sun 24/08/2025

New Music Reviews

Reissue CDs Weekly: Helen Shapiro - Face The Music The Complete Singles 1967-1984

Kieron Tyler

What happens when the hits dry up? And what happens a little further down the line, as the years of being on the charts recede into the past? For Helen Shapiro, the questions are answered by the intriguing Face The Music: The Complete Singles 1967–1984, a 25-track compilation collecting all her pop singles from the period covered by the title. Her work in jazz is not heard.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: John Coltrane - Giant Steps

Kieron Tyler

Giant Steps doesn’t suffer from a lack of availability. A couple of weeks ago, two editions of John Coltrane’s 1960 landmark set were available in a central London music store.

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GogolFest:Dream review - the best music festival of the summer?

Peter Culshaw

GogolFest:Dream in Kherson, somewhere near the Crimea in Ukraine was the music festival of the summer.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: The London Pub Rock Scene, The Year The UK Turned Day-Glo

Kieron Tyler

The standard recitation goes like this. In the early Seventies a London scene evolved, centring on bands playing in pubs. Music was taken back to the grassroots. Finesse was unnecessary. What happened was dubbed pub rock and it laid the ground for an even more basic style: punk rock.

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BBC Proms live online: Anoushka Shankar/Laura Marling - scintillating sitar and fortified folk

Miranda Heggie

In what would have been the year her father, the legendary sitar player Ravi Shankar turned 100, sitarist and composer Anoushka Shankar pays tribute to him and builds on his legacy in this online Prom.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: The Stooges - Live At Goose Lake

Kieron Tyler

So far this year, Live at Goose Lake August 8th, 1970 is 2020’s most exciting archive release. The album is a previously unknown soundboard recording of The Stooges playing at Jackson, Michigan’s Goose Lake Festival. The event was formally billed as Goose Lake Park – International Music Festival.

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South West Four Live, Electric Brixton online review - the dance goes on?

Nick Hasted

If two dozen DJs spin tunes and no one’s there, did a rave really happen? There is plenty of time for such questions during the 25 hours of livestreams substituting for SW4’s annual bank holiday party on Clapham Common.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: This Is Our Music - Jazz Out Of Norway

Kieron Tyler

The Turnamat is a type of washing machine made by AEG. In the composition titled “Turnamat”, Seventies-type synths, wobbly keyboard lines and hard-grooving drums give way to a brass-led interlude suggesting an acquaintance with the compositions of Lalo Schifrin. It’s as if a jazz-inflected soundtrack from 45 years ago has been shoved into a blender rather than a washing machine, then reconstituted and given a major buff-up.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Ready Or Not - Thom Bell's Philly Soul Arrangements & Productions

Kieron Tyler

A skim though the track listing confirms that this is no typical soul compilation. Actress and some-time pop singer Connie Stevens crops up. So does Johnny Mathis. Such seeming quirks are fitting as Thom Bell was never a typical arranger, producer or songwriter.

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theartsdesk on Vinyl 59: Johnny Cash, Bananagun, Fleetwood Mac, Romare, PJ Harvey, Kamaal Williams and more

Thomas H Green

The usual summer vinyl release slump doesn’t seem to apply this year.

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