New music
CD: in analysis - mothersSunday, 11 March 2018
Looking to the 'net to help fund a project is nothing new. Getting strangers to help with the actual creative process, though, is still pretty novel. It's what David Schweitzer's In Analysis project does. Schweitzer is best known for children's TV... Read more... |
CD: Seun Kuti - Black TimesFriday, 09 March 2018
Is it fair to say that Seun Kuti’s fourth album is just more of the same? I believe it is, because more of the same is more or less the point with protest music, particularly if what you’re protesting hasn’t gone away. You have no choice but to keep... Read more... |
Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, Roundhouse - hits and missesThursday, 08 March 2018
There are good musical reasons why it might never have occurred to you to wonder how Lady Gaga would sound if adapted by Duke Ellington; Radiohead by Sidney Bechet; or Bruce Springsteen by Frank Sinatra. Even if you still think those reasons are... Read more... |
CD: Erasure - World BeyondThursday, 08 March 2018
That Erasure have stuck to the tonalities of electropop – and not just electropop, but the extra gay hi-NRG flavour thereof, with Andy Bell's theatrical voice cartwheeling off Vince Clarke's fizzing beats – for seventeeen albums now makes them a... Read more... |
CD: Ministry - AmeriKKKantTuesday, 06 March 2018
Al Jourgensen is pissed off with Donald Trump. Really pissed off. So pissed off that he’s dragged the latest incarnation of mighty industrial metal originators Ministry back into the studio for the first time since 2012’s Relapse to produce an album... Read more... |
CD: Myles Kennedy - Year of the TigerMonday, 05 March 2018
Huge-voiced rock singer Myles Kennedy is best known for two things: first, his day-job as Alter Bridge frontman and, second, the extra-curricular work he does with Slash. In neither capacity could you exactly call his approach subdued. Alter... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Zoot Money's Big Roll BandSunday, 04 March 2018
“That colourful character Zoot Money has recently been writing at length in support of psychedelic music. Now, what’s the score Zoot, has it got a contribution to make to the scene?” It’s 14 January 1967 and BBC presenter Brian Matthew is... Read more... |
CD: Tracey Thorn - RecordSunday, 04 March 2018
Tracey Thorn’s solo career in the 21st century has veered between contemplative adult music and the pop dancefloor. With her latest, we’re definitely on the pop dancefloor, but, despite delicious synth-led production from Ewan Pearson, ignore the... Read more... |
CD: David Byrne - American UtopiaSaturday, 03 March 2018
Believe it or not, it’s been 14 years since the one-time Talking Heads frontman’s last solo album proper. Perhaps it doesn’t feel like that because his interim collaboration projects always sound so very David Byrne. Even when he took equal billing... Read more... |
Anna von Hausswolff: 'Forget about space and time, it's eternal and mysterious' - interviewFriday, 02 March 2018
Considering the coal-dark nature of her music, it was unsurprising Sweden's Anna von Hausswolff was dressed entirely in black while meeting up at London’s Rough Trade East shop to talk about her new album Dead Magic. Less foreseeable was her sunny... Read more... |
CD: Gwenno - Le KovThursday, 01 March 2018
There was a hint of what was to come in Gwenno Saunders’ debut, Y Dydd Olaf. It was, for the most part, a Welsh-language affair, save for the closing track “Amser”, a song sung in Cornish and the album’s dizzying slow dazzle. For her follow-up, Le... Read more... |
CD: The Breeders - All NerveWednesday, 28 February 2018
For some a lack of development is failure; not for Kim Deal. Her songwriting and voice have influenced hordes of indie bands from the Eighties until now – indeed the “angular” clang and arch drawl of bands indebted to Pixies, and The Breeders, her... Read more... |
