rock
Joe Muggs
All of us, no matter how media-literate we think we are, in some way or another absorb received opinion about particular musicians. It’s particularly easy when they are, in the literal sense of that most abused of words, iconic: when you are constantly exposed to a condensed simulacrum version of them. So it is that I realise that, even though I know deep down that it’s a construct, I have bought into the cliché version of Ringo Starr: the lunkish, clowning, “not even the best drummer in The Beatles”, along-for-the-ride foil for his more mercurial bandmates.Of course, it’s not like he hasn’t Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Noura Mint Seymali is possessed of the most extraordinary voice; its very fabric is electrifying, its reach, power and depth cut from an entirely different cloth to the rest of us. Maybe it’s a cloth of gold. And then there is her axe-hero husband Jeich Ould Chighaly’s shapeshifting, inventive guitar work, its distorted fizz and fuzz redolent of Seventies Glam and heavy rock melded into Mauritanian desert blues – and just as addictive. The guitar lines twist, smoulder, spark and melt like solder, with the traditional andine acoustic harp that Noura Mint plays and uses to define her music’s Read more ...