New music
Katie Colombus
There’s something in the dichotomy of Babymetal that I just can’t fathom. Cutesy J-pop meets heavy metal. Sheeny bubblegum-bounce dance routines to thrash. Sweet teen vocals over shredding.It’s like something that would get the audience vote on X Factor just because the entire nation wanted to piss off Simon Cowell. It shouldn’t work. And yet, bamboozlingly, they seem to have won over at least some of the hard core metal heads (Corey Taylor from Slipknot, Rob Zombie, Anthrax, Judas Priest) that should, by definition, think they’re a load of shite.My own mindset adds to the conglomeration of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Hollywood Stars were not shy. In 1976, in keeping with their assertive handle, they sang “some last a year, then disappear as if they were magicians, but while I’m here no need to fear at the top I’m a pop musician, they call me the Houdini of rock 'n' roll because I’m number one on the radio...what is the secret they want to know.” The song, a crunchy riff-laden glam-indebted pop-rocker, was titled “Houdini of Rock 'n' Roll”. Instead of getting to number one on the radio, it wasn’t heard.“Houdini of Rock 'n' Roll” is one of ten tracks The Hollywood Stars recorded in 1976 for what’s Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Rodrigo y Gabriela are no longer the youthful metalheads that once spawned an organic fan movement from the muso grapevine, via rigorous gig schedules and world tours.They are grown up now, having been in the game for 20 years – something Rodrigo references, saying that it was natural to follow fun when they were young, but that they now have a more important message. The Mettavolution tour is not only full of their usual unassumingly intense and brilliant flamenco-rock aesthetic, but also food for thought that glimmers around Buddhist principles and a connection to something greater than the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Prior to the UK dance music explosion of summer 1988, house and techno were American micro-scenes, geographically restricted to Chicago, Detroit and New York. Small coteries showed interest in the UK, but few thought of making the stuff. Mancunian producers 808 State, however, were early adopters, recording an album that year and later charting with iconic 1989 hit “Pacific State”, a futuristic, Balearic instrumental. 30 years on, their seventh album is both forward-looking and a tribute to old analogue technologies.808 State, once a four-piece, is now the duo of long-term members Graham Read more ...
Tim Cumming
K-Music has become one of the highlights of the autumn cultural calender since it launched in 2014, bringing an eclectic range of Korean artists and bands, from pop and rock to jazz and folk, and all the gradations between. Next Sunday Korean Pansori opera comes to Kings Place, while Park Jiha’s beguiling looped soundscapes come to Rich Mix on 17th October, and Kyungso Park returns to the Southbank with her zither-like gayageum and new band, SB Circle on 29 October.Launching this year’s edition at the Purcell Room was the penetrating wall of sound that is Jambinai, more sheet metal than heavy Read more ...
joe.muggs
When he arrived on the scene in the mid Noughties Mika – yes his name is Michael Holbrook – flew the flag for grandiose pop classicism. He had The Feeling as fellow travellers, and to an extent The Killers in their first wave of success and Muse entering their imperial phase channelled these same impulses. Now, of course the songwriting and production values of ELO, Queen, Abba, Wings, Hall & Oates are all good and noble things to aspire to. The love of studio as instrument, the ability to cram whole concertos and movies into three minute pop songs is nothing to be sniffed Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy has been pondering how to react to oppression, and his own music’s obsolescence. What use is a rock band’s eleventh album at the best of times, he’s wondered, let alone in these worse ones under Trump?Wilco’s response is not to mirror their President in futile, raging protest. Instead, Ode to Joy is mostly gentle, built on acoustic strums of Tweedy’s toy guitar, and the relentless crunch of Glenn Kotchke’s percussion, which hammers against the protagonist’s self-deceit in “Everyone Hides”. Though static crackles at its margins, the music rises with purposeful optimism, Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Punk rock, more so than any other genre, comes with a built-in age limit. There’s only so long you can play weeknights at basement venues for a share of the door and travel expenses; only so many years your back can withstand so many nights on strangers’ sofas. Those that don’t age out, sell out: their youthful excesses repackaged to shill hatchbacks and low-fat spread. Thank god, then, for The Menzingers: a four-piece born in the Scranton, Pennsylvania punk scene who opted to channel their 30s into roots-rock with a latent edge, capturing the free-fall into adulthood proper with a certain Read more ...
Tim Cumming
So it’s your birthday. Not just another one but your 70th. So who’s on the guest list? Let’s see – master concertina player Alasdair Anderson, the "guvnor" Ashley Hutchings, Husker Du’s Bob Mould, bassist extraordinaire Danny Thompson, Fairporters Dave Mattacks and Dave Pegg, Floyd’s David Gilmour, Spinal Tap’s Derek Smalls (yes, you read that right), Martin and Eliza Carthy, onetime Strangler Hugh Cornwell, premiere folk singers Maddy Prior, Kate Rusby and Olivia Chaney, family members Jack, Kami, Teddy and Linda Thompson, son-in-law James Walbourne, old mucker Loudon Wainwright III, and Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Charles Hazlewood's 2018 two-parter for BBC Four, Tones, Drones and Arpeggios: The Magic of Minimalism explored work by some of the great composers of the genre Hazlewood dubs as “last big idea in classical music”, which emerged from the experiments of John Cage in the 1950s, with offshoots spearheaded by the likes of La Monte Young and Terry Riley, and later Steve Reich and Philip Glass.Now the British conductor’s passion for the last revolution in 20th century classical music, one that seeped through to other genres via the likes of Mike Oldfield and Brian Eno, comes to the stage of the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s reckoned that this time next year vinyl sales will have overtaken CDs. It’s still a small market and anyone who thinks vinyl will one day replace streaming is living on Planet Lah-lah. There’s so much coming out even theartsdesk on Vinyl cannot review it all, but what we can do is devote 7500 words to what grabs our attention. We are not limited by genre or by new vs reissue. We eat it all up and want more. So check below for the juice on what’s out there. Dive on.VINYL OF THE MONTHMambo Noir Trio Mambo Noir Trio (Oona)If you see the name Matti Bye on anything, check it out. His 2017 Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Bassist Dan Berglund was a founding member of the highly influential euro-jazz Esbjörn Svensson Trio (e.s.t.) until the accidental death of Svensson, while diving, in 2008. The first Tonbruket album appeared the following year, with Berglund joined by guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Johan Lindström, keyboardist Martin Hederos and drummer Andreas Werlin, the music stretching into prog-rock territory, some distance away from e.s.t.’s supple euro-jazz dynamics.Since then, four further albums have come, including last year’s live set, Live Salvation, with each musician bringing their Read more ...