New music
peter.quinn
It seems fitting that the propulsive playing of drummer Anton Eger is the first sound you hear on this latest studio recording by the Scandinavian/British jazz trio, Phronesis. While there’s plenty of warm-hearted lyricism and vibrant harmonic writing on the group’s sixth CD (their fourth for Edition Records), what’s really striking about Parallax is the absolute primacy of rhythm.Whether it’s the unforeseen metric modulations of Eger’s brooding opener “67000MPH”, which serve unfailingly to catch the ear, the circling, highly charged rhythmic blocks of pianist Ivo Neame’s “OK Chorale”, or the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Is there anything left to say about Sandy Denny? Sadly, she cannot say anything herself, as she died in 1978. So it’s left to what she released during her lifetime, posthumous appraisals and reappraisals, and packages and repackages to do the talking.In 2010, the career-spanning, 19-disc box set Sandy Denny was issued. That could have been the last word and was measured against her issued discography of four solo albums, the three with Fairport Convention, and one with Fotheringay, as well as sundry collaborations. Fotheringay were recently the subject of a box set and her solo albums have Read more ...
joe.muggs
Kathryn Williams has a lot to live up to. The last time I saw the Liverpudlian singer-songwriter play live was a completely unamplified gig in the Tricycle Theatre some nine years ago, and its intimacy and intensity remain seared in my memory as one of the most powerful performances I've ever experienced. So I was feeling some trepidation about seeing her play in my local south London parish church as part of the Sydenham Arts Festival: while her recent Hypoxia album is up there with her best, she can be inconsistent on record, with the occasional drift too far into daytime Radio 2 territory Read more ...
mark.kidel
Black bile, the dark blood which feeds the melancholy mood, runs through musics that resonate with the heart’s longing. In Arabic sawdah is a word which draws together the ideas of black bile and, in Ottoman Turkey, the pain-filled desire for the beloved. It lies at the root of the saudade of Portuguese fado but also the Bosnian musical genre known as sevdah or sevdalinka.In their second album Damir Imamović’s Sevdah Takht stay true to the tradition of their folk roots, while subtly playing with a more contemporary sound. They manage very skilfully to reach back to the pure form, Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Without wishing to repeat myself, small venues almost always work best. The intimacy they offer heightens emotion and increases impact while breaking down the barrier between artist and audience. There's a mathematical consideration, too – fewer people means fewer antisocial arseholes no matter which way you divide it. And so I find myself back in East Kent’s best venue, among some of Ramsgate's most upstanding, to see the swirling, melodic storm of Berlin/London duo The KVB. First though, there’s the surprisingly engaging prospect of support band M!R!M.Also a duo, M!R!M create a haunting Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The post-Christmas headlines could barely contain themselves: HMV sells one turntable per minute! UK vinyl sales set to hit two million in 2016! Tesco stocking records! Vinyl was officially back.And now Record Store Day 2016 is upon us and likely to be the biggest one since its 2007 inception. There has been much discussion about the merits of RSD, on which shops around the country will be stocking limited releases to sate the public’s newfound appetite. For some shops, it’s a boost as increased awareness, footfall and income can see them through fallow times. Buying in swathes of stock is a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The cape is not an everyday item of clothing. Worn by magicians, it brings an air of the extraordinary. It billows in the path of superheroes. The cloak of invisibility confirms the cape’s singularity. Basia Bulat was first seen in a sparkly gold cape on the sleeve of her recent Good Advice album and last night it was integral to the renewed vigour of her music and stage persona. Moved to say how hard it was play guitar with its folds fluttering, she nonetheless did not take the easy path and discard it.None of this is to say that Bulat would lack anything without the cape, but it is Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It was in August 1968 that Graham Nash, then still a member of The Hollies, took a cab from LAX airport in Los Angeles to Joni Mitchell's house in Laurel Canyon. He was just embarking on a love affair with Joni, but also about to blast off on a different kind of adventure with the two musicians who greeted him at her house, David Crosby and Stephen Stills.When Nash added his high vocal harmony to the other two voices as they sang a new Stills song, "You Don't Have to Cry", it was the first spark of a California soft-rock revolution. Crosby Stills and Nash, later joined by Neil Young, would Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Considering that it was recorded in North California, that she now lives in Los Angeles, that her musical co-conspirators include a member of The Red Hot Chilli Peppers and that the album’s co-producer Noah Georgeson was behind a raft of Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom albums, Cate Le Bon’s Crab Day could sound American. It does not. Her fourth album proper evokes the greatest mavericks of pre-punk British art rock: Kevin Ayers, the Brian Eno of Taking Tiger Mountain, Slapp Happy and Robert Wyatt all come to mind as its 10 songs unfold. So do the slightly later Art Bears and David Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Absolute heartbreak has been part of country & western since before Hank Williams pined that he was so lonesome he could cry, way back in the 1940s. There’s a strand of country that’s an endless paean to the cowboy’s (and cowgirl’s) wandering soul, to messy lives lived among empty bottles and broken relationships. Texan Hayes Carll falls very much within this tradition and his fifth album, from its title onwards, is a warm bath in melancholy and broken-heartedness.In truth, it gets a bit much over the whole ten songs, drifting into the realms of the maudlin but, taken in smaller doses, Read more ...
Tim Cumming
The youthful old master of European jazz raps on the Doors of Perception for his latest album, Beauty & Truth, with his piano trio of drummer Eric Schafer and bassist Chris Jennings. Their subject for analysis is The Doors’ “The End” and “Riders on the Storm”, delivering distilled and deconstructed versions of the band’s music and the singer’s intent – both dark, apocalyptic Sixties tone poems of dread and release, and both led by Shafer’s superb drumming, with Jennings’s supple double bass tacking between that and Kühn’s finely fractured piano lines.Around them, he and ACT producer Siggi Read more ...
peter.quinn
Masterly improvising, outstanding compositions, a complete understanding between the musicians. On every count this was an exceptional set, as emotionally engaging as it was lovingly delivered.Working for three years in her late teens with the great Vinicius de Moraes and the singer-songwriter Toquinho, the Sao Paolo-born, New York-based pianist, vocalist and composer Eliane Elias grew up with bossa nova. So it seemed entirely appropriate that her trio, featuring Marc Johnson on bass and Mauricio Zottarelli on drums, kicked off their set with a sparkling arrangement of the Jobim/Moraes Read more ...