New music
theartsdesk at Førdefestivalen: Music and the midnight sunSunday, 12 July 2015
The first thing that strikes you at 3am is the light, that strange disembodied glow of Norway’s midsummer midnight sun casting its rays over a landscape soaked in fantasy proportions – sheer glacial drops of greenstone, sweet-water fjords... Read more... |
Chaka Khan, Ronnie Scott'sSaturday, 11 July 2015
The voice is the pinnacle of instruments, the surefire road to the heart. But the core humanity which distinguishes it can work both ways: the vulnerability displayed so powerfully in human song makes possible the expression of powerful emotions but... Read more... |
Suicide, BarbicanFriday, 10 July 2015
What do we do when our heroes become incapable of doing what made them our heroes in the first place? Who are we to say when an artist is too old and broken to be on stage, if that’s where they want to be? Where is the line between thrilling... Read more... |
Max Cooper and Tom Hodge, Abbey Road StudiosFriday, 10 July 2015
I’m in a car and I’m uncomfortably hot. The reason I’m in a car is I’m on my way to a gig on the first day in 14 years that industrial action has brought London Underground to a standstill. No skeleton service, no contingency, just closed doors and... Read more... |
CD: The Pretty Things - The Sweet Pretty Things (Are In Bed Now, of Course)Thursday, 09 July 2015
Vintage is word I’m not comfortable with. I make it a point of principle not to pay a 3000% mark-up on clothes someone’s already worn, and when it comes to wine, I’m more likely to shop by ABV in truth. Vintage is however, a word at the heart of The... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Love Supreme: Van Morrison & Dianne ReevesWednesday, 08 July 2015
Love Supreme, now in its third year, feels like the best of both worlds. Set in the spectacularly rolling scenery of Glynde Place, outside Lewes, it’s only a champagne cork’s flight from Glyndebourne opera house, and if you’re not camping you can... Read more... |
Sinatras on Sinatra: 'He was a lonely soul'Wednesday, 08 July 2015
Frank Sinatra is back in London in the centenary of his birth. His disembodied voice is returning in a show called Sinatra: The Man & His Music. At the London Palladium, where he made his British debut 65 years ago, there’s to be a 24-piece... Read more... |
CD: Asian Dub Foundation - More Signal More NoiseTuesday, 07 July 2015
If Jerry Dammers was a time-traveller who had decided to launch the 2-Tone movement in 2015 instead of back in the late 1970s, it would be easy to imagine that the predominant sound might be something similar to the glorious noise of Asian Dub... Read more... |
Chick Corea & Herbie Hancock, BarbicanTuesday, 07 July 2015
There was a buzz at the Barbican last night, the kind that makes you feel like a child again, a ripple of electric energy that only comes with seeing the true greats. And they don’t come much greater than Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, two jazz... Read more... |
CD: Ezra Furman – Perpetual Motion PeopleMonday, 06 July 2015
“I’m having too much fun, my arms around the toilet like a long-lost chum, I’m kneeling at the throne…I’m learning what it means to really pray.” Four tracks into Perpetual Motion People, on “Haunted Head”, Ezra Furman paints a picture which must be... Read more... |
CD: Xaos - ChaosSunday, 05 July 2015
The Xaos project arises out of a lineage that goes back to the early days of the world music phenomenon, at the start of the 1980s, when Jon Hassell spoke of “Fourth World” sounds, and David Byrne and Brian Eno extended the compositional palette... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Sex PistolsSunday, 05 July 2015
Sex Pistols: SpunkFor an album that was never meant to be widely available, what’s become known as Spunk has had a surprising afterlife. The bootleg Sex Pistols album first became available in selected shops around three weeks before the... Read more... |
