New Music Reviews
Kraftwerk: Radio-Activity, Tate ModernFriday, 08 February 2013
“Tschernobyl… Harrisburg... Sellafield… Fukushima” reads the display above the four figures standing impassively below like toys, suddenly turning these harbingers of the computer age into proselytisers for an anti-nuclear energy policy. Read more...
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Kraftwerk: Autobahn, Tate ModernThursday, 07 February 2013
Childlike wonder is a rare emotion at a gig, so gasps of delight are doubly jolting as the first images appear to float out of the mammoth screen behind the stage and float over our heads. These are notes of musical notation that cascade from a car radio at the moment when the dial shifts in "Autobahn", the track where Kraftwerk’s concepts first properly coalesced and that gave their breakthrough album its title. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Marcos Valle, Five Star, Julian Cope, Carlos NúñezSunday, 03 February 2013
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Jane Birkin, Cadogan HallFriday, 01 February 2013
The notice saying “table reserved for Lord Chelsea” in Cadogan Hall’s foyer bar instantly signalled this show was likely to be more rarefied than your normal pop concert. It was in keeping with the grandeur of this early 20th century, Byzantine-style former church a minute from Sloane Square. The tone was further elevated by this being a rare, small-venue British outing for Jane Birkin, an actual, proper star. Read more... |
CD: Wayne Shorter Quartet - Without A NetWednesday, 30 January 2013
Truly an ensemble cast, the Wayne Shorter Quartet's playing on Without A Net - marking Shorter's return to Blue Note Records after 43 years - fuses disparate elements into something transcendent and utterly original. From the slow burn of “Myrrh” to the searching, high-velocity romanticism of “Starry Night”, two of six new Shorter compositions featured, the album takes small group music-making to another dimension. Read more... |
Aimee Mann, Royal Festival HallTuesday, 29 January 2013
Aimee Mann must surely be one of the most unstarry of stars. While most of her fans were still in the bar thinking about what they might have as a pre-gig aperitif, she strolled onstage to join support act Ted Leo for a couple of new songs they have written together. No grand diva entrance here, she just strapped on a bass guitar and stood next to the Costello-ish Leo pulling at those strings. Moral? Never ignore the support act, it might feature the person you've paid to see. Read more... |
Sahara Soul, Barbican HallSunday, 27 January 2013
Bassekou Kouyaté’s ngoni looks like a real bugger to play. Its hollow body is the size and shape of a child’s cricket bat and its rounded fretless neck is thinner than that of a broomstick. It’s a mystery how anyone gets a note out of this ancestor of the banjo's four strings, never mind play the kind of galloping, coruscating solos that this Malian virtuoso gets out of it. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: 94 Baker Street Revisited, Buzzcocks, Tim Hardin, Julian CopeSunday, 27 January 2013
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Matthew Halsall/Zara McFarlane, Ronnie Scott'sFriday, 25 January 2013
Fronting her four piece band - pianist Peter Edwards and saxophonist Binker Golding among them - the young jazz/soul singer Zara McFarlane performs a mix of new songs and tunes from her album, Until Tomorrow. Among the former, “Woman in the Olive Groves” is inspired by a midnight taxi ride through southern Italy, passing an African woman by the highway, among the olive groves, trading her sex. Read more... |
Hammer & Tongue + Slipjam:B - 10th Annual Poets vs MCs, Concorde 2, BrightonFriday, 25 January 2013
For a decade these two outfits, the Hammer & Tongue poetry collective and the Slipjam:B crew of hip hop MCs, have been taking each other on. They both run their own successful nights but this evening is their yearly face-off. As it reaches its climax, after a series of rounds, the two units are onstage together, MCs stage right, poets stage left, taking turns to front up, laying into each other, riding a thin line between affable digs and bawdy insult. Read more... |
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