New music
Russ Coffey
It had been a perfect summer's day and around the stadium denim-clad punters sipped ice-cool beer and discussed how this reunion would sound. Everyone knew how Axl had aced it, right here, a year ago, filling in as AC/DC's lead singer. Many hoped it would be just like when the classic line-up last played London in 1992. Except this time the sound quality would be better.Unfortunately, for many, the latter wasn't to be. As the band launched into "It's So Easy" smiles of anticipation turned into looks of disbelief - the acoustic at the back of the venue felt like sludge. The culprit seemed to Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The follow-up to Lorde's multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated album Pure Heroine has been a long time coming after the 16-year-old singer/songwriter withdrew from the limelight and beat a hasty retreat back to her home country of New Zealand.Four years later, Lorde (real name Ella Yelich-O'Connor) took to New York to collaborate with high-end producers who've worked with Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Beyonce, Madonna and Justin Bieber. While the upswing from independent to made shows in the polished and slickly produced sounds of pop, electro, indie, ballad and a touch of a reggae beat, there Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Alison Moyet is one of Britain's best-loved singer-songwriters. Known for her deep, soulful voice and down-to-earth personality she has managed to combine commercial sensibility with artistic integrity for over 30 years. Today, 16 June, she releases her ninth solo album Other, recorded with long-time collaborator Guy Sigsworth.Geneviève Alison Jane Moyet was born in Billericay, Essex to a French father and English mother. Her teenage years were spent playing in various punk and garage bands. In 1982 she formed the seminal new wave band Yazoo with former Depeche Mode keyboard player Vince Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Nicholas Bullen is an artist and composer, based in Birmingham. He works across disciplines and media, including sound, installation, film, performance and text. In 1981, Bullen founded the Grindcore legends Napalm Death with Miles Ratledge. He will perform a new solo piece Universal Detention Centre at this year’s Supersonic Festival to mark the 30th anniversary of their seminal album, Scum, a disc which includes “You Suffer”, the world’s shortest song according to the Guinness Book of Records.GUY ODDY: Scum was not only a seminal album for Napalm Death but also for the grindcore movement. Read more ...
howard.male
Rarely has an album’s artwork better reflected its content: blackness, or the void from which light occasionally emanates. This is a collection of instrumentals enhanced by vocals, rather than what might be called songs. The opening minimalist piece “Lightshaft” begins with a single plucked guitar note and its long vibrato-laden after-echo, like the sonic equivalent of a lone flickering candle. Norwegian singer Anneli Drecker’s haunting contributions can’t be described as lead vocals because they are no more or less significant than any other texture on the record.This is only the former Read more ...
David Nice
The time is out of joint for Turkey at the moment, but it’s still a country equally split between those looking to the west for the culture of ideas and the more conservative element which at least needs its voice respected. They co-exist peacefully in a great cosmopolitan city like Istanbul, which recently joined Ankara and Izmir in rejecting increased powers for its leader. Facing difficult challenges and late cancellations, the vivacious Yeşim Gurer, director of the 45th Istanbul Music Festival, held a fine balance between the urban intelligentsia's hunger for fine western ensembles and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
After the persuasive opening singles “Chained to the Rhythm”, “Bon Appétit” and “Swish Swish”, as well as all Katy Perry’s pre-release talk about “purposeful pop”, there was a feeling that Witness might push the boat out, taking Perry’s music into more intriguing terrain than previously. Perhaps it might even achieve the leaps forward made by Beyoncé with last year’s masterpiece, Lemonade, or Madonna’s transformations with producers William Orbit and Stuart Price, in 1998 and 2005 respectively. Unfortunately, while occasionally tasty, it cannot meet those comparisons, yet it’s still Perry’s Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Formed in 1958 by Desmond Briscoe and Daphne Oram, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop pioneered groundbreaking innovation in music making, using anything and everything to create new textures and tones to satisfy eager TV producers looking for otherwordly sounds to lead audiences through their programmes. Although it shut its doors in 1998, the work done there has proved an enormous influence on generations of electronic musicians, from The Human League to Hot Chip, Portishead to Pye Corner Audio, all of whom cite the Workshop as a major inspiration.After getting together for a series of gigs under Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Fellow defenders of the Delta tradition Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’ have never recorded together before. Billed as a “historic collaboration”, this album features appearances from starry performers including Bonnie Raitt, and excellent young jazz singer Lizz Wright. After a couple of listens, however, fans will be dismayed at the misuse of the term “historic”. An opportunity was missed to do something original. This is very easy to listen to. Everyone is, in a technical sense, on good musical form, and the recording is lustrous and full-bodied. Both musicians tip a hat at the blues tradition Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In Summer 1973, Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” peaked at 35 on the American charts. Originally the A-side of a France-only single issued in 1972, the song had been discovered by New York DJ David Mancusso. After Mancusso repeatedly played it, “Soul Makossa” was licensed by Atlantic, charted and became integral to what was bracketed as disco music. The Cameroon-born Dibango had been making records under his own name since 1961 and “Soul Makossa” was his breakout track. So much so, he recorded a reconfigured version to advertise Toyota cars. “Happiness on the African road” was guaranteed.As a Read more ...
joe.muggs
Clifford Price – Goldie – has long cut an imposing, and complicated, figure in the music industry. Part larger-than-life entertainer, part monster (as satirised in music industry grotesque Kill Your Friends), part irrepressible raver, part grandiose conceptualist. But there's another side to him too: the massive, Pat Metheny-idolising, jazz smoothie.His breakthrough 1994 track “Inner City Life” was partly high-tech drum'n'bass ferocity, but it was completely merged with jazz-soul sophistication and of course the soaring voice of the sadly recently-deceased Dianne Charlegmane (who would work Read more ...
Guy Oddy
In 1990, Ride were in the first wave of the Shoegazing scene to get out of the blocks and into the studio to record their iconic debut EP. Four albums and a sack load of EPs and singles later, however, they called it a day and the four lads from Oxford slouched off to join Oasis, the Jesus and Mary Chain, put out solo records and, in bassist Steve Queralt’s case, to take up a career in retail at Habitat. And that seemingly was that. However, in 2015 fate intervened and the Coachella Festival came calling with the offer to get back together in front of a crowd of 70,000.Weather Diaries is Ride Read more ...