New music
Album: Toumani Diabate and the London Symphony Orchestra - KôrôlénSaturday, 17 April 2021
Toumani Diabate, master of the 21-string kora, along with some other Malian musicians, collaborated on a symphonic concert at London's Barbican Centre in 2008. The orchestra in question were the London Symphony, who have often been open to working... Read more... |
Album: AJ Tracey - Flu GameFriday, 16 April 2021
AJ Tracey is one of Brit rap’s aristocracy now. Along with the likes of Stormzy, Dave, J Hus and lately Headie One, he is massively bankable, with streams in the tens of millions for singles, sellout shows in Alexandra Palace, and radio ubiquity. It... Read more... |
The Master Musicians of Joujouka review - a 4000 year-old rock'n'roll bandThursday, 15 April 2021
The Master Musicians of Joujouka, described by William Burroughs as a “4000 year-old rock’n’roll band”, and recorded by Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones in the late 1960s, have always been something of a cult – even in their own land. Based in the... Read more... |
Album: Imelda May - 11 Past the HourTuesday, 13 April 2021
11 Past the Hour opens with its title song, a delicious, twangy, string-laden Nancy Sinatra Bond theme that never was. The album closes with a lyrically empowered torch song, “Never Look Back”, which rises and rises over a marching band drum tattoo... Read more... |
Singer-songwriter Peggy Seeger: still in the vanguard of her musical dynastyMonday, 12 April 2021
If American music has a royal family, it’s surely the Seeger clan. Charles, the patriarch, the composer, musicologist and teacher who could be said to have invented ethnomusicology, married first to Constance de Clyver Edson, a violinist and teacher... Read more... |
Album: Lady Dan - I Am the ProphetMonday, 12 April 2021
There’s a line in “No Home”, the staggering centrepiece of Lady Dan’s debut album, that perhaps sums up the project. “Wolves will never be my masters again,” the artist, real name Tyler Dozier, sings as the strings swell, in a voice like the... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Wes Montgomery - The NDR Hamburg Studio RecordingsSunday, 11 April 2021
Speaking to America’s Hit Parader magazine in August 1967, Frank Zappa said “If you want to learn how to play guitar, listen to Wes Montgomery.” The article was titled My Favorite Records and the head Mother was being featured shortly after the... Read more... |
Album: Alan Vega - MutatorSaturday, 10 April 2021
If there’s someone who could claim to have proved Arnold Schoenberg’s pithy phrase “If it is art, it is not for all” it was Alan Vega. His and Martin Rev’s abrasive synth-punk duo, Suicide were famously detested by fans of the Clash, one of whom... Read more... |
Album: Cheap Trick - In Another WorldFriday, 09 April 2021
A trend's been emerging, of late, for ageing rockers to actually sound younger on each new record. We last saw it with AC/DC's Power Up (2020), an infectious blend of carefree swagger and blistering solos. Now it's the turn of Cheap Trick... Read more... |
Album: Raf Rundell - O.M. DaysThursday, 08 April 2021
The career of Raf Rundell has had one of the most satisfying trajectories of any in UK music – a steady process of self-realisation, from record label staff via DJing and artist management, through being a serial studio collaborator, to becoming a... Read more... |
Album: Peggy Seeger - First FarewellWednesday, 07 April 2021
At 85, Peggy Seeger has lived in Britain for most of her life, arriving in 1956 as a Radcliffe dropout at the invitation of folklorist Alan Lomax, who had plans for a British equivalent of the Weavers. That didn’t work out, but the visit brought her... Read more... |
Album: Ballaké Sissoko - DjourouMonday, 05 April 2021
Ballaké Sissoko is one of the greatest musicians in Africa – a kora player of extraordinary quality, strongly rooted in the Manding and family traditions that have nourished him. He’s also a born collaborator, with a sense of adventure that has... Read more... |
