New Music Reviews
Gwilym Simcock, Kings PlaceSaturday, 11 January 2014
Gwilym Simcock, pianist, composer, and jazz-classical crossover specialist, is releasing two albums this year, and at Kings Place last night, the audience had a taste of both. An evening billed as the launch of Instrumation, Simcock’s new album of original suites, became a kind of Simcock tasting menu. He played half of Instrumation, which was officially launched, and sections from his second album of 2014, Reverie at Schloss Elmau. Read more... |
Landes, Aurora Orchestra, Collon, Kings PlaceSunday, 05 January 2014
May this be a New Year sign and a symbol of a revitalized concert scene to come: an eclectic programme of dazzling range to draw in the new pick-and-mix generation, full of segues that worked and executed with the right balance of poetry and in-your-face exuberance by a crack team of young players. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Love, Poetry and RevolutionSunday, 05 January 2014
|
Album of the Year: Wayne Shorter Quartet - Without A NetFriday, 03 January 2014
In jazz, 2013 belonged to Wayne Shorter. In recognition of a remarkable six-decade career as a saxophonist, educator and composer, Shorter, who turned 80 in August last year, received a lifetime achievement award from the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz – only the second time in the Institute’s history that it has bestowed such an honour (Quincy Jones being the first recipient in 1996). Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The Best of 2013Sunday, 29 December 2013
Despite his nickname and habit of doing a bunk, George “Shadow” Morton was one of America’s highest-profile and most distinctive producers and songwriters. He was responsible for shaping the sound and style of The Shangri-Las, Janis Ian, Vanilla Fudge and The New York Dolls. Until the release of Sophisticated Boom Boom!! – The Shadow Morton Story, the musical side of his story had not been told. A consummate collection, this significant release was pulled off with style. Read more... |
Queer as Pop, Channel 4 / The Joy of Abba, BBC FourSaturday, 28 December 2013
Queer as Pop (****) was as much about social as musical history, and Nick Vaughan-Smith’s film told its story with a combination of outstanding archive material and some incisive interviewees, the archive taking fractionally more of the weight. Subtitled “From the Gay Scene to the Mainstream”, it started loosely in the Sixties, then jumped back and forth across the Atlantic until the present day as the story demanded. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Beachwood Sparks, John’s ChildrenSunday, 22 December 2013
|
The Mission & Fields of the Nephilim, O2 Academy, BirminghamWednesday, 18 December 2013
It’s panto time in the UK and what better way to get into the spirit than the Goth Christmas Roadshow that is The Mission and Fields of the Nephilim? Here are two bands who were part of the goth scene that sprang forth in the second half of the Eighties in black cowboy hats and blacker shades, with a mission to move things away from post-punk austerity and back towards Seventies excess. Read more... |
Angélique Kidjo, Songlines World Music Awards, BarbicanSunday, 15 December 2013
She has been called “Africa’s greatest diva” but as DJ Nihal giving the award of Artist of the Year at this year’s Songlines Awards to Angélique Kidjo pointed out the word “diva” is a loaded one, and makes you think of Mariah Carey’s backstage tantrums. Not that there’s aren’t African divas – the imperious Oumou Sangare, for one, but Kidjo is more known her down-to-earth pragmatism and idealism. Read more... |
The Big Christmas Reunion, O2 ArenaSunday, 15 December 2013
Screens dominate the stage at London’s O2 Arena for The Big Christmas Reunion, which seems fitting given the show is an extension of ITV2’s reality series following 5ive, Atomic Kitten, Honeyz, Liberty X, B*Witched and 911 as they get back on the pop wagon a decade after they were all disbanded or dropped by their labels. Read more... |
Various Artists: Love, Poetry and Revolution
Beachwood Sparks: Desert SkiesPages
latest in today
Love Lies Bleeding review – a pumped-up neo-noir
Somewhere along a desert highway in the American Southwest, where there's not much to do besides get drunk, shoot guns, and pump iron, a stranger...
Music Reissues Weekly: West Coast Consortium - All The Love...
West Coast Consortium’s first single was July 1967’s “Some Other Someday,” a delightful slice of Mellotron-infused harmony pop which wasn’t too...
Remembering conductor Andrew Davis (1944-2024)
As a human being of immense warmth, humour and erudition, Andrew Davis made it all too easy to forget what towering, incandescent performances he...
Brancusi, Pompidou Centre, Paris review - founding father of...
120 sculptures, and so much more: the current Brancusi blockbuster at the Centre Pompidou, the first large Paris show of the Romanian-born...
CVC, Concorde 2, Brighton review - they have the songs and t...
The joy of CVC, when they catch fire, is the zing of gatecrashing a gang of cheeky, very individual personalities having their own private party....
Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - meeting a...
Kahchun Wong, the Hallé’s principal conductor from the coming autumn season, presided in the Bridgewater Hall for the first time yesterday since...
Extract: Pariah Genius by Iain Sinclair
Iain Sinclair is a writer, film-maker, and psychogeographer extraordinaire. He began his career in the poetic avant-garde of the Sixties and...
Nezouh review - seeking magic in a war
The 21st century learnt afresh about the reality of carpet-bombed cities thanks to the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011. And the...
Album: Dua Lipa - Radical Optimism
This album has a lot to live up to. Its predecessor Future Nostalgia came along just as the Covid crisis was properly kicking...
Laughing Boy, Jermyn Street Theatre review - impassioned agi...
On the morning of the press show of Laughing Boy, the BBC news website’s top story was about the abuse of children with learning...