How does an artist follow a debut album as well-received as Jessie Ware’s Mercury-nominated Devotion? With something just as insistent, just as beautiful and just as likely to stick in the brain. There’s something incredibly unassuming about the London-born diva, who despite having the sort of voice that would lend itself perfectly to big, belting R&B ballads, is content to play it subtle and let the music speak for itself.Tough Love is, according to Ware, one last record about unrequited love before she becomes a happily married woman; and there’s a sepia-tinged late-night sadness to the Read more ...

Acclaimed British jazz singer Georgia Mancio celebrates five years of ReVoice!, her festival of jazz song, with an expanded event – now twice its original length – beginning next week. Mancio’s programming combines some of the most charismatic and original performers worldwide to create ten concerts (some with several performances) that display the art of jazz singing at its cosmopolitan best.In some quarters, vocal jazz can still be too closely associated with restaurant crooners to be widely recognised as a serious musical form. While all of these performers are highly entertaining, and Read more ...

It has been announced by the Hyperdub label that Stephen Samuel Gordon, better known as The Spaceape, vocalist, poet and live performer, passed away peacefully after a 5 year struggle with a rare form of cancer. Gordon was the constant recording and performing partner of Hyperdub founder Kode 9, and collaborator with key Hyperdub affiliates including Burial and Kevin Martin, and his rich voice and lyrics which blurred academia, mysticism and science fiction with the power and finesse of soundsystem culture were a constant for lovers of "bass music" through the 2000s. He was a mysterious Read more ...

There's a narrative that I recall from one particular "Ball Boy" strip in the Beano comic many years ago, but I'm pretty sure was recurring in similar cartoon strips too, of a bookworm or boffin character impinging on the tough kids' game, but then proving his worth by using his book learning to calculate, say, the perfect goal-scoring kick in a football match. Maybe it was far-fetched, but it spoke to a deep hope – not just as a simple “revenge of the nerds” narrative, but a hint that maybe the complexities of life and of human games and teams could actually be worked out.And maybe there's Read more ...

This is what Goat look like: There are seven of them, five band members and two front-women, the latter constantly whirling about the stage like dervishes. One of the guitarists and the bassist are clad in dark attire with black cowls over their heads akin to those worn by nomadic Arabic riders in the Sahara – but also a little like hangmen. The second guitarist has on a beanie hat underneath which resides a gold mask, as if he were a sinister ancient deity returned to haunt an Eighties B-movie. The drummer, in an Afro-flavoured smock, wears a mask that’s part bird, part skull, and the bongo- Read more ...

Transgressive is a bold statement for a record label's tin and, on their 10th anniversary celebration last night, there appeared instead a Caucasian calm to the events. From optimistic William Blake lyric loops in the foyer, to the persistent professions of love from the audience for anyone under the limelight.The first live act to grace the Barbican stage last night was newcomer Marika Hackman, unassuming in a simple black cape, aquamarine guitar and unbrushed Scandinavian blonde hair. The focus fell on her lilting pick pattern and twisting melody, and her presence and playing exuded a Read more ...

Amy Winehouse, Esperanza Spalding, and Roberto Fonseca were the names tossed and bandied after a London debut of extraordinary charm and maturity from the 19-year-old Spanish singer and multi-instrumentalist Andrea Motis. While a modest Soho crowd was dwarfed by the audience at the Barcelona Jazz Festival where she became, in 2012, the youngest performer to headline, there was a communal tingle of recognition, that we’d witnessed the start of something big.Motis sings an already broad repertoire of standards, both American and Latin, with a sprinkling of modern repertoire such as Amy Read more ...

All lovers of music have styles they're drawn to and others they loathe. For me the continuing rise of the whiney, vulnerable, male singer-songwriter, his falsetto-flecked voice emoting non-specific but all-encompassing woes, is anathema. Poor old Jeff Buckley, dead these last 17 years, has so much to answer for. The gigantic and continuing public appetite for solipsistic carefully highlighted sensitivity, from Damien Rice to Ben Howard - and way too many more - is apparently and unfortunately endless.The arrival, then, of flop-haired, falsetto-flecked 24-year-old singer-songwriter Andrew Read more ...

Vance Joy does not pull in the kind of crowd that you might imagine would be wowed by a ukulele or an acoustic guitar. In fact, at the Birmingham date of his sold out UK tour, the place was rammed with fresh-faced teenagers and 20-somethings who were not only unlikely to know any of arch-folkie Richard Thompson’s tunes but also unlikely to have heard of the bloke at all. Joy did, however, conform to folkie type with his woolly hair, unshaven look and grubby denim shirt – a no-nonsense approach that he applied to his music as well.Bounding on stage with a three-piece backing band of bass, Read more ...

Thom Yorke’s second solo LP arrived unexpectedly this week via BitTorrent as a paid-for fileshare, a medium Yorke and producer Nigel Godrich hope to promote to empower artists to sell direct, without the need for a corporate hosting system. In a striking dissonance of form and content, the upbeat, seize-your-destiny message of the BitTorrent medium has conveyed to us a set of tracks that, never less than intriguing, are nearly all on the downbeat mood spectrum, from pensive to virtually apocalyptic.As expected from a Yorke solo project, this is an electronic collection: Radiohead guitar Read more ...

Exoticisation, at an event named "Sahara Soul", was perhaps inevitable. With Tuareg jewellery and souvenirs in the foyer, there was a touristic expectation last night that these genuine desert-dwellers would bring the burning spirit of the Saharan blues along with their glinting necklaces. Indeed the first set was the diamond display of an all-star ensemble, brought together exclusively for this performance as part of the Barbican’s Transcender Festival.The women of Malian ensemble Tartit were the first to file onto the stage, in irridescent white gowns and ornate headdresses, to be joined by Read more ...

Does Kylie exist without spectacle? Take away the 6ft headgear, the sparkly hotpants, the spangly corsets, the team of super-fit dancers dressed like futuristic liquorice allsorts, and what’s left? If you find whatever it is, please let me know. But if it’s spectacle you’re into – and who doesn’t enjoy a bit of sparkle and shimmer now and again? – there’s fun to be had at a Kylie gig, even as you’re aware that all you’re admiring is the pristine production and the manufactured aura of the Kylie brand. "Wooo", the audience go at a spectacular but brief light show between two Read more ...