New music
CD: The Vamps – Night and Day (Night Edition)Monday, 17 July 2017
Watching the YouTube clips that accompany the release of the Vamps’ third album, Night and Day (Night Edition), it becomes immediately apparent how keen they are to come across as a "real" band. They talk eloquently about the writing process and are... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Anne BriggsSunday, 16 July 2017
The Time Has Come was issued in late 1971. Anne Briggs’ second album and her second to reach shops that year, it followed an eponymous set released that April. That was on the folk label Topic and produced by the pivotal A. L. Lloyd, who had... Read more... |
CD: Alan Broadbent - Developing StorySunday, 16 July 2017
Hearing the London Metropolitan Orchestra ripping a hole in the silence with the impassioned opening theme of the three-movement "Developing Story", I’m not entirely convinced that the New Zealand-born, US-based pianist, composer and arranger Alan... Read more... |
Enter theartsdesk's Young Reviewer of the Year AwardSaturday, 15 July 2017
The Hospital Club’s annual h.Club100 awards celebrate the most influential and innovative people working in the UK’s creative industries, with nominations from the worlds of film and fashion, art, advertising, theatre, music, television and more.... Read more... |
CD: Dizzee Rascal - RaskitSaturday, 15 July 2017
In the four years since Dizzee Rascal’s last album the landscape around grime has changed. In 2013 grime MCs were busy hooking up with as many pop stars as possible, fusing their machine-gun lyricism with Autotune-addled pap pop. A Dizzee single... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 30: Moby, The Beach Boys, Napalm Death, John Coltrane and moreThursday, 13 July 2017
If there’s a downside to the resurgence of vinyl, it’s that all that’s left in most charity shops these days is James Galway and his cursed flute and Max Bygraves medley albums. Then again, there’s always new stuff coming in so it’s down to... Read more... |
CD: Emma Stevens - To My RootsThursday, 13 July 2017
What’s not to like about To My Roots, the third album by singer-songwriter Emma Stevens? That’s the problem. Not just her problem, of course, but the problem with so many DIY indie artists who release albums, often crowdfunded (as this was), pick-up... Read more... |
CD: Boris – DearWednesday, 12 July 2017
Boris are a trio of Japanese noise rockers who are masters of all things heavy, and Dear, a double album of superior quality, marks the band’s 25th anniversary as a going concern. Covering a range of bases from doomy slabs of heavy noise to riff-... Read more... |
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Hyde Park review - electrifying American classicsTuesday, 11 July 2017
Tough security checks mean I make it to British Summer Time’s main stage just moments before the opening chords of the early evening set from The Lumineers.The Denver-based band’s rousing folk rock beats burn beneath blue skies; a kick drum and... Read more... |
CD: Pete Fij/Terry Bickers - We Are MillionairesMonday, 10 July 2017
To anyone other than Eighties and Nineties indie obsessives, the guitarist from The House of Love and Levitation and the singer from Adorable getting together in 2014 did not cause a stir. However, both had stylistically leapt away from their pasts... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Silhouettes & Statues - A Gothic RevolutionSunday, 09 July 2017
In February 1983, New Musical Express ran a cover feature categorising what it termed “positive punk”. Bands co-opted into this ostensibly new trend were Blood & Roses, Brigandage, Danse Society, Rubella Ballet, Sex Gang Children, Southern Death... Read more... |
CD: Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah - DiasporaSunday, 09 July 2017
New Orleans trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah has been at the forefront of the movement to reinvent jazz for some time. On this album he claims to be creating a new kind of “Stretch Music” (and has created an app of the same name, which won... Read more... |
