New music
Matthew Wright
At least the concept is more catchy than the title, which won’t be tripping off DJing lips. A mixtape intended to let the band flex its (well-concealed?) experimental muscles, this features collaborations with artists from Haim to Angel Haze and MNEK. It promises intriguing new blends of musical colour and texture, but too many songs are characterised by windy, wailing, reverb-heavy synth and vocals. “Axe to Grind”, featuring Tyde, is disappointingly blunt-edged, with an attractive palette of voices but no shape. “Torn Apart” is another ragbag of wailing synths and vocals. “Fall Into Read more ...
mark.kidel
The Afro-Atlantic world, in music as well as in religion, has always been characterized by a continuously self-renewing tendency to combine elements from cultures that originate on either side of the ocean. Lucas Santtana is a thoroughly contemporary Brazilian musician – in spite of his roots as an accompanist of bossa nova and tropicalia greats such as Gilberto Gil and Gaetano Veloso. His most recent music has drawn from the polyrhythms of Africa, the soft lilt of reggae, Brazil’s own rich samba tradition, as well as the complex textures of European club music and indie rock.His new release Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
With just over two weeks to Christmas, thoughts might be turning to which of the deluge of 2014’s reissues might be suitable as a gift, worth putting on your own wish-list for Santa or even merit buying for yourself. So if help is needed, theartsdesk is happy to provide a one-stop guide to the essential reissues covered so far this year.Normal service will resume next week with a look at John Grant’s old band The Czars. The week after we will consider Millions Like Us, a box set dedicated to, as it is helpfully subtitled, “the Mod Revival 1977–89”. Following that will be a collection Read more ...
caspar.gomez
Once up on a time, a long time ago, the pop music of France was a joke to the outside world. Serge Gainsbourg and certain Parisian chanson auteurs received occasional plaudits but, for the most part, coverage consisted of throwaway sniggering at Johnny Halliday. No longer. From Daft Punk to David Guetta, from Air to Justice, the French are now colossi of dance-pop which, let’s face it, in 2014 is all pop. One day, when the dust settles and leather elbow-padded rave historians peek into how this change came about, three names will recur: Daft Punk, of course, but also techno visionary Laurent Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The last time I saw Jon Hopkins he was bangin’ out techno to a marquee full of sweating ravers at a festival on the Silesian plains of Poland, one man and a small gaggle of black boxes. Today the boxes have expanded from a small gaggle into a congregation and he is joined, upon occasion, by guitarist Leo Abrahams and a violinist, as well as a hefty dose of backdrop visuals and lighting. He also has a grand piano to which he occasionally retreats so that he might play lilting pieces culled from his soundtrack to 2010’s giant-aliens-take over-the-Tex-Mex-border movie Monsters. The audience is Read more ...
Matthew Wright
John Coltrane’s album A Love Supreme, recorded 50 years ago next week, is second only to Miles Davis' Kind of Blue as a revered document of jazz recording. Inspired by Coltrane’s spiritual awakening on overcoming his addiction to heroin and alcohol in the late 1950s, it has (by his standards, at least) a relatively simple structure, following a four-note motif through four movements with the quasi-religious titles "Acknowledgement", "Resolution", "Pursuance", and "Psalm."The spiritual intensity of Coltrane’s tone, and the aspects of the prodigious technical accomplishments of the final years Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The subject of The Possibilities are Endless does not appear until 24 minutes into the film. When Edwyn Collins is manifested, it is as a silhouette, as spectral as he is tangible. Collins is bifurcated: corporeal but also removed. The massive stroke he had suffered meant he could not summon the words he needs, has mobility issues and did not recall the connections between the episodes from his life in his memory. Who Collins is has been rewritten yet he remains the person he was, as attested by his partner Grace Maxwell.The Possibilities are Endless charts the iron-willed Collins’ difficult Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The news that keyboard player Ian McLagan had died of a stroke at 2:39pm today at a hospital in his adopted home of Austin, Texas is tremendously sad. McLagan outlived his former Small Faces bandmates Ronnie Lane and Steve Marriott, and it seemed as though he would be around forever. Drummer Kenney Jones is the only Small Faces member left with us.Despite having defined a vital aspect of the Sixties with Small Faces and going on to global stardom with The Faces, McLagan was approachable and led a low-key life in Austin. Seen behind his keyboard at the city’s bars and always open for a chat Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s a rare year when 80s psychedelicists-with-a-black-sense-of-humour the Butthole Surfers stray into the studio. So when guitarist Paul Leary and bass player, Jeff Pinkus join up with Melvins’ mainstays, King Buzzo and Dale Clover, it’s not unreasonable to expect something special. Hold It In is not a disappointment and offers plenty of twisted, gonzo metal with Metallica-sized riffs, some completely whigged-out psychedelia and much inbetween.The metal-with-a-twist of tunes like “Bride of Crankenstein” and “Sesame Street Meat” will certainly keep long-term fans of the Melvins happy with Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Craig Bratley has been impressing for a good while now behind the desk and the decks alike. A handful of must-have 12”s and DJ sets at nights including the stellar A Love from Outer Space and the ever-reliable Música Noche have ensured that this is an album for which the bar of expectation has been set very high.“Transmission One” starts things off and the synth sounds glow with the warmth of a comforting, crackling fire. It manages to be both futuristic and enjoyably dusty at the same time – like finding an old Eagle annual on a visit to your mum’s. Then comes “Dance with a Mannequin”, which Read more ...
joe.muggs
The story of Busted and McFly was a weird case of pop lightning striking twice. Busted, an early 2000s attempt to put together a boyband-with-guitars for girls who don't like boybands, was a huge success – not least because one of its members, James Bourne, proved to be an extraordinarily deft bubblegum pop-punk songwriter. But not only that, but another auditionee for Busted, the then also teenaged Tom Fletcher, was taken on by the management as part of the band's writing team, and as apprentice to Bourne proved to be at least his equal – spawning offshoot band McFly, multi-platinum albums Read more ...
Heidi Goldsmith
“I have quit smoking!” the rock star exclaims to rapturous applause, taking a luxurious drag on an e-cigarette. And the artificial smoke dissipates across the stage, revealing a 67-year-old Marianne Faithfull perched on an antique leather chair, shoulder raised and pouting as if caricaturing her own youth. It is a subtle and triumphant reference to her past of destructive drug abuse and yet tonight quite clearly shows that for Faithfull the stage (alongside nicotine replacement and a wooden walking stick) is now her crucial crutch for rehabilitation. Though she fills many a Read more ...