New music
CD: Take That - WonderlandSaturday, 25 March 2017
One tries not to conflate the man and the music too much. Getting overly tangled up in questions of authenticity is a fool's errand, songs are ultimately public property, and in general, short of Gary Glitter-level crimes, dislike of a pop star's... Read more... |
Craig David, Brighton CentreFriday, 24 March 2017
Craig David’s two-hour show, in two parts, receives an ecstatic response in Brighton. The audience, dominated by women in their twenties, is loudly vocal in their appreciation, apparently knowing every word to every song on his six albums. It feels... Read more... |
CD: Goldfrapp – Silver EyeThursday, 23 March 2017
Silver Eye is Goldfrapp’s seventh long-player in an 18-year career that has taken in electronica sounds of all stripes. It sees the duo make a stab at melding together the club-friendly electropop and the witchy rural folk-noir sounds of their... Read more... |
10 Questions for Poet Tommy SissonsWednesday, 22 March 2017
Tommy Sissons is a 21-year-old poet, originally from Brighton, now based in London. He has won a number of poetry slam championships, and has performed across the UK at venues ranging from the Boomtown Festival to the Royal Albert Hall. His debut... Read more... |
CD: Jethro Tull - The String QuartetsWednesday, 22 March 2017
On Jethro Tull's classic "Songs from the Wood" Ian Anderson promised "all things refined". And refined the band certain has been. Musically educated, too. For 40-odd years they have specialised in baroque rock and minstrel ballads all served up... Read more... |
CD: Yasmine Hamdan - Al JamilatMonday, 20 March 2017
Lebanese singer Yasmine Hamdan founded Beirut’s groundbreaking 1990s electro-duo Soapkills with Zeid Hamdan – the first Middle Eastern electro band to garner a cult following across the Arab world. More recently she featured in Jim Jarmusch’s 2013... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Chuck BerrySunday, 19 March 2017
When a skiffle group called The Quarry Men played live in 1959, their repertoire included covers of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” and “Sweet Little Sixteen”. The folk-based skiffle was becoming rock. In 1960, when the same band became The Beatles... Read more... |
CD: Judy Collins - A Love Letter to Stephen SondheimSunday, 19 March 2017
Judy Collins was one of the great folk icons of the 1960s, competing for the spotlight with Joan Baez. Where the latter was instrumental in bringing Bob Dylan to wide prominence, the former was crucial in putting Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen on... Read more... |
CD: The Jesus and Mary Chain - Damage and JoySaturday, 18 March 2017
Listening to the Jesus and Mary Chain’s first album of new material in 19 years is like meeting up with an incorrigible old friend. Maybe there are a few more wrinkles and grey hairs but the original spirit is most definitely still there. Fuzzy,... Read more... |
French Touch, Red GalleryFriday, 17 March 2017
Un Voyage Á Travers Dans Le Paysage Électronique Français, the French subtitle, goes further. French Touch is the first exhibition to celebrate and dig into France’s electronic music heritage: exploring the lineage which laid the ground for the... Read more... |
CD: Zara Larsson - So GoodThursday, 16 March 2017
For many, music is simply background, blurring tinnily from phones, sense-candy to “Like”, swipe and scroll alongside Pokemon and Snapchat. Music is content, filling digital space in the same way Polyfilla fills dents in walls. Zara Larsson... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bergen: Questions upon questions at Borealis FestivalTuesday, 14 March 2017
There comes a point in any experimental music festival when you have to accept the silliness and go with it. And at Borealis, that point comes very early. Only a couple of hours off the plane in Bergen and we're in a pedestrian tunnel under the bus... Read more... |
