New music
BaianaSystem, Village Underground - the new Brazilian contendersMonday, 06 August 2018
The post-modernists have taken over the asylum. At least, that's what I thought twice this week. Once when I saw Vlad Putin on YouTube doing karaoke to an adoring audience. The other was seeing Brazil’s latest contenders BaianaSystem, who played to... Read more... |
CD: Death Grips - Year of the SnitchMonday, 06 August 2018
Death Grips are a self-proclaimed “conceptual art exhibition anchored by sound and vision” who are forever threatening to split up, but don’t let that put you off. Year of the Snitch, their sixth album in as many years, is an experimental hip hop... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Gary McFarlandSunday, 05 August 2018
Although Gary McFarland’s 1965 album The In Sound had the Samba and Bossa Nova influences which were colouring the sound of American jazzers from around 1962, it was on the button for the year it was released. This despite sporting a pop art sleeve... Read more... |
CD: Gulp - All Good WishesSunday, 05 August 2018
With Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys seemingly hitting the best form of an already outstanding career, the bar has been pretty high for any other Furries looking to leap into pastures new. Not that this should unduly worry Gulp – SFA bassist Guto... Read more... |
CD: Iggy Azalea - Survive the SummerSaturday, 04 August 2018
In basic creative terms of the ingredients that make it up, this is not a bad record. Hip hop production is in extraordinary period right now, and the six tracks on this EP have the best production that money can buy: woozy, narcotic, digitally... Read more... |
WOMAD 2, Charlton Park review - rainbows and rumbaThursday, 02 August 2018
In the days around WOMAD there have been plenty of media about how the “hostile environment” towards migrants has created all sorts of problems for artists attempting to get here from around the world. Certainly, we are being denied some of the... Read more... |
CD: The Proclaimers - Angry CyclistThursday, 02 August 2018
A sight every music fan should see and hear once is The Proclaimers playing Scotland. Around 18 years ago I saw them play a giant marquee at the T In The Park Festival. It was like a rally, a roaring wall of joyful fanaticism (on which note, their... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Camp Bestival 2018 - from Astley to apocalypseWednesday, 01 August 2018
Gusting. It’s not a word I’ve ever given much thought. You hear it on weather forecasts but I’m not a farmer of a fisherman so when they say it’ll be windy “with possible gusting speeds of up to 45 miles per hour” my brain doesn’t really register... Read more... |
CD: Dee Snider - For the Love of MetalTuesday, 31 July 2018
In recent years there’s been an explosion in feminised self-empowerment anthems, perhaps best epitomised by Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song” (This is my fight song/Take back my life song/Prove I'm alright song). For those in need of a masculine... Read more... |
WOMAD, Charlton Park review – drawing the world a little closerMonday, 30 July 2018
Even seasoned veterans can suffer from programme amnesia over the four days and nights of rock, pop, dance and traditional music from around the world to be found at WOMAD, such is the array of choices across its 10 stages, ranging from the main... Read more... |
CD: Bansangu Orchestra - Bansangu OrchestraMonday, 30 July 2018
This gloriously feel-good album offers irresistibly catchy hooks, a myriad of musical influences handled with an unruffled ease, plus a communicative power that thrills at every turn.Penned by the orchestra's MD and co-founder, multi-instrumentalist... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Gathered From CoincidenceSunday, 29 July 2018
It might have begun with The Beatles espousal of Bob Dylan in 1964. There was also The Animals whose first two singles, issued the same year, repurposed tracks from Bob Dylan’s 1962 debut album. Before The Byrds hit big with their version of his “Mr... Read more... |
