sat 31/05/2025

New music

New Music Unlocked 1: Reef, Supersonic Festival, Elton John and more

The lockdown which began in March is now noticeably easing, although in the realm of gigs and festivals things are still nowhere near operative. Nonetheless, theartsdesk is responding to the changes by ceasing our many weeks of New Music Lockdown...

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Album: Nicolas Jaar - Telas

The last experience that this writer had of Nicolas Jaar’s glitchy soundscapes was through his 2011 debut album Space Is Only Noise. Nine years and five discs on, as well as other releases under the Against All Logic alias, not much has changed....

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Album: The Pretenders - Hate for Sale

It is difficult to live up to your own legacy when you’ve reached an iconic status in rock’n’roll. It is even harder when you are a frontwoman in a “masculine” genre where age makes you increasingly invisible and/or viciously criticised. Like...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Dennis Herrold

It’s been a long strange trip for Dennis Herrold. The Virginia-born rocker’s sole single, December 1957’s “Hip Hip Baby” / “Make With the Lovin’”, was a full-bore rockabilly two-sider. Yet it made no waves despite being reviewed glowingly by music...

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theartsdesk Radio Show 29 - Morricone, Moroccan psychedelia and Sudanese techno

Peter Culshaw’s periodic global music radio update is back, quicker than usual as there is some catching up to do. There’s a focus on Ennio Morricone, who died this week - with his amazing range from Westerns to lush soundscapes and experimental...

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Album: JARV IS – Beyond the Pale

National treasure Jarvis Cocker recently claimed in an interview with the New York Times that lyrics really aren’t that important. He’s so very wrong. Within this very album – brief though it is (seven songs, 40 minutes) and long overdue (the band...

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theartsdesk on Vinyl 58: Joy Division, Alma, Prince, African Head Charge, Wargirl and much more

Lockdown’s easing and the record shops are opening here and there. So, to help vinyl junkies on their way, here’s 7000 words of reviews, capturing the best of the last couple of months’ releases on plastic. As ever, the sounds go everywhere, from...

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Album: The Streets - None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive

Given the collaborator list on this album, it should be a bit of a mess. Brit punks IDLES, Aussie woozy pop auteur Tame Impala, pumping bassline house producer Chris Lorenzo turning his hand to drum’n’bass, as well as Ms Banks, Dapz On The Map,...

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Album: Shaggy - Hot Shot 2020

Hot Shot 2020 has been billed as a rerub of Shaggy’s colossal turn of the century release Hot Shot. It’s not quite an accurate description of an album that has already been released in three different forms and shifted nine million copies though. In...

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Album: bdrmm - Bedroom

Shoegaze stable Sonic Cathedral has, in truth, always been a much broader church than its name implies. From the psychedelic, sunshine pop of Gulp, to the blistering art noise of Spectres, it has consistently released music that shares a similar...

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Ennio Morricone 1928-2020: A lost afternoon in his apartment in Rome

Ennio Morricone was a genius, or as close to that description as makes no odds. If we mean someone who created a unique body of work, one that changed culture, had a distincive style and was massively influential, then Morricone fitted the bill....

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Album: Rufus Wainwright - Unfollow the Rules

After Unfollow the Rules: The Paramour Session and the #Quarantunes “robe recitals” comes the album: Unfollow the Rules, no longer stripped back (though everything's relative) but in all its pomp and glory. It’s Rufus Wainwright's ninth collection...

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