New music
Reissue CDs Weekly: The Hollywood BratsSunday, 17 July 2016
July last year saw the publication of Sick on You: The Disastrous Story of Britain’s Great Lost Punk Band, Andrew Matheson’s chronicle of his band The Hollywood Brats. The essential book was impossible to put down. It took in picaresque encounters... Read more... |
CD: John Martin - The Hidden NotesSunday, 17 July 2016
Few new releases come with quite such a specific technical claim as this double release from British saxophonist John Martin. His album title refers to his incorporation of multiphonics, an established technique in free improvisation, within his 11... Read more... |
CD: MSTRKRFT - OPERATORSaturday, 16 July 2016
Music is so often about context, some music more than others. Such is the case with the latest album – the third – from Canadian electronic bolshies MSTRKRFT. It’s wilfully obnoxious, caustic stuff, a battering techno-based assault that cares not a... Read more... |
CD: Bosco Rogers - Post ExoticThursday, 14 July 2016
Anyone looking for some psychedelic pop to at least give the illusion that we might now actually be in the middle of summer could do much worse than try out the debut album by Anglo-French duo Bosco Rogers. Their 21st century twist on the Monkees’... Read more... |
CD: Hedvig Mollestad Trio - Black Stabat MaterWednesday, 13 July 2016
Thirty-three minutes is not long for an album. What actually counts is not length but what is said and its impact. Norway’s Hedvig Mollestad Trio know what they are doing and over Black Stabat Mater’s 33 minutes they do it with such clarity, force... Read more... |
Stevie Wonder, Hyde Park BST FestivalMonday, 11 July 2016
Sixty-five thousand people came to Wonder. The final night of British Summer Time in Hyde Park was a sell-out. With a performance lasting four hours including an intermission, the Detroit-born legend and his band – and also the weather, which stayed... Read more... |
CD: Elliot Galvin Trio - PunchMonday, 11 July 2016
Ludic, ironic, kaleidoscopic, highly stylised, this follow-up to the Elliot Galvin Trio’s acclaimed 2014 debut, Dreamland, packs an exhilarating feast for the ears into its shortish 38-minute time frame. Like that greatest of musical magpies, Igor... Read more... |
Mumford & Sons, Hyde Park BST FestivalSunday, 10 July 2016
At Mumford & Sons’ air-punchingly rousing concert at the Hyde Park festival, thoughts of Brexit start to intrude. Those “Little Lion Man” lyrics, for example – so apposite, surely. “Weep for yourself, my man/You'll never be what is in your... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Kris KristoffersonSunday, 10 July 2016
If Kris Kristofferson had just been the writer of “Help Me Make It Through the Night”, “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down”, his legacy would have been assured. Each song is a classic, and each is wonderful. Elvis Presley and Gladys... Read more... |
CD: Steven Tyler - We're All Somebody From SomewhereSunday, 10 July 2016
For Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler, country music is the new rock n’roll. And it seems an easy transition from one kind of heavy beat to another, with simple melodies, alongside rich textures and honeyed harmonies in this new vista.Tyler... Read more... |
CD: Cliff Martinez - The Neon Demon OSTSaturday, 09 July 2016
Cliff Martinez isn’t your average Hollywood film composer. He didn’t come up via an orchestral academy or even move sideways from the electronica/classical crossover milieu. Neither John Williams nor Jóhann Jóhannsson are his template. Instead, he... Read more... |
CD: The Avalanches - WildflowerThursday, 07 July 2016
The weight of expectation can be a terrible thing to bear. When Since I Left You, The Avalanches’ patchwork party debut, was released in 2000, there was no sense of how long it had taken to make, just a collective intake of breath at the dense... Read more... |
