New music
The South Bank Show: Tim Minchin, Sky Arts 1Friday, 19 April 2013The new South Bank Show has glided into its second season with a seemingly effortless profile of multi-hyphenate Tim Minchin. In case we’ve forgotten what exactly we admire him for these days – so varied has been his decade-long career been, through... Read more... |
Kurt Elling, Ronnie Scott'sThursday, 18 April 2013![]() OK, so you've given your copies of Rod's It Had To Be You and Robbie's Swing When You're Winning a few listens (released many, many years ago, the latter is still top of the iTunes jazz albums chart in a gazillion countries). You've memorised the... Read more... |
CD: Michael Bublé - To Be LovedThursday, 18 April 2013![]() It’s too obvious just to take the Canadian charm-monkey down in a bile-fest, so where to begin? He looks a bit peaky on the album cover and peakier still on the first page of the CD insert booklet (not that anyone under 40 listens to CDs). He’s lost... Read more... |
CD: Ian McCulloch – Holy GhostsWednesday, 17 April 2013![]() When I suggested reviewing Ian McCulloch's new album, our glorious editor was under the impression that it was just a live collection of ancient tracks. It is actually a double album – mainly old Bunnymen beauties on the self-explanatory Orchestral... Read more... |
Exclusive download: Mice ParadeMonday, 15 April 2013![]() We're extremely happy to be able to offer a free download of this live track by New York collective Mice Parade to mark the release of their seventh album, Candela, today. In its six minutes, this version of "Couches & Carpets" encapsulates much... Read more... |
10 Questions for Internet Broadcaster Jamal EdwardsMonday, 15 April 2013![]() In six and a half years of existence, SBTV has redefined what youth culture broadcasting can be. It began as nothing more than a YouTube channel where Jamal Edwards would put up videos he had filmed of his favourite grime MCs – but his natural... Read more... |
Brass Band Battle: Serbia vs Mexico, BarbicanMonday, 15 April 2013![]() Remember the Brass Band Battle of a couple years ago? The one that pitted Romania’s Fanfare Ciocarlia vs Serbia’s Boban & Marko Markovic Orkestar on CD and stage? The concert at London’s Koko was great fun, less a "battle" and more a good... Read more... |
CD: Morris Cowan - Six DegreesMonday, 15 April 2013![]() Some 20 years ago, a series of albums called Artificial Intelligence on WARP Records aimed to promote techno as home-listening music. They made up a frequently sublime collection, but unfortunately the word “intelligence” in their title was picked... Read more... |
CD: Françoise Hardy – L’amour fouSunday, 14 April 2013![]() "Stately" is the best adjective for Françoise Hardy’s similarly measured follow-up to 2010’s La pluie sans parapluie. Fifty-three years on from her first release, there is no need for Hardy to break new ground or hare off on a tangent, but her... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Sandie Shaw, Country Joe & the Fish, David Bowie, MorrisseySunday, 14 April 2013![]() Sandie Shaw: Sandie/Me/Love Me Please Love MeThe former Sandra Goodrich probably would have emerged in the Sixties as an embodiment of the era. She could have been a model, actress or a TV presenter. But it was music that found her, and it... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Musician Steve EarleSaturday, 13 April 2013![]() A renaissance man from Texas? Hell yeah. Loosely pegged as "country singer" when he struck out for Nashville in the late Seventies, where he survived on a series of odd jobs before landing himself a songwriting job with a music publisher, the mature... Read more... |
theartsdesk in India: Endangered classical music, and aerialist dancersSaturday, 13 April 2013![]() I hadn’t been through Mumbai (although lots of people there still call it Bombay) for a while – I once Iived in a beach house here for several months in Juhu while working on a fairly insane project with, among others, Boy George, Bollywood playback... Read more... |
