s Girl-Pop is promoted on the basis of the rarity of what’s collected. The 19 tracks include The Pussaycats “The Rider”, the A-side of a 1965 single: originals sell for upwards of £100. Read more... |
Caetano Veloso and Teresa Cristina, BarbicanTuesday, 25 April 2017
Caetano Veloso is a unique figure in world popular music. As bright as the likes of David Byrne and Brian Eno, but also a genuine pop star, beloved by “chamber maids and taxi drivers” as well as the intellectual liberal élite. In the late 1960s, he reinvented Brazilian pop music with friends like Gilberto Gil in the Tropicalismo movement. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Brinsley SchwarzSunday, 23 April 2017
In the second week of September 1979, Nick Lowe’s “Cruel to be Kind” entered the Top 40. A month later, it peaked at number 12. The commercial success was belated validation for a song with a history. In May 1978, an earlier version was the B-side of his “Little Hitler” single. Fans with long memories heard another, even earlier, “Cruel to be Kind” when his old band Brinsley Schwarz recorded it for the BBC’s John Peel Show in February 1975. Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl: Record Store Day Special 2017Thursday, 20 April 2017
This Saturday, April 22, is Record Store Day, the annual celebration of independent record shops. Thus, everyone from the biggest major to the weeniest micro-label is putting out unique, limited edition vinyl runs. When Record Store Day was first inaugurated in 2008, record shops were in trouble, everyone was still in thrall to free invisible music. A decade ago the idea of music as content became king. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The VibratorsSunday, 16 April 2017
When the Sex Pistols first played live on 6 November 1975 at St. Martin’s School of Art, they were the support act to a Fifties-influenced band called Bazooka Joe whose roadie was John “Eddie” Edwards. Of the first band on that night, he declared “everyone said ‘oh, they’re not much good are they?’ They were a bit untogether.” Read more... |
Laetitia Sadier Source Ensemble, Green Door Store, BrightonSaturday, 15 April 2017
Perhaps most famous as the singer in seminal Nineties art-pop band Stereolab, Laetitia Sadier has worked hard in recent years to establish herself as a solo artist in her own right through a series of well-received avant-muzak albums, including this year’s Finding Me Finding You. Read more... |
Pink Martini, Brighton DomeFriday, 14 April 2017
"An Evening with Pink Martini" consists of two sets by the Portland, Oregon group/mini-orchestra. Of these, the first takes the prize, but only by a very short lead. During it the nine-piece, led by Thomas Lauderdale at the piano, seem to relax and really allow spontaneity to take hold, in a manner that’s both risky and thrilling, in terms of stagecraft. Read more... |
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