electronica
joe.muggs
From his days as a session musician in mid-Seventies Tokyo through global mega fame in Yellow Magic Orchestra and on, Ryuichi Sakamoto has always had a Stakhanovite work ethic. And that's still the case, even at the age of 65, and despite the fact he was not long ago given the all-clear from throat cancer. This year, Sakamoto has released the soundtracks to two South Korean movies, The Fortress and Rage, and performed two live commissions: one for Oslo's Ultima festival with dancer Min Tanaka and “fog sculptor” Fujiko Nakaya, and a live improvisation with long-time collaborator Alva Noto at Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
In the seven years since N.E.R.D last had an album out, Pharrell Williams’ profile, which was already massive, has achieved some sort of pop supernova. “Happy”, “Get Lucky” and the less loveable “Blurred Lines” have made him a megastar. He now returns with Chad Hugo, his childhood pal and production partner in one of hip hop’s defining production units, The Neptunes, and their reclusive associate Shay Haley. N.E.R.D’s original remit, when they began a decade-and-a-half ago, was to make their own R&B-marinated version of rock, but their fifth album sees raw electronic funk to the foreA Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although the Hardanger Fiddle is regarded as a traditional Norwegian instrument, its use stretches back to no earlier than the middle of the 17th century. The music players summon from its strings is more easily seen as traditional though: music to dance to. Tuned differently to a standard fiddle, the hardingfele does not have a set amount of strings but instead has four for playing and four or five resonating, sympathetic strings underlying those which are bowed. The baroque viola d'amore, which also has sympathetic strings, is a near relative. Once heard, the keening, resonant power of the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“The Prodigal Son of Magnesia” is an attention-grabbing title. So are “Three Legged Giant Centipede” and “Public Execution of the Sleeping Lotus Eater”. Each suggests that the album from which they are drawn could be a prog rock epic inspired by conflating existing myths with newly made-up fancies. Track lengths exceeding 10 minutes further the impression. Yet despite surface impressions, 1 is not a showcase for instrumental prowess or tricky arrangements. The first solo album from Finland’s Timo Kaukolampi is instead about immersive, intense atmospheres.Kaukolampi has form. As a producer, he Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Robin Rimbaud, AKA Scanner, has been releasing music for over two decades. There was a point in the mid-Nineties when he was a media “thing” due to the way he sampled sounds plucked from the airwaves. Shockingly, this included phone calls because cordless home phones are as accessible as any other radio signals. He has long operated on the art-intellectual spectrum, bridging electronic, industrial and avant-classical, collaborating with everyone from Wire to Michael Nyman.So to Fibolae, titled for a word that came to him in a dream, and his first album in eight years. Giving background to Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
STIMMUNG is always an event. Stockhausen’s score calls for a ritual as much as a performance, with six singers sitting around a spherical light on a low table, the audience voyeurs at some intimate but unexplained rite. Singcircle has been performing the work for over 40 years, and its director, Gregory Rose, clearly has an innate sense of its pace, structure and aura. This performance commemorated the 10th anniversary of Stockhausen’s death, but also marked the last ever appearance by Singcircle, a fitting end for a group associated above all else with this work.As with most of Stockhausen’s Read more ...
joe.muggs
At three decades deep in the creative industries, it's fair to say Trevor Jackson is a renaissance man. He is a designer, filmmaker, music producer, radio and club DJ, compilation curator, label owner (he introduced Four Tet and LCD Soundsystem among others to UK audiences), professional grouch – and impossibly prolific in all those spheres. Most recently, after a lengthy break from releasing his own music, he's been mining his catalogue of unreleased tracks, starting with with the “Format” project in 2015, featuring dozens of tracks from old harddrives, followed 50 tracks over nine EPs and Read more ...
theartsdesk
Disc of the Day reviews new albums, week in, week out, all year. Below are the albums to which our writers awarded five stars. Click on any one of them to find out why.SIMPLY THE BEST: THEARTSDESK'S FIVE-STAR REVIEWS OF 2017Alan Broadbent: Developing Story ★★★★★ The pianist's orchestral magnum opus is packed with extraordinary thingsArcade Fire: Everything Now ★★★★★ A joyous pop album that depicts a world in tragic freefallAutarkic: I Love You, Go Away ★★★★★ Tel Aviv producer Nadav Spiegel's latest collection is a triumph of head and heartBrian Eno: Reflection ★★★★★ Slow-motion cascades Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Óttarr Proppé, the stylish chap pictured above, was appointed Iceland’s Minister of Health in January this year. Last Saturday, when the shot was taken, he was on stage in his other role as the singer of HAM, whose invigorating musical blast draws a line between the early Swans and Mudhoney. At that moment, at Reykjavík Art Museum, it was exactly a week on from the declaration of the first results in the country’s Parliamentary election, the second within 12 months.While rare but not unknown for political office and active involvement in rock music to co-exist, Proppé was in what must have Read more ...
joe.muggs
It seems to be the season for light entertainers to show us their musical chops, with Nick Knowles, Bardley Walsh and Jason Manford all doing their level best to prove that they are All Round Entertainters. Matt Berry, however, provides a rather different twist on the comedian-troubadour trope. Though he's best known for his appearances in the likes of The Mighty Boosh, House of Fools, Toast of London and so forth, he's already several albums deep in a musical career on a variety of extremely credible labels, touching on various flavours of psychedelia. The real surprise, given Berry's Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The autumnal release deluge is upon us. Vinyl’s thriving and writhing. Raise a glass to it. Do it. However, records that, in another month, would have been reviewed here, music that would have been in the ALSO WORTHY OF MENTION section, has been unfairly passed over. Thus theartsdesk on Vinyl didn’t have space for the likes of Sixties-flavoured popsters The Dials, lone Nine Inch Nail Alessando Cortini, “space mermaid” Johanna Glaza, Dutch-Belgian jazz trio De Beren Gieren, London electro noiseniks Fever Dream, Spanish rhythm’n’blues maestro Julián Maeso, retro soul revivalists D’troit Soul Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Possibly named after a variety of magic mushroom, left-field Glaswegian six-piece Golden Teacher have been turning out their very strange idea of party music since 2013. Initially they did so for local freak-fostering collective Optimo but have since appeared via various outlets, finally ending up on their own eponymous label. Their sound is electronic but also organic, with percussion that rolls and sometimes has a touch of the more polyrhythmic, advanced drum circle about it. Don’t let the words “drum circle” put you off for Golden Teacher are an invigorating proposition.Heavily stewed in Read more ...