wed 28/05/2025

New music

10 Questions for Musician Kevin Martin (AKA The Bug)

Kevin Martin is a musician, record producer and journalist. He is best know for recording and performing as The Bug, however, has been and continues to be involved in a variety of other musical projects including: GOD, Techno Animal, Ice, Curse of...

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CD: Melody Gardot – Currency of Man

No one can accuse Gardot of stinting on the shoe-leather. For her previous two albums she has trotted the globe, drawing together samba, tango, bossa nova and calypso into a rhythmical pot pourri. This time, for the fourth album in seven years,...

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theartsdesk in Fes: Has the magic gone?

More than anywhere else, the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music has been the place where I have gone annually for most of the last 20 years to retune my ears, to find inspiration and connections, and to discover new international music. For fans, it...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: The Mothmen

The Mothmen: Pay Attention!On their 20-minute “Mothman”, Manchester’s The Mothmen took a trip fusing bendy Captain Beefheart-style guitar, dub, insistent percussion and a Krautrock sensibility. The side-long track closed their album Pay Attention!,...

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CD: FFS - FFS

Being arty, in pop, is generally considered a good thing. When it comes to being clever, though, things are less clear. Three-minute songs are, after all, mainly about feelings: about how much you’ve lived rather than how much you've read. Which...

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Songlines Encounters, Kings Place

The fifth Songlines Encounters Festival at Kings Place brought together artists from around the world, offerering a powerful cultural kick-back against all manner of extremist positions. The opening Thursday featured young Portuguese Fado singer...

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theartsdesk in Bergen 1: Jazz in a sardine factory

Reggie Watts has a few things to say about Norway. In Bergen to play Natjazz, the annual jazz festival, he’s concerned about the local predilection for fish soup. Be careful, he warns, it can be dangerously hot. Then there are trolls and the...

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Does anyone know the way to blockbuster?

There’s a lot of Seventies revivalism in the ether. Fleetwood Mac are back as a famous five after many years asunder. 10cc have on at the Albert Hall, although one astutely remarked that they really should have been billed 2.5cc. In When Pop Ruled...

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CD: Muse - Drones

Almost a decade ago, I went to a disappointing festival in Holland. Driven to distraction by the crowd – a sixth-form disco stuck between the third and fourth circles of Dante's inferno – I, on the advice of a friend, went to see Muse. Their...

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CD: Leftfield - Alternative Light Source

The 1990s were a great time for electronic dreamers. Before social networks and cat videos and tedium there was a sense of romance about “cyberspace”. This “virtual universe” seemed to have the potential to be cosmic, narcotic and exciting. There...

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CD: Slaves - Are You Satisfied?

As Britain stares down the barrel of another five years of austerity, it’s disappointing that so few of the country’s musicians have anything to say about the very bad times that are heading our way. Slaves, however, have very definitely got...

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Sticky Fingers: unzipped

Sticky Fingers is the Stones’ defining album, a record that preserves the band in all its ragged, outlaw rock'n'roll glory. It captured them, too, between worlds of their own making, as the exploratory Sixties solidified into the excessive Seventies...

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