wed 21/05/2025

New music

Icebreaker and BJ Cole, Milton Court

Call it re-analogification, de-digitisation or perhaps just plain reverse-engineering, Icebreaker’s set at Milton Court was all about reclaiming the electronic for hoary-handed instrumentalists. Their skills are well-honed: from Anna Meredith to...

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CD: David Crosby - Lighthouse

While there were 20 years between the 74-year-old David Crosby’s last solo album, 2014’s Croz, and its predecessor It's All Coming Back To Me Now..., Lighthouse arrives with what must be seen as exceptional speed. It’s also, despite being recorded...

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On the road with Bob Dylan: the mother of all rockumentaries

Dont Look Back is the Ur-rockumentary, the template for hundreds of hand-held rock tour films, a source of inspiration as well as a model to aspire to.When director DA Pennebaker went on the road with Bob Dylan as he played a number of English gigs...

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CD: Moby & the Void Pacific Choir - These Systems Are Failing

Moby’s last proper album, not including the ambient affair he released via a free download from his LA restaurant earlier this year, was Innocents in 2013. It was a rich yet melancholic affair, the culmination of some years when a sober Moby, no...

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theartsdesk on Vinyl: Volume 21 - Sex Pistols, J Dilla, Uriah Heep, Hendrix and more

Autumn arrives and theartsdesk on Vinyl is ready at the turntables with a vital selection to kick out the drizzle and seasonal blues. Now in a more toned, slimmed down form, we offer 30 reviews that pinpoint the very best new vinyl available,...

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CD: Katie Melua - In Winter

Readers of a certain type of lifestyle blog will be familiar with the concept of hygge. The Danish word, which refers to a state of cosiness and good cheer in which to survive the winter months, is nothing new – but this year, it’s popping up...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: The Shaggs

“The Shaggs are real, pure, unaffected by outside influences. Their music is different, it is theirs alone.” So began the liner notes to Philosophy of the World, The Shaggs' sole album. Not many people read the words or heard the music when it was...

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The Passion of Joan of Arc, Wells Cathedral

Wells Cathedral, masterpiece of Gothic architecture, is distinguished by relatively intimate scale: a perfect place to present Carl Dreyer’s 1928 classic and visually arresting account of the trial and burning of Joan of Arc. The screen was hung in...

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CD: Dr John Cooper Clarke and Hugh Cornwell - This Time It's Personal

You get two singular punk-era artists – a poet and a songwriter – together in a room for a few nights, with a rack of guitars, a rack of songs from their sweet youth, and a few musical friends to help out on keyboards, trumpet, flute and sax. Then...

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CD: Green Day - Revolution Radio

Revolution Radio is a title that can only bring to mind The Clash. To be more specific, it feels like a confabulation of “This Is Radio Clash” and “Revolution Rock”. The spiritual great-grandfather of this album, however, would be The Ramones, punk’...

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Jean-Michel Jarre, Brighton Centre

If this review had a subtitle, it would be “Rave in the Mausoleum”. Jean-Michel Jarre threw everything he had at the crowd – state of the art lightshow, earthquake-level bass, eardrum-shattering decibels, remixed greatest hits, thumping kick-drums,...

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CD: Barry Gibb - In The Now

“If tears were diamonds, I’d be a rich man now.” Barry Gibb, that famous falsetto still pitch-perfect, isn’t mincing his words on the solo album that, at the age of 70, he never expected to be left to make. Whether writing with the Bee Gees or his...

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