New music
Owen Richards
Compared to Scotland, Welsh independence has yet to hit the mainstream. The idea has been mostly supported by the Welsh-speaking population, with opinion polls hovering around 19 per cent. It’s fallen to Super Furry Animals keyboardist Cian Ciaran to change this with the Yes is More campaign. On Friday night, Cardiff’s Tramshed played host to a mini festival of music, food and discussion, with the aim to engage the public in its political and social future.As line-ups go, it was a hell of a launch event. Mainstream appeal was clearly the target, with self-proclaimed “prosecco socialist/dank Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Beth Jeans Houghton’s world seems to have been characterised by an over-supply of half-empty, small glasses of late – especially when it comes to romantic relationships with men. That’s not to say that she’s completely given up on half the globe’s population though, as she grudgingly admits that she’d “rather have a man than a coffee machine” on “Coffee Machine”. Nevertheless, there’s not much to suggest in the lyrics of Lung Bread for Daddy that she feels ready to make peace with that end of the human race, even making enough space among her feckless exes to give everyone’s favourite target Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Full marks for shoehorning-in the names of city’s two major football teams into the title of Manchester - A City United In Music. But this spiffy double-CD compendium roams further than the boundaries of the titular metropolis. Leigh, Salford, Stockport, Timperley and Warrington are in the mix too. “Manchester-area” or “Manchester-region” wouldn’t be such snappy designations but the point is made – Manchester is suffused in music.The period covered is covered is 1963 to 1994 with a couple of outliers rounding-out the picture. What’s dealt with is from the Beatles-dominated beat era up to and Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Avril Lavigne was the original Punk Pop Queen. Fearless, feisty and perfectly fitting for the early noughties as the manufactured antithesis of Britney and Christina, she was the rebellious antidote alongside the likes of Pink and Gwen Stefani. After a six-year hiatus, a battle with Lyme Disease, a divorce and a new millionaire boyfriend she’s back with what I was hoping would be a new, evolved sound that mirrored the growth from angsty teen sensation to mature female musician, working with her distinctive sound and vocal prowess.Her new album is capped up with a strong piano ballad, the Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Chaka Khan’s last album, 2007’s Funk This was billed as the Queen of Funk’s comeback after her 80s and 90s purple patch. But after its release, apart from the odd cameo vocal on other people’s tracks, she stepped back out of the spotlight and retreated back into relative obscurity. 12 years on and she’s back again with the groove-driven Hello Happiness – an album with her new label owners, former Major Lazer man Switch and Ruba Taylor’s contributions all over both the songwriting and the production. Gone are the anthemic dancefloor vibes of “Ain’t Nobody” and “I Feel For You”, to be replaced Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The striking cover for the Brighton Festival 2019 programme shouts out loud who this year’s Guest Director is. Silhouetted in flowers, in stunning artwork by Simon Prades, is the unmistakeable profile of Malian musician Rokia Traoré. Taking place between 4th and 26th May at a host of south coast venues, this year’s Festival, which launched its schedule of events this morning, looks to be a multi-faceted extravaganza with true international reach. Once again, theartsdesk is proud to be a media partner.“I set out to bring new voices to the city to tell their stories,” Traoré explained, “ Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Let’s cut straight to the chase. Here are reviews of 48 records, running riot across genre boundaries and categorizations, from preposterous pop metal to woodland-themed classical piano pieces. It’s the wildest vinyl ride in review-land, an adventure for the ears. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHVula Viel Do Not Be Afraid (Vula Viel)To describe this record is not to do it justice: Vula Viel are a three-piece investigating the possibilities of the Ghanaian xylophone (the gyil), using it to explore minimalist Afro-jazz potential of the traditional music of Africa’s Dagaaba people. So far so dusty and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When Ladytron appeared in 1999, at a time when electronic music was glutted with pop-trance, Mitsubishis and superclubs, they drew instead directly on the post-punk synth-pop explosion of 20 years before, The Human League and the like. While all about revelled in warmth, hedonism and groove, Ladytron embraced the android: crisp in appearance, dry and enigmatic of lyric, symmetrically stylish. Coming back now from a five-year break, it’s their own music of 20 years before they may be defined against, a striking back catalogue they often match.When I first heard Ladytron all that time ago, I Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The nature of the product that is pop music is that its stars rarely get the chance to be prolific. It’s something that Ariana Grande – the biggest pop star in the world right now, at least on the numbers – complained about in a recent interview: how, when it came to music, she just wanted to “drop it the way these [rap] boys do”. Arriving a mere six months after the smash hit Sweetener, thank u, next may be her attempt to do just that, and it makes sense from both personal and professional standpoints: it’s fair to say that Grande’s previous album had no worlds left to conquer, and besides Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Of the 20-plus names gathered on the superbly packaged Kankyō Ongaku, it’s likely that only Yellow Magic Orchestra and their members Haruomi Hosono and Ryuichi Sakamoto are familiar to most non-Japanese listeners. Initially, it seems a big ask to hope buyers will fork out for compilation tracking potentially uncharted musical territory but the full title stresses that what’s heard isn’t so perplexing.Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980–1990 collects exactly what it says. “Kankyō ongaku” translates as environmental music. Nothing here is unapproachable. Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Jimmy Hendix’s Greenwich Village studios are the venue for LCD Soundsystem’s third live album, which features the most recent touring line-up playing a set heavy with songs from 2017’s American Dream album along with a smattering of covers. Live albums often come with the promise of dynamic abandon – the chance to see a band communicating directly with their fans and pushing emotional dynamics and song structures to the limit, but here, in a closed studio, there’s none of that – so what is the point? The answer for most bands would be “not much”, but LCD Soundsystem aren’t most Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Cosey Fanni Tutti was born Christine Newby in Hull in 1951. She is a musician, performance artist and writer and is best known for her time with COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle and Chris and Cosey. Her memoir Art Sex Music came out in 2017 and her second solo album, Tutti is released on 8 February.GUY ODDY: I really like your new album, Tutti. I understand that it started life as a film soundtrack but then you reworked it as a standalone piece. How do you feel about it now that it’s all finished?COSEY FANNI TUTTI: I feel fine about it because the decision to make it into an album came Read more ...