New music
CD: Ryan Adams - 1989Sunday, 25 October 2015
Back in the early 2000s, it was rumoured that Ryan Adams had covered Is This It by The Strokes in its entirety. According to my extensive cataloguing of the career of Americana’s enfant terrible, only “Last Nite” ever surfaced (I have a live version... Read more... |
CD: Killing Joke – PylonSaturday, 24 October 2015
Killing Joke are a band that inspire near devotion in their fans. Their 1980 eponymous debut is regularly cited as one of the best of all time, and they’ve managed two very decent outings since the original line-up of Jaz Coleman, Paul Ferguson,... Read more... |
Bob Dylan, Royal Albert HallThursday, 22 October 2015
Two years ago, Dylan played his best concert in years here at the Royal Albert Hall, the dim stage circled by vintage movie studio lights, and circling Dylan a band seasoned enough to bottle its own oil, delivering a new kind of quiet, late-night... Read more... |
Beardyman, Old Market, BrightonThursday, 22 October 2015
Standing in front of a table filled with small consoles, Beardyman reaches into a blue bucket for an audience-suggested title to the next song he’ll create live, from scratch, in front of us. “The Muppets on Trial” is what he ends up with. Tapping... Read more... |
Herbert & Kode 9, Abbey Road StudiosThursday, 22 October 2015
There's a new kind of forum for electronic musicians. Certainly not a rave, and not just a recital to earnest nerds, built on a kind of patronage, but a long way removed from a standard corporate gig where you're just providing the interchangeable... Read more... |
CD: Roots Manuva - BleedsThursday, 22 October 2015
The world of Rodney Smith aka Roots Manuva often feels like a hermetic one. Despite his increasing elder statesman status the Stockwell-raised rapper, producer and visionary exists away from trends and scenes, a self-professed armchair philosopher,... Read more... |
CD: Amy Winehouse & Antônio Pinto - Amy OSTWednesday, 21 October 2015
Asif Kapadia’s Amy packs a punch. It is a wrenching, clear-eyed portait of a supremely talented, charismatic young woman being whittled away by voracious, relentless 21st century celebrity, exacerbated by her own demons. At the UK box office it’s... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl: Volume 10 - Fela Kuti, Simple Minds and moreMonday, 19 October 2015
Let’s not get carried away. The news, announced at the end of September, that vinyl sales generated more money than the combined income of Spotify, Vevo and YouTube’s free services sent waves of celebration through the record-loving community. $166... Read more... |
CD: Zombi – Shape ShiftMonday, 19 October 2015
As well as releasing electronic music on Ron Morelli’s feted L.I.E.S. label, and the sporadically brilliant Ghost Box, as well a particularly impressive outing on Static Caravan (as Primitive Neural Pathways), Steve Moore is the bass- and synth-... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Little Bob StorySunday, 18 October 2015
Little Bob Story: Off the Rails + Live in ‘78Aki Kaurismäki’s 2011 film Le Havre features a cameo from a hard-rocking band fronted by a grey-haired gentleman who crops up elsewhere in the action. He is Roberto Piazza, and trades under the name... Read more... |
CD: Joanna Newsom - DiversSunday, 18 October 2015
“I always think she knows a little more than the rest of us,” said film director Paul Thomas Anderson, on casting Newsom as the knowing narrator Sortilège in last year’s Inherent Vice. Fans of her music know the feeling. It’s five years since the... Read more... |
Get The Blessing, Rich MixSaturday, 17 October 2015
You would expect a galactically-themed album like Astronautilus to blast off into extra-terrestrial airiness. The fifth album from west-country jazz-rock space cadets Get The Blessing scorched some earth at its launch in Shoreditch last night, yet... Read more... |
