New music
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... |
CD: Conor Oberst - SalutationsTuesday, 14 March 2017
Conor Oberst's 2016 LP, Ruminations, was seen by many as both a triumph and milestone. A triumph because of the acclaim it attracted; and a milestone because it finally packed the emotional punch the singer-songwriter had been promising for years.... Read more... |
Lula Pena, Café OtoMonday, 13 March 2017
Lula Pena is a Portuguese singer who takes fado (or "phado" as she calls it) into new directions and musical horizons. She is one of the most intense performers you are likely to hear and, with only three albums in the last 20 years, keeps a lowish... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Kitchens of DistinctionSunday, 12 March 2017
Albums are not meant to be heard this way. Collecting a band's output in one package inevitably obscures that what’s being heard might have been recorded and released over years. The listening time may be five or six hours, but eighteen months could... Read more... |
CD: Mary Ocher - The West Against the PeopleSunday, 12 March 2017
OK, the title could be offputting, suggesting as it does the crassest of adversarial politics. But this record is something far deeper, far subtler and far more enjoyable than that. Yes, the Russia-born, Israel-raised, Berlin-based singer-songwriter... Read more... |
CD: Jarvis Cocker & Chilly Gonzales - Room 29Saturday, 11 March 2017
Jarvis Cocker and Chilly Gonzales’ first collaborative album is a song-cycle centred around the piano in the titular room of the Château Marmont in West Hollywood – a hotel with a reputation as something of a den of iniquity during the Roaring... Read more... |
CD: The Moonlandingz - Interplanetary Class ClassicsFriday, 10 March 2017
Musically, Interplanetary Class Classics breaks no new ground. Opening cut “Vessels” could be by the KLF and kicks off with Glitter Band drums, a Chicory Tip stomp and has robot-like declamatory vocals: what critically favoured Nineties band Earl... Read more... |
CD: Fink - Fink's Sunday Night Blues Club Vol 1Thursday, 09 March 2017
Fin Greenall’s career is developing as a reverse mirror image of musical history. Originally a DJ and electronic music pioneer working on the edge of contemporary performance, for the past decade he has been on a journey into the acoustic and... Read more... |
CD: Tamikrest - KidalWednesday, 08 March 2017
Tamikrest’s fourth album is well-presented, good enough, but a little hamstrung by what have become the clichés of the modern Touareg genre: the lilting rhythms of a camel cruising slowly across the dunes, intertwined guitars that smoothly swirl... Read more... |
CD: Miraculous Mule - Two Tonne TestimonyMonday, 06 March 2017
Miraculous Mule summon up that great feeling when you walk into an anonymous festival marquee and are caught up in a storm of music by someone you’ve never heard of. Two Tonne Testimony has a looseness, where songs matter less than hefty grooves, a... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: BuzzcocksSunday, 05 March 2017
By the time Buzzcocks recorded the 12 tracks heard on Time’s Up, they had played with Sex Pistols twice. They had also shared bills with The Clash, The Damned, Eater, Slaughter & The Dogs, Stinky Toys and The Vibrators. After singer Howard... Read more... |
